#//Merias

[ginny-anime]

I find it hilarious when people hate on House Martell and dorne.

Why because they didn’t bow down to the conquerors?

They killed Rhaenys the conqueror and her dragon?

They didn’t fight in the dance of the dragons when it wasn’t their war to fight?

Because they were the only kingdom that defied the Targaryens and remained an independent kingdom until the reign of Daeron ii?

What is there to even hate about House Martell and Dorne

[holly-mckenzie]

“I will not fight you,” Princess Meria told Rhaenys, “nor will I kneel to you. Dorne has no king. Tell your brother that.”

“I shall,” Rhaenys replied, “but we will come again, Princess, and the next time we shall come with fire and blood.”

“Your words,” said Princess Meria. “Ours are Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. You may burn us, my lady…but you will not bend us, break us, or make us bow. This is Dorne. You are not wanted here. Return at your peril.”

Thus queen and princess parted, and Dorne remained unconquered.

FIRE & BLOOD | Aegon's Conquest

[alstroermeria]

I hate to be that person, but I just realized that between the beginning of DAO and DA4 there's about a 23/24 year gap, so you know... how to put it-

I don't think HoF and Alistair during Veilguard will be alive (or in good shape anyway), unless in the time between DAI and DA4 they have found a cure for the Calling.

David Gaider said in this 2012 interview:

"Thirty years is the maximum that you could probably expect. It's going to vary for an individual according to their willpower and the level of their interaction with the darkspawn. During a Blight you can expect that the Gray Wardens are going to have shorter lifespans. Outside of a Blight the Gray Wardens would tend to live longer. We have instances in the game of people going on their Calling after five or ten years quote shouldn't be taken as gospel, that's the way I like it. "

And probably everyone who became Gray Warden in the time between Awakening and the first act of DA2 will also be close to their Calling in Dragon Age the Veilguard.

i'm gonna cry

[atheyrie]

From left, Princess Rhaella Targaryen, Lady Joanna Lannister, The Princess of Dorne. All pre marriage

(My personal headcannon is that they were friends, and Rhaella sent Joanna away to protect her from Aerys)

[emptyportrait]

Oh, yeah i have some speculations about HBO adaptation of aegon's conquest. Rest assured that the plot will be surrounded by a drunken lout middle child who on a spur of the moment decides to conquer an entire continent. An alleged dark sorceress firstborn who'd probably be jealous of her younger sister. The doomed youngest child who will embrace death first. [She also loved music, dancing, and poetry, but those traits might be erased cause who cares, right??] A half-brother who will be portrayed as a backbiter and harbouring resentment towards the conqueror trio because he is a bastard. I won't be surprised at all if Harren the Black is shown as a tragic figure. And it may also feature a happy and harmonious westeros where everyone lived amiably before evil megalomaniac freaks with purple eyes, who also rides fire breathing flying lizards decided to invade them.

[martellspear]

MARTELL WEEK - day O3

⤻ favorite moment

“I will not fight you,” Princess Meria told Rhaenys, “nor will I kneel to you. Dorne has no king. Tell your brother that.” “I shall,” Rhaenys replied, “but we will come again, Princess, and the next time we shall come with fire and blood.” “Your words,” said Princess Meria. “Ours are Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. You may burn us, my lady...but you will not bend us, break us, or make us bow. This is Dorne. You are not wanted here. Return at your peril.” Thus queen and princess parted, and Dorne remained unconquered.

fire and blood, george r. r. martin

[mariedemedicis]

Ladies of House Martell:

Meria

[alicenttully]

quite frankly, if they're gonna insist on doing something as boring as the conquest, they should just focus on the most interesting part of it which is dorne!

dorne like the other kingdoms refused to submit to the targaryens, but it was dorne alone that actually succeeded. and the person who was instrumental in that victory (albeit a heavy one) was princess meria martell. she was no dragonrider, just an old woman who quite frankly probably didn't relish the idea of war, but respected the meaning of her house words more. y'all can call that selfish, but how is that any more selfish than aegon deciding he needed to have westeros? at least dorne was meria's home and she was doing what her people wanted.

all the other kingdoms was solved fairly quickly but the first dornish war took 9 years. they killed rhaenys and her dragon. it would end with princess meria's death and her granddaughter travelling to a city that was full of people who wanted her dead or worse with terms for aegon, and ended up leaving it with dorne remaining independent due to aegon finally agreeing to it. and this was all thanks to a letter from prince nymor that nobody besides aegon knew the contents of.

edit: oh and poc writers being heavily involved would be necessary, a must

[thewingedwolf]

i was looking through the actual book of the world of ice and fire, just to see the art, and I forgot that on the first page, where it says “to his esteemed and gracious lord, tommen the first of his name” blah blah to celebrate his reign, but you can see that maester yandel initially wrote it for robert, then he got murdered, so yandel blotted out his name and put joffrey, then HE got murdered, so yandel blotted out his name too and put tommen. this poor man, can u imagine him being like “maybe i’m young enough to write another great history tome, let’s see if i can convince tommen to fund another vanity project” and then within like 6 months, tommen dies, myrcella is crowned, myrcella dies, the targaryens come BACK, aegon vi is crowned, dany lands and announces her crown, the north decides to shake things up and starts chucking crowns at every stark they see, and yandel is desperately blotting out yet another name on the damn title page

[queenaryastark]

As gross as the parallel is, it's interesting that GRRM has Quentyn hear false rumors of Dany that vilify her for promiscuity in a similar way that their shared ancestor, Meria was vilified by her enemies:

The more Quentyn heard of Daenerys Targaryen, the more he feared that meeting. The Yunkai'i claimed that she fed her dragons on human flesh and bathed in the blood of virgins to keep her skin smooth and supple. Beans laughed at that but relished the tales of the silver queen's promiscuity. "One of her captains comes of a line where the men have foot-long members," he told them, "but even he's not big enough for her. She rode with the Dothraki and grew accustomed to being fucked by stallions, so now no man can fill her." -- Quentyn II, ADWD

---

Age and ill health finally did what dragons and armies could not. In 13 AC, Meria Martell, the Yellow Toad of Dorne, died abed (whilst having intimate relations with a stallion, her enemies insisted). -- Fire and Blood

Both Dany and Meria are/were powerful women ruling in their own right whose enemies fabricated falsehoods about them and tried to depict them as sexually depraved since they couldn't defeat them. This is clearly an intentional parallel not only between Dany and her ancestor but between both of them and Catherine the Great who was also sexualized by her enemies, who couldn't defeat her. She, too, was said to be participating in beastiality with a horse when she died, which was false.

Through Dany and Meria, GRRM is showing how women in positions of power are vilified by misogynists who want to uphold the status quo.

[giggly-argent]

Homare week previews! I'm still working on the other 4 pics, but it's going pretty well!

[ginny-anime]

When the conquerors show happens and House Martell shows up and the rest of Dorne.

I’m defending them with my life. I’m defending everything house Martell and dorne does.

I’m gonna be worse than team black defending daemon Targaryen.

[natividadmoon]

Day EXTRA Martell Week: Favorite trope/HC

Even the extra ends, yesssss! It was going to be a fuller image to show you the top and pants that I feel like the Martells wear under some tunics, but it stayed at the bust size. One of HC that I try to capture is the use of Khol on the eyes like the rings inspired by ones of Andalusian origin that a friend showed me.

The one in the drawing is a young Meria, by the way, about 30 years old, a mother and I think she was already princess regent of Dorne, so she was a determined and tenacious woman from a very young age. willing to tarnish her image in history, if that gave freedom to her lands and her people.

Nymeria drawing of the character of the day

[martellweek]

officially one week until martell week!!

— Meria Martell

"Your words. Ours are Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. You may burn us, my lady ... but you will not bend us, break us, or make us bow. This is Dorne. You are not wanted here. Return at your peril."

[coldraindropsss]

Meria Martell, the Yellow Toad of Dorne, The red Princes of Dorne

[atopvisenyashill]

A timeline of the ruling princes and princesses of Dorne from Meria Martell’s death to the formal union of Dorne and the rest of the Seven Kingdoms in 187 AC.

Anything marked with a * means it’s a canon date. The rest are speculation and a lot of math on my part. I also made up the names for a few characters as well! Also rip the quality on this but when you click it, it looks better.

More explanation under the cut.

Where I ran into most trouble in trying to figure out this timeline when we have not nearly as much information as we do about literally every other major Great House of Westeros, is the line from Morion the Mad to Qoren Martell. There’s several quick changes in princes during that time and we don’t even know what their relation is to one another in several instances. So I tried working out the timeline in a few different ways - I tried it with Mara Martell, Morion’s heir, as his very young daughter, as a twin sister, as a younger sister, and I finally settled on her being his much older aunt as making the most sense.

I think it makes the most sense because Morion is considered young and yet his father was Prince for a very long time; it doesn’t make sense that a ruling prince would wait so long to have an heir unless in a parallel to Jaehaerys’ later issue, several of his heirs die and leave the line of succession a bit uncertain. So I concluded that Morion’s father, who I named Voren, had several older children that died, likely during the Vulture King’s first war (we know it’s suspected Deria was funding him) so when Voren died, the throne went to his reckless, dumb ass youngest son, Morion. With Morion dying without any children, the throne passes next to Deria’s second child, Mara, and the Nymeros Martell line descends from them. This also makes sense because in canon, Morion was angry that his father didn’t send soldiers to kick the Iron Throne out of the Dornish Marches during Lord Rogar’s War; if Voren had children that had died in a previous conflict, it would make sense that he’d hesitate to get involved again.

Qoren was also a bit tricky. He had to be old enough to fight in the Stepstones War against Daemon, but young enough to not be married yet and be considered a potential match for Rhaenyra two years later. After a lot of wondering how in the hell I make that work, I finally figured - again, similar to Cregan Stark and Jaeherys, that there was a surplus of heirs at this time. Mara would have come into her throne already old with children and grandchildren, and her heir would come into the throne also already old, same as Meria/Nymor/Deria. Makes sense that the prince before Qoren was therefore a grandfather or great-grandfather, and that Qoren’s father never took the Sunspear Throne.

I stopped at the unification of the Seven Kingdoms simply because we get absolutely no information on what was going on in Dorne until Doran’s mother. Apparently, Dorne was real quiet during the Blackfyre Rebellions, hah.

And as for names...

Voren - we have several instances of Dornishmen with names that end in the -en sound. Doran, Oberyn, Llewyn, Yoren, etc. It seems like a common naming quirk, similar to the Northerners being really fond of -on and -ard endings. I thought Voren sounded the most like a real name.

Ellario - We have Elia and Ellaria so I figured there should be a male version of the name. I didn’t want to use Elio, so Ellario was born.