Has anybody done a timeline on Dorna Swyft, chinless wife of Ser Kevan Lannister? So she's held hostage by Ser Kevan over her father's debts to the Lannisters after the War of the Ninepenny Kings in 260 AC and before the Reyne-Tarbeck Rebellion in 261 AC and old enough for them to fall in love yet her and Kevan's son Lancel isn't born until at least 282 AC (a 2-decade courtship or childless marriage?!?) and she is still having children up to 297/298 AC with Janei's birth. Does this all work out?
“The lion has awoken,” said Ser Harys Swyft, the Knight of Cornfield, when the collectors arrived at his castle gates. Unable to repay his debt, he turned his daughter over to Ser Kevan as a hostage instead. (TWOIAF)
I imagined Dorna Swyft was still a child in 260AC. Ser Harys Swyft is still healthy enough to fight in TWOT5K, and by 300AC he’s running around in Braavos attending plays, so I think he’s at most 5 years older than Tywin.
Let’s say Dorna was 5 years old in 260 (so in this scenario I have made up, she would have been born ~255), and then Kevan married her around ~266 (sometime shortly before the twins were born, hence the “meanwhile”):
In 266 AC, Lady Joanna gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. Meanwhile, Ser Tywin’s brother Ser Kevan had also wed, taking to bride the daughter of Ser Harys Swyft of Cornfield, who had once been given to him as a hostage for her father’s debts. (TWOIAF)
Say Dorna was 11 in 266, while Kevan would have turned 22 that year. It’s certainly not the first marriage where the bride was “half [the groom’s] age” or younger. Compare it to Genna’s marriage, or Tyrek’s, or Tyrion’s.
“Your sister swears she’s flowered. If so, she is a woman, fit to be wed. You must needs take her maidenhead, so no man can say the marriage was not consummated. After that, if you prefer to wait a year or two before bedding her again, you would be within your rights as her husband.”
I think if we really want to make GRRM’s timeline work, the argument could be made that Kevan wedded and bedded an 11 year old, and then waited a few years before bedding her again. Still, the experience might have severely traumatized Dorna, both mentally and physically, so she may have had extreme difficulty conceiving when she and Kevan started sleeping together with any regularity when she was older. That might explain why Dorna doesn’t give birth to a living child until 282, when she’s (by my made up birthdates) 27.
Willem and Martyn were twins, born sometime between 285 and 287, so that might have been another 5 years before Dorna had another successful birth. And then Janei wasn’t born until either 296 or 297 (when Dorna was just about ~41 in this scenario). There may have been many miscarriages and stillbirths, as was the case with Rhaella, who was also a child-bride.
Kevan loved his chinless lady, flat-chested and chicken-legged as she was. (AFFC)
Dorna was a gentle soul, never comfortable but at home with friends and kin around her. She had done well by their children, dreamed of having grandchildren, prayed seven times a day, loved needlework and flowers. (ADWD)
I don’t imagine Dorna was in love with Kevan in 266, but she (hopefully) grew to love Kevan eventually, as Daenerys grew to love Drogo. (I hold with the idea that Daenerys basically had Stockholm Syndrome toward Drogo, and that Dany/Drogo is a terrible relationship, but if you asked Dany, she would say she loved Drogo. I imagine Dorna feels the same toward Kevan.)
However, GRRM is not very good with making pre-series timelines match up (ie Barristan’s timeline of tourneys is impossible and GRRM has admitted as much and there was a 2 year error in the Westerlands timeline in TWOIAF), so you might not want to think about ASOIAF timelines too hard.