"This is an insult," Mace all but screamed, his hands shaking around the letter he held as he paced around the solar. "That, that Baratheon upstart want me to marry my daughter to a bastard?"
For once in her life, Olenna Tyrell found herself agreeing with her lackwit son. Something inside her clenched in shame and rage at the thought of sweet little Margaery married to a Northern bastard of all things. She clenched her hands around the armrests of her chair. Still, she kept herself calm. "I told you and Paxter it was not time to play games just yet," she said. "You would not listen to me." Of course, they might have all lucked out if Paxter's little scheme had succeeded and the king and his main allies had been slain fighting the Greyjoys, which was why she, foolishly, had not pushed harder. Now was not the time to dwell on past mistakes, however. She wanted her sweet granddaughter to marry a crass lowborn Northerner as much as Mace did, but sometimes there was nothing to do but work with what you had.
Let the board reset, take time to reassess the pieces and move on from there. "Margaery is years away from flowering," she said. "There is plenty of time to figure out where we shall go next."
Mace huffed. "With Garlan in Riverrun with Hoster Tully - and I can no more turn that invitation down than I can turn down the betrothal - there is nothing we can do," he said. "One toe out of line, and my little boy..." He trailed off, shaking his head, his round cheeks flushing in anger. At least he had the good sense to see that Garlan would be going as a hostage, rather than a squire, whatever word Jon Arryn chose to use.
Margaery was supposed to have married so much higher than this, was supposed to have been a princess or a queen. Marrying the Prince of Dragonstone would have been a dream once - it had been all their dream, before the War of the Usurper was lost, that Margaery might be born a girl and one day be betrothed to Prince Aegon, and then he had died and their plans had been for naught. Marrying a mere Lord of Dragonstone was something else. The Starks would never be the Targaryens, and the Lord of Dragonstone was no longer first in line for the throne. Mace was right; this truly was an insult of the highest rank.
"Mayhap he is a good boy," Alerie spoke up from the other chair, her voice soft and uncertain. "Mayhap he will be good to her."
Olenna let out a long sigh at her gooddaughter's words. "He will still be a bastard," she said.
"If things had not gone so very wrong, he would not have been," Alerie said, holding fast to her opinion more stubbornly than she usually would. "It is said that Eddard Stark and Ashara Dayne pledged to wed after the Tourney at Harrenhal. If not for the war and Brandon Stark's death, they would have, and Jon Sand would have been born Jon Stark. Both his parents are highborn, and he is being raised and trained by the Sword of the Morning himself. He was born of love, not treason. The kind of bastard you lament, not the kind you despise."
Olenna bit back a snort. A bastard was a bastard was a bastard. "Like I said," she repeated. "Dear Margaery's flowering is years away yet. We have time to think. Time to meet him and see for ourselves," she added, for her gooddaughter's benefit as she tried not to roll her eyes. "Nothing is set in stone just yet." Even if the proposal could not be turned down, there were ways around that. Young boys receiving martial training often did not survive to wed, betrothal or not. And she did not imagine the bastard of one of the Usurper's dogs would go unscathed on Dragonstone, even if Olenna did not help things along.