If Marula can be co-opted as a Consul while in office are you so sure about Caesar?  McCullough manages to postulate a way around the restrictions in her books on the period, and it is also valuable to take into account the high degree of change that the society was being subjected to at that time.
Of interest also is the question of the marriage to the Flaminica.  why should her death render the Flamen out of his office?  Graves in his book 'The White Goddess' postulates that the reason for this is because the office was originally matrilinearlly bestowed by virtue of a propoerly constructed marriage to the heiress that bore the title.  If that were the case then one could presume that by  historical times, with the advent of patriarchal structures, the form merely remained, with no connection anymore to the original reason.