I've been waiting for the next book in ASOIAF to come out and have been going over "what ifs" out of boredom. In one of Ned's chapters, Renly mentions something about Margery looking like Lyanna and it had something to do with Renly attempting to sway Robert somehow? And I think he brings it up again when he's talking to Stannis in the second book. I was hoping you could shed some light on Renly's plot. I was confused as to his endgame with that plan. Opinions?
I could have sworn I’ve answered this already, but it’s not in my posts at all. (edit: oh right, it was on someone else’s blog.) Anyway, the text you’re referring to:
Ned was not sure what to make of Renly, with all his friendly ways and easy smiles. A few days past, he had taken Ned aside to show him an exquisite rose gold locket. Inside was a miniature painted in the vivid Myrish style, of a lovely young girl with doe’s eyes and a cascade of soft brown hair. Renly had seemed anxious to know if the girl reminded him of anyone, and when Ned had no answer but a shrug, he had seemed disappointed. The maid was Loras Tyrell’s sister Margaery, he’d confessed, but there were those who said she looked like Lyanna. “No,” Ned had told him, bemused. Could it be that Lord Renly, who looked so like a young Robert, had conceived a passion for a girl he fancied to be a young Lyanna? That struck him as more than passing queer.
“Have you seen Mace Tyrell’s boy? The Knight of Flowers, they call him. Now there’s a son any man would be proud to own to. Last tourney, he dumped the Kingslayer on his golden rump, you ought to have seen the look on Cersei’s face. I laughed till my sides hurt. Renly says he has this sister, a maid of fourteen, lovely as a dawn…”
—Robert Baratheon, AGOT, Eddard VII
“The Knight of Flowers writes Highgarden, urging his lord father to send his sister to court. The girl is a maid of fourteen, sweet and beautiful and tractable, and Lord Renly and Ser Loras intend that Robert should bed her, wed her, and make a new queen.”
Sighing, Renly half turned in the saddle. “What am I to do with this brother of mine, Brienne? He refuses my peach, he refuses my castle, he even shunned my wedding…”“We both know your wedding was a mummer’s farce. A year ago you were scheming to make the girl one of Robert’s whores.”“A year ago I was scheming to make the girl Robert’s queen,” Renly said, “but what does it matter? The boar got Robert and I got Margaery.”
It’s pretty straightforward. Renly didn’t care for the stranglehold the Lannisters had on his brother and the kingdom, what with Tywin being owed millions of gold, Cersei as queen, and Lannister appointees everywhere (including two of Robert’s squires). Renly was also aware of how Robert and Cersei didn’t get along, and it’s also very likely that he suspected the truth about the parentage of Cersei’s children. At the very least he probably guessed their father was not Robert.
So when Renly met his lover Loras’s younger sister, and saw how pretty she was… and he knew that the Tyrells were one of the few families rich and powerful enough to stand up to the Lannisters… well, he planned to bring Margaery to King’s Landing so that she would become Robert’s mistress. With all probability he could even convince Robert to set aside Cersei and take Margaery as queen instead. (Basically an Anne Boleyn plot.) So Renly had this portrait of Margaery painted, and told Robert about her beauty, and even said that she might look like Lyanna, to further appeal to Robert. (Note “a maid of fourteen” is what Lyanna was when Robert last saw her.)
But before the plan could really get moving and Margaery could come to King’s Landing, Cersei’s own plan went into action, and Robert was killed by the boar. So after fruitlessly trying to convince Ned to side with him, Renly got the hell out of King’s Landing before the Lannister coup, went to Highgarden where he married Margaery, and then declared himself king, with all the wealth and armies of the Reach supporting him.
