So a big reason why Lyanna didn’t want to marry Robert was because he wouldn’t be faithful, right? Then why did Lyanna willingly shack up with Rhaegar, who was married with two kids? Seems a little hypocritical.

goodqueenaly:

This question supposes, to me, that the relationship between Lyanna and Rhaegar was as one between equals – that the only choice Lyanna made was based on personal desire for Rhaegar over Robert, that she felt free to choose between these two based on that metric alone, and that Rhaegar bears no responsibility for the choice Lyanna made in any respect. I, however, see the situation as quite different.

By the time of the Tourney of Harrenhal, I suspect, Lyanna was probably feeling in a very unwinnable position. She had “long been betrothed” to Robert, in Yandel’s words (I suspect in or around 279 AC, when she would have been 12-13, about the same age Catelyn was at her betrothal to Brandon), and might have suspected that Rickard planned to marry both of his betrothed children in 282 AC (which I think was not an unreasonable conclusion). Time was ticking, in other words, before she would be married to a man she knew would not be faithful to her, a man far removed from any romantic ideal she might have held, a man whose outward professions of love were no more than words. At the same time, she must have felt that there was no way out: even if she could run away with someone and consummate a secret marriage before her father could stop her, no one in her small sphere of contact would have the power to defy Lords Stark and Baratheon, and she ran the risk of the union being made a legal nullity (a la Tyrion’s) and any evidence of this un-marriage being swiftly and ruthlessly erased (a la Lysa Tully’s forced abortion at Lord Hoster’s command), lest Rickard risk the crucial Baratheon alliance. 

Then comes Rhaegar. Rhaegar, Prince of Dragonstone, heir apparent to the Iron Throne. Rhaegar, a man whose talents were universally praised, handsome, able, seemingly the paragon of chivalry. This man approaches her – and, amazingly, offers her a way out of her predicament. It seems like a solution dropped from heaven: to run off with Rhaegar, marry him instead, and never have to become Lady Baratheon. Now, instead of the faithless Robert, Lyanna would have the apparently romantic, apparently sensitive Rhaegar. She and Rhaegar would be like his own grandparents, Jaehaerys and Shaera, and before Rickard Stark could protest, the deed would have already been done. So long as Rhaegar married her (and I’m sure Lyanna would have the thought of the (long-dormant) Targaryen precedent of polygamy to justify a second marriage for Rhaegar), she could never be forced to wed Robert – not the least reason because Lord Stark and Lord Baratheon would not have the power to gainsay the heir to the Iron Throne and future Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. 

Of course, related to that last point, I don’t know that Lyanna herself felt that she had a choice in the matter. Rhaegar was as much her future king as he was the future king of her father or would-be husband, and if they did not have the power to defy this great royal, she, a mere maiden daughter of Lord Rickard, would have even less grounds to do so. What could she do to stop him if he wanted her – and what could he in turn do against her or her family if she refused him? If he told her “I want you, run away with me”, she would not be merely considering a romantic proposal from a beau – she would be facing down a royal order from the crown prince and her future sovereign. Caught in a situation she was desperate to escape, presented with an alternative that she herself very probably found attractive, offered to her by the crown prince whose power so extraordinarily outweighed her own, Lyanna I think made the only choice she thought she could. 

So who’s really to blame here, for this whole relationship? For my money, that’s Rhaegar. It’s Rhaegar who is the one with all the power in this relationship. He is making the offer to Lyanna, he is choosing the hour to go, he is deciding where they will “shack up”, he is trying to get Lyanna pregnant as quickly as possible, he is the one who leaves Lyanna under guard to fight for the man who had had her father and eldest brother murdered, in order that he might kill her former betrothed and another of her brothers. Similarly, it’s Rhaegar who deliberately insults his wife in the most public manner possible, Rhaegar who runs off with Lyanna while his wife is recovering from the near-fatal labor and birth of his son, Rhaegar who leaves his wife and small children to the whims of his insane father. Rhaegar is the one who abandons his duties to his wife, to his children, and to his country in order that he might impregnate a teenager and keep her under effective arrest thousands of miles from her home. Compare all that, coming from the adult crown prince, to the naiveté of the teenage Lyanna, and I know whom I would criticize.