Margaery felt that she was cursed, and the name of that curse was: anything related to marriage was bound to go wrong.
At first, the family's efforts to secure her marriage to Joffrey Baratheon repeatedly ran into obstacles. That could still be explained by King Robert's determination not to allow the Tyrells to become royal in-laws, which was understandable.
Later, the note incident in King's Landing triggered the uprising of the League of the Righteous in the Vale. Taking advantage of the gathering of the lords of the Six Kingdoms at the Bloody Gate, she offered herself to the usurper as a lover, only to be advised to seek out the Stark instead. Unexpectedly, Robb fell for Roslin Frey first in the blink of an eye. That was an accident.
Immediately afterward, the scandal of the golden Lannister siblings broke out, causing drastic changes in King's Landing. After Robert's death, the Reach gathered the courage to crown Renly king, and Margaery successfully became queen and entered the Red Keep. Everything was as beautiful as a dream, but who could have known that the dream would turn into a nightmare in the very next moment? Before they could consummate the marriage and leave behind heirs, her husband died from the poisoning of dark magic, leaving her with the bad name of widow and husband-killer for no clear reason, and even dragging the entire Reach into rebellion, placing them in an awkward situation.
Finally, the long-suffering Tyrell family grasped Aegon, this life-saving straw that had appeared out of nowhere. After twists and turns in negotiation and compromise, and the unexpected surprise of the two dragons splitting apart, they once again regained the qualification to contend for the position of queen. Looking on the bright side, this time the husband's surname she could take was even older and nobler, and the legitimacy of his line was even more proper than the Baratheons. Hardship had ended, and sweetness had arrived.
And the result?
The wedding was shelled and ended in chaotic dispersal, and they were pursued during the retreat. The couple was separated by the chaos of the army and nearly captured by the Dornish army. After finally escaping separately back to the safety of the Reach, King Aegon was stationed near Bitterbridge, gathering scattered soldiers and preparing to deal with possible further attacks. As queen, Margaery should have been by her husband's side, supporting him through this difficult time, but she had to preside over another, even more important matter: coordinating resources, urgently researching and reproducing powder, and breaking the Gift army's monopoly on thermal weapons.
As long as this overwhelming advantage of the enemy could be destroyed and the strategic situation restored to balance, then if they advanced, the Reach could fight a decisive battle with Daenerys's army, and if they retreated, it would still be enough to serve as a bargaining chip for negotiating better peace terms. Either way, there would be no loss.
That was right, this work could have been handed over to others, but Margaery did not dare.
She had been born intelligent, and personally raised and disciplined by the Queen of Thorns, educated and cultivated according to the model of a queen. These positive "causes" inevitably led to good "results": after growing into her teens, Margaery gradually became sharper, more decisive, and mentally stronger than most people, regardless of gender.
Because her father was weak and her brothers were simple and straightforward, the entire Tyrell family could be said to be controlled by two women: her grandmother Olenna as the principal figure, and she, Margaery, as the second.
Certainly, among the servants within the castle and the bannermen outside the family, there was no lack of outstanding men and women who were no less capable than she was, or even better than her in one or several respects, and to whom she could confidently entrust affairs and heavy responsibilities.
However, for this complicated task, which concerned the future and destiny of the Reach and required reputation, status, intellect, and meticulousness, along with a bit of flexibility and innovation, Margaery searched through her mind and could not find anyone who might possibly do better than herself. She could not confidently entrust it to anyone else.
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By combining the information that Neil had inadvertently revealed with the analysis of the material throughput data of Night's Watch Industry, which Reach merchants had access to, Margaery quickly reached a conclusion after excluding certain misleading factors: the raw materials for powder were three things, sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal. Everything else had been deliberately released to muddy the waters.
But figuring this out was only the beginning.
Among the three major raw materials, except for charcoal, which was readily available, the other two had to be gathered. Of the two, sulfur, as a common alchemical ingredient, could barely be procured on a large scale, but the last item, saltpeter, was a truly scarce resource. The Reach, having never realized its strategic value, had neither discovered any saltpeter mines by chance nor ever tried to search for them. As a result, only when disaster was already upon them and they wanted to make a final desperate effort did they realize that there were only two ways to obtain this substance.
The first was to imitate Night's Watch Industry by establishing saltpeter production sites and broadly collecting manure for artificial production. This method was clearly efficient and reliable, but setting aside the fact that the Reach had not obtained the detailed techniques for making saltpeter, and in truth had never bothered to pursue them at all because there was no profit in it, even if they could somehow acquire the entire set of techniques and personnel in a short time, the long production cycle would still be an unacceptable fatal weakness. And after ruling out one of these only two options, Margaery was surprised and embarrassed to discover that the only remaining emergency method available to them was the second path: gathering it piecemeal from the common people.
They had to broadly mobilize their low-ranking subordinates and the masses, make use of the Reachmen's simple enthusiasm for self-defense and regional solidarity, and search through every household's cow sheds, sheep pens, stables, privies, caves, and cellars, using the clumsiest and most primitive method of scraping by hand, relying on the advantage of vast territory and a large population to overcome skill with sheer force.
This undertaking required tremendous mobilization and execution. Fortunately, that was not difficult to achieve when facing a powerful enemy and with internal unity in the Reach. However, even if they succeeded in collecting enough raw materials despite all difficulties, they would only have taken the first step toward catching up technologically.
The second step was to carry out a large number of experiments and errors, quickly adjust the material ratio, approach the ideal value as soon as possible, and begin mass production of powder.
It sounded simple, and in actual operation it also proceeded without much disturbance. There was only a small episode when they were close to getting results: when the craftsmen and alchemists finally worked together to determine that the weight ratio of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal should be around 10:1:2, the pro-Reach faction hidden inside Night's Watch Industry suddenly sent back information, bringing with it a printed internal document, allegedly meant for the expanded production of the Night's Watch arsenal, which detailed the production process, cannon data, and the precise ratio for powder.
Margaery was excited by the news for less than half a day before she received an enraged report: although this document looked genuine and read as if it were true, the most crucial data in it was false. According to what it stated, the powder mixed using those proportions had less than half the explosive power of the previously undecided formula, and had no practical combat value at all.
Would King's Landing really go to such lengths to create a fake leak just to waste less than half a day of the Reachmen's time? Margaery felt suspicious. Although she vaguely sensed that this was a trap aimed at someone or some people, she had no time to regret or worry over the acquaintance or hidden ally who might be lured out and killed in this operation, because the even harder third step was already before her.
Since the ratio data was fake, there was even less need to look at the cannon data. But in that case, although they had barely managed to produce powder, their experience in how to use it was still completely nonexistent.
The aggressive enemy army was about to reach their doorstep, and Margaery had to quickly find the best way to maximize the effect of the inferior powder they had made. But at the same time, another major problem, one that was actually very serious but had temporarily been overshadowed by the central contradiction of life and death, was also exposed: her marriage had once again reached the edge of collapse and failure.
Most of the wedding had been completed, but the most important part of the ceremony itself, the most crucial part of a political marriage, entering the bridal chamber and leaving behind descendants of the bloodline, had still not been completed. Under such circumstances, instead of remaining inseparable from her husband, she was running all over the Reach and "playing with alchemy." Even though reasonable explanations had been given both publicly and privately, it still inevitably aroused suspicion among observers: had the Queen of Thorns instructed Margaery to avoid her husband and not truly complete the marriage? Was the Reach preparing to sacrifice the lesser for the greater, making peace with Daenerys at the cost of giving up Aegon and the position of queen, in order to preserve the overall interests of the Reach?
(To be continued.)