Rhaegar and Elia's annulment

In the real world some cultures only require you to repeat a word three times and its done. So not that far fetched.

Does the faith of the 7 allow for divorce? Annulment is a way around that.

Rhaegar got the High Septon of that era to annul the marriage, that's why it was recorded in the Septon's scrolls that Gilly read from.

Seeing how the High Septon is the titular head of the Faith of the Seven religion practiced in Westeros, Rhaegar followed protocol that wasn't all that different from how aristocrats got annulments in medieval monarchies of our day, by seeking them from the pope.

Of course when the pope flat refused Henry VIII's request for annulment from Catherine of Aragon so he could marry his mistress Ann Boleyn, the king decided to reject the Catholic Church's authority altogether and start the Anglican church of England which he controlled so he could marry who he wanted. The result was the Great Schism and ensuing Protestant Reformation and as they say, the rest is history.

But with regards to Rhaegar, it sounds like he paid a fat enough bribe to Maynard to agree to annul his marriage in spite of having multiple children well into his first marriage to Elia Martell. It couldn't have been cheap. Nor was it cheap when kings sought annulments from the pope, they exacted a stiff price.

Yes, it's believable that the crown prince could strong-arm the pontiff into annulling his first marriage, even if there were children. That happened all the time in 14th-15th century Europe, Henry VIII was about the only monarch who couldn't get the pope to annul his marriage on request. Imperfect marriage contracts and pre-existing childhood betrothals could provide an out, it was also illegal to marry a close cousin but as all the crowned heads of Europe were related most marriages between royals were technically illegal, so anyone who wanted a divorce could bring up the degree of "Consanguinity".

However, just because a crown prince COULD get an annulment doesn't make it likely that he'd do it, and do it in secret! For one thing, aristocrats in Westeros just don't marry for love, doing so is considered shocking and self-indulgent and undutiful to the family, like when Robb broke his promise to the Freys to marry for love (or to assuage his conscience in the books). Do you think the Martells would have taken it any better than the Freys, if they found out their Elia had been dumped and their grandkids named as bastards? It'd have been war or the threat of war, if anyone had known. It WAS war, when Robert found out that Rheagar had taken his fiancée, you just can't do that sort of thing in a society like Westeros.

No, it'd make much more sense for Rheagar to revive the Targaryan custom of polygamous marriage, and hope everyone in Westeros was just grateful that the next generation of royals was less inbred than the last. But I don't suppose TV audiences would buy Jon as the legitimate heir if they worked the backstory that way.

I saw a YouTube clip about this that hinted at the possibility that something may have been wrong with Elia that had only just started to present itself when Rhaegar and Lyanna meet (and that the Martells MAY have known about). Like mental instability or something similar that Rhaegar was concerned about passing along to his heirs. Since madness was already present in his children's genes through HIS ancestry, he didn't want to double the odds. It was already established that Elia couldn't have any additional children, so maybe combined with something like instability, that was enough for Rhaegar to start looking for a way out?

Note that, at the Laughing Tree Incident, while Robert is somewhat amused by Rhaegar naming Lyanna as Queen of Love and Beauty, and everyone else is somewhat scandalized by it all, Elia's reaction is never mentioned. Was she even at the joust? If not, where was she, and why?