while reading ur responses to the situation where aerys spontaneously drops dead & leaves rhaegar directly responsible 4 explaining his actions and (possibly) trying smooth ruffled feathers, maybe get lyanna officially recognized as his wife while tywin & the martells are pissed on the sidelines, i just have to say i had the totally bizarre but also maybe crack-pot plausible theory. rhaegar’s genius solution: marry literally anyone from the great houses. everyone’s happy & extra twpwp, rite? /s

And then have a reality show that’s ostensibly about Rhaegar’s life and family when in reality everyone is tuning in to see how his spouses keep pairing off and ignoring him. Lyanna and Elia. Robert and Ned. Cersei and Jaime. And they are all starry-eyed over the budding baby romance between Benjen and Edmure.

Does the war happen if Aerys bites the dust before bbq the Starks? Rhaegar returns with a pregnant Lyanna. What then? Marry her off to Jon Con? Offer political plums to the Starks/Baratheons? Rhaenys for Renly?

I once wrote an au scenario about how Rhaegar can handle the situation that was admittedly overly hopeful and a bit fantastical. So I’ll take another (more realistic) stab at it.

Let’s start by mapping how that scenario goes: Rhaegar disappears with Lyanna near Harrenhal. Brandon and his companions (a gaggle of nobles that included no less than the heir to the Vale, a Royce, a Mallister and a Glover) ride to King’s Landing to protest the apparent kidnapping. Aerys throws them all in a dungeon, summons their fathers to answer for their sons’ crimes but then dies before actually murdering everyone.

First problem is that there is no effective head of state to handle a very perilous situation if Aerys dies. Rhaegar is in the wind. Rhaella’s authority is tremulous at best and non-existent at worst. Elia might still be on Dragonstone and if she is in King’s Landing, any authority she might have claimed has been soundly undermined by both Aerys and Rhaegar, and that’s without taking into account the possibility of her being indisposed so soon after Aegon’s birth. And the Hand is Owen Merryweather, hardly the person you want in charge during a political crisis.

And while the monarchy is in disarray, you have some powerful lords right there, who are at best pissed off for being treated as conspirators and their sons as criminals when they came to protest a legitimate grievance, and at worst know that Aerys has marked them for death. And the new king is not there and would
not be located until months later per OTL. Even if we assume that the
Daynes knew at the time that Rhaegar was at the Tower of Joy and dispatched
someone to drag his ass back to King’s Landing stat, even if we assume that he would agree to leave without being sure that Lyanna was pregnant and his precious third head of the dragon on the way, it’s still some
time before the now king can make it to the capital to a mess that
wouldn’t be solved easily and that’s been exacerbated by his absence. He has been accused of kidnap and rape. He disappeared without bothering to
give even a perfunctory explanation or show the least bit of
acknowledgement or respect to the feudal contract or the
liege-vassal relationship. His father then proceeded to treat the people injured by his actions as criminals and conspirators, and may have even passed the sentence before keeling over. So the message remains the same: “the law does not apply to House Targaryen. We’re not beholden to the mutual obligations of a feudal contract that afford vassals protection and legal rights. We can do whatever we want with no consequences”. That’s hard to smooth
over, even without murdered nobles. And that’s assuming that Rhaegar is interested in smoothing things over in any way he can.

As per the current situation, I would not be surprised one bit if Winterfell, the Eyrie and Storm’s End still call their banners. No one is going to wait politely for Rhaegar to bestir himself from Dorne and deign to address the damage he caused, and the crown has proven untrustworthy. Even if I assume that Rhaegar only chooses the most conciliatory moves
going forward (which I doubt), if he returns Lyanna promptly and she
tells everyone that she left willingly and is believed, the damage has
already happened. Houses Stark and Martell have been publicly
dishonored. The crown has stomped all over the liege-vassal relationship
several times over. The now king has thwarted a marriage pact
and a political alliance between two great houses seemingly for no reason but a
personal whim (and speaking of the prophecy in these circumstances would
make things worse). The previous king has sentenced innocent people who have committed no crime to death in defense of his son’s unlawful actions. By every convention, the crown has soundly
overstepped the boundaries of royal power within the feudal contract and
the nobles are pissed. And if Rhaegar did indeed marry Lyanna on the
Isle of Faces, you can add the Faith to the list of people pissed at Rhaegar.

So it’s really not as easy as what you’ve suggested, and some of that is just not happening. There is nothing Rhaegar can do to smooth things with Robert so that Rhaenys/Renly betrothal isn’t happening (and that’s assuming that Rhaegar would be willing in the first place. The guy is prophecy-oriented and he might have wanted his children to marry). It’s also likely that Rhaegar and Lyanna married in front of a heart tree which would spark a fierce debate over the validity of the vows, inflaming both the Starks and the Martells.
Rhaegar might think himself supported by prophecy and that this is enough to
legitimize his actions, but that isn’t gonna fly with any of the furious
lords waiting for him to emerge or with their armies.
If the SA bloc was formed as a security measure against either tyranny
or abandonment from the crown as speculated, Rhaegar and Aerys would have thoroughly
validated
their concerns and no one would back down without some assurance that
the king wouldn’t be in a position to do this ever again or some
concrete way to check the power of the crown.

With both the Faith and so many great lords furious at Rhaegar, I’d say that the crown losing its power is the best case scenario. I can see the lords pushing for a permanent Great Council that prevents such an overeach and violation from happening again and restricts the power of the crown.

The bad news is that preventing this from escalating to war is entirely dependent on Rhaegar and his willingness of make concessions to mollify his angered vassals. Like I said, the guy thinks he is backed by prophecy and this justifies everything. The fact that he declared for Aerys in OTL to protect his throne and that he wanted to put down the rebellion before enacting the changes he talked about to Jaime speaks of a person willing to sacrifice thousands to retain his crown. He wouldn’t be open to effectively losing his power to the lords (especially if he entertains the belief that he needs full royal power for the War for the Dawn), and I don’t know how willing he’d be to return Lyanna prior to Jon’s birth (especially if she is in early enough stage of pregnancy that she could abort, whether naturally or with the aid of moon tea). His actions in OTL don’t instill a lot of confidence in me. At no point in the narrative did Rhaegar Targaryen ever display any keenness to deescalate the situation, prevent the war or try to smooth things over with the rebels so I hesitate to ascribe more levelheadedness, acumen and affinity for conciliation than he’d ever displayed in OTL. Given Rhaegar’s track record, there’s a very big chance that he digs his heels in and aggravates the lords even more, reassured as he was that the prophecy would ensure he prevails. That means war.

Hey don’t you find Elia ‘s successive pregnancies a bit sketchy. It’s probably because of my hatred for rhaegar but two pregnancies too soon makes rhaegar a bit rapey even if we don’t consider lyaana for a moment.

I agree that the timing makes the situation seems off. Taking into consideration Elia’s six months of bed rest after Rhaenys’ birth and the average date of both Rhaenys and Aegon’s births, it looks like Elia fell pregnant very soon after her confinement ended which may have contributed to her trouble birthing Aegon and the consequent inability to have another child. What I don’t agree with is calling it rape.

You have to keep in mind that the political landscape of the time and the good old patriarchy are a fundamental part of this conversation. Not only does the patriarchy enforce the idea that childbearing is a woman’s duty, but it also forces women into a position where their political legacy is intrinsically tied to the children they bear. Elia was the crown princess of a dynasty with only two heirs so she’d have felt the pressure to produce a male heir to Rhaegar
keenly, while the bad blood between Rhaegar and Aerys that was becoming more apparent by the day meant that an heir was vital to strengthen Rhaegar’s position in court in the face of a father eager to undermine him. Too, Aerys’ contempt and his reaction to Rhaenys’ birth and looks might have distressed Elia not just for its racist awfulness but also for how precarious it made her position in court. Here she was, a Dornish princess contending with a lot of prejudice from the king himself, giving birth to a Dornish-looking girl and falling so ill she had to keep to her bed for six months thereafter. Talk must have abounded about the princess’ ability to bear another child even then, and perhaps even about whether the prince would or should put her aside in favor of another who would give him a male heir to secure the succession. Under these circumstances,

I can easily see how Elia herself might be eager to try for another child as soon as possible to put any conspiracies or rumors
to rest

, and to secure her position in court.

Granted that’s far from a healthy situation for Elia to be in and it does interfere with her consent, but it does not make Rhaegar a rapist. It may be utterly callous and careless on his part to impregnate Elia so soon. It may be a symptom of his prophecy brain due to the comet in the sky (and probably the first sign of his belief that the prophecy would ensure things turning out alright). But I balk at calling it rape. In this case, the questionability of Rhaegar’s actions lies elsewhere.