#THATS an insitution. everyone was just following it bc it was a norm.

[shoot-i-messed-up]

I want to know about the superlantern arranged marriage AU 👀 and thank you for the tag!!

TYSM for askig!! I realized that I actually have talked about this AU idea way too much for having…not actually explained the premise?

It came about bc I noticed a little while back that there are tons of Superbat arranged marriage AUs, which don’t get me wrong I’ve enjoyed a lot of them, but like…you kinda have to do a little bit of mental gymnastics in order to reason why Bruce Wayne, a random non-noble non-govt leader American billionaire, would be the person that Earth sends to an arranged marriage with an alien prince. I thought to myself, an arranged marriage AU with Superlantern as the main ship would probably make way more sense just from the premise, and then I also proceeded to do a whole ton of mental gymnastics to make that work!

So here's the basic premise:

This is a "Krypton lives" AU where despite the high council of Krypton still doesn't believe Jor-El about their overmining leading to the core of the planet becoming unstable, Jor-El manages to save Krypton anyway! He has won the hearts of the people and the hostility of pretty much all the members of the high class. Yay?

But now, even though Jor-El saved them from imminent disaster like 20-ish years before the story starts, there's still a ton of environmental disasters (mostly earthquakes, like in For The Man Who Has Everything, which was one of my inspirations for this AU) and economic issues that result from the overmining and the long centuries of isolationism and stagnation, so there's been a growing social progressive movement on Krypton to open up their economy.

For that, right before the story starts, Krypton has been having negotiations with the Green Lantern Corps to become annexed, or at least trade partners (think, like, trying to enter the World Trade Organization and get Most Favored Nations status but also the WTO protects you from space pirates and slave ships, ykyk). Really, they've been negotiating with sector partners Tomar-Re and Hal Jordan, who protect the same sector in this universe (Krypton has historically canonically been in the next sector over from Earth, but it just makes more sense for this AU if they are just. in the same one.)

However, this Krypton used to be close allies with Mars before they entered their isolationist period (long story), and while they generally respect the Corps members themselves (like most of the universe(, they are very distrustful of the Guardians. Krypton knows that the Guardians planted that debilitating fear of fire into Martians, to basically make sure they wouldn't, like, conquer and dominate the rest of the universe, and the people of Krypton understandably doesn't want that to happen to themselves.

Thus: the arranged marriage. The high council of Krypton wants a Green Lantern to 1) marry one of their own and 2) have a child born of that marriage to so that Krypton functionally has "hostages" against the Green Lantern to ensure that the GL has an incentive to protect Krypton against the Guardians doing something like what they did to Mars. Meanwhile, Hal agrees to this because no one in the Green Lantern Corps wants another rise of the Kryptonian Empire, and if there's anything Hal is loyal to above all else, it's his duty to the Corps. (plus, the whole thing with Sinestro turning out to be a dictator just went down, and while Hal himself is innocent, he is advised by a certain Guardian that he should lay low for a little while until the heat from the rest of the Guardians and the Corps cools down.)

Meanwhile (x2), Clark was actually forced into this arranged marriage. He's a part of the noble class, yes, but he's not a prince nor part of the negotiations in any capacity, and he's not even a Guild member (which is considered highly scandalous considering that he's not only a noble but a member of a High House). The High Council forced Clark specifically into this marriage for, like, a lot of complicated, overlapping reasons, the main one being this: pretty much everyone in high society kinda hates Clark, not only because his father is the "Savior of Krypton" who proved the High Council wrong, but also because of Clark's own merits (yay!). Here, Clark is a journalist for a low-key blasphemous newspaper and an outspoken member of the progressive movement, and he basically represents everything that is fundamentally against what Krypton's ruling class wants, except he's so close to home that they can't ignore him.

The reason why the High Council chose Clark to be the one in the arranged marriage, instead of any of their own, is because he is part of the progressive movement and therefore was one of the people who wanted Krypton's economy to be opened up but he also is a very convenient scapegoat if the arranged marriage / trade deals go poorly.

For Clark's own part, he's very aware that this is what's happening, and he doesn't try to fight the arranged marriage. He does want Krypton to be annexed into the Corps, and he's hoping to use his marriage to the Green Lantern to further his own interests (I mean that in the least self-serving way possible).

However, the High Council forced Clark into that arranged marriage through some old laws from, like, manorialistic Kryptonian Empire. Although it's become a social institution that nobles can't just make peasants to marry anymore, it's never actually been put down into the law books, so they can actually legally do that. However, Clark and Hal's marriage becomes the "straw that broke the camel's back" with all the social tensions on Krypton because if the High Council can just legally eschew institutions not to dictate commoners' lives in terms of marriage, they can also legally eschew a lot of other things about commoners.

So like... yay class war <3