December Meme: Dorne

[netgirl_y2k]

sageofthesky asked me to talk about Dorne.

First, a fact that might get me run out of ASOIAF fandom on a rail, the first time I read the books I didn't care for Oberyn Martell as a character. I wasn't actually interested in Dorne at all, really. But I think a lot of that was that by AFFC... you know how at this time of year if you're going to a lot of parties, and drinks, and Christmas whatevers, there comes a point where you're going: No, George, I can't possibly meet any more new people... Well, it was like that.

But then I wasn't interested in Sansa either during my first read of the books. Clearly I didn't know my own mind.

Oberyn I didn't really connect with until season four of the show, and the casting of Pedro Pascal, which was basically the only thing the show did right this year, and they're lucky that they got it so, so right. It's actually bought them more good will from me than they frankly deserve at this point. This is why I'm not too perturbed by the spoilers that Jaime's heading for Dorne in S5; Oberyn made you want to see more Martells, to visit Dorne. Was there anything about the show's take on the Tullys and Riverrun that made anyone want a season of Jaime wandering around the Riverlands?

This actually brings us neatly to the elephant in the room when it comes to S5, which is the show's writing out of Arianne. I'm... miffed, but perhaps not as miffed as you might expect me to be. I think because I'm not at all surprised; I remember thinking, ages ago, before we even knew that Dorne was going to appear in S5, certainly before any casting announcements happened, I thought, I bet the show will leave out Arianne and make Trystane the heir to Dorne.

Actually, the thing that annoyed me more than the omission of Arianne - and on some level I've accepted that Arianne was the sacrifice I had to make in exchange for never having to see a Greyjoy nuncle on my screen - was a tiny little thing. There's a scene in Tyrion's cell when Oberyn says that his father took him and Elia to visit Casterly Rock. It was his mother! His mother who was the ruling princess of Dorne! And why change that? It's such a tiny little thing; it'll mean nothing to non-book readers, and a lot to me some people. I mean, if you're writing out Arianne anyway the fact that Dorne has equal primogeniture isn't really going to be a plot point, but why not just let it exist quietly in the background?

Actually, when I want to annoy myself, I indulge my suspicion that one of the reasons Arianne was written out (another, I think, and a not totally invalid one, was to make the Trystane/Myrcella romance more prominent) was that with the Sand Snakes there too, they didn't want that storyline to be too female heavy.

I will concede that Arianne is not immediately the easiest character to like or sympathise with, but then look at the wonders the show has worked with Cersei Lannister and thwarted avenues of female power.

I'll also say that I adore that huge swathes of tumblr have mentally fancast Ayisha Hart as Arianne and just carried on like the show isn't ass-backwards stupid. I also adore that literally the only time I see Atlantis on my dash is when people have chopped up footage of Ariadne scenes to recreate the Arianne ones. I was especially impressed with this one.

Back to the books, obviously I love that Dorne practices equal preference primogeniture. For all the canonical parallels between the North and Dorne I wish this was another one. I want Sansa Stark, reluctant and kind of rubbish heiress to Winterfell. I mean, I like the Queen in the North stuff as never gonna happen wish fulfillment, though I can see her as regent/castellan for one of her younger siblings; but I think Sansa has to go south to realise how much she wants the North.

I love how many great female characters Dorne gives us. The Dornish/Rhoynar stuff was worth the price of AWOIAF to me; I was a little surprised that Nymeria of the Rhoynar wasn't the warrior queen a lot of fandom had cast her as, but ultimately I really liked what we saw of her; I could completely see how she'd be Arianne's hero. As an aside, I love that Arya names her direwolf Nymeria; I love that Arya knows about Princess Nymeria, and Visenya Targaryen, and Wenda the White Faun. I think the fact that Arya, and Brienne and Asha too, essentially like and respect other women is one of those awesome little details that sometimes gets lost in translation.

I love Meria Martell, a fat old woman, whose response to people trying to conquer her country with dragonfire was basically, no, you fuck off. I love that, ultimately, she won. I like to think of her as the logical predecessor to Genna Lannister and Olenna Tyrell.

I want all the fics about Elia Martell that make her the protagonist of her own life. The ones where she survives on a wave of righteous, impotent fury; the ones where Lyanna survives too, and well, this is awkward. As an aside, I sometimes get into fannish arguments about Sansa or Dany and whether it was normal for girls in Westeros to be married in their early teens; and my argument is that a) as far as my layman's knowledge will take me, that wasn't even true in medieval Europe, and b) doesn't even seem to be true in Westeros; girls (and boys) are betrothed at an early age, but unless there's some sort of immediate land grab happening the actual marriage takes place much later. Catelyn and Cersei were both wed in their late teens; Elia in her early twenties. Although, I have a headcanon that the reason Elia's marriage was so comparatively late was that up until Arianne was born she was Doran's heir and couldn't be married outside of Dorne. Actually, not that I harbor any ill-will towards Doran, but what I wouldn't give for ruling princess of Dorne!Elia and her biggest supporter Oberyn fic.

Actually, I've always wondered how marriages work with equal opportunity primogeniture. Not so much inside Dorne, where you arrange the marriage of your heiress to somebody else's second born son and vice versa, but when an heiress marries outside Dorne-- Like, we know Arianne harbored hopes of marrying both Edmure Tully and Willas Tyrell. How would that have worked. I mean, time share? Would Arianne have given up Sunspear (seems unlikely), did she think either Edmure or Willas would have given up their claims and ruled as her consort?

To be fair, all that really tells us is that teenaged Arianne was a hormonal idiot who thought she could have her cake and eat it, which only makes me like her more, really.

Comments

[endeni]

/his is why I'm not too perturbed by the spoilers that Jaime's heading for Dorne in S5/ - Wait, Jaime's what?!?
/Was there anything about the show's take on the Tullys and Riverrun that made anyone want a season of Jaime wandering around the Riverlands?/ - LOL, I see your point...
/And why change that? It's such a tiny little thing/ - Yes, exactly! Makes me so angry! It's like they wanted to altogether rule out the possibility of equal primogeniture and banned even the mere mention... I should have know by then it wasn't boding well for Arianne... *shakes head*
/Actually, when I want to annoy myself, I indulge my suspicion that one of the reasons Arianne was written out (another, I think, and a not totally invalid one, was to make the Trystane/Myrcella romance more prominent) was that with the Sand Snakes there too, they didn't want that storyline to be too female heavy./ - Oh, hadn't thought about the Trystane/Myrcella thing but it seems legit. Sadly the other possibility is very ugly but also very very pausible... *shakes head*
/I love that Arya knows about Princess Nymeria, and Visenya Targaryen, and Wenda the White Faun. I think the fact that Arya, and Brienne and Asha too, essentially like and respect other women is one of those awesome little details that sometimes gets lost in translation./- Yes, I love it too, such a shame...
/I want all the fics about Elia Martell that make her the protagonist of her own life./ - OMG me too, very much so!
/what I wouldn't give for ruling princess of Dorne!Elia and her biggest supporter Oberyn fic./ - That'd be awesome...

[netgirl_y2k]

Wait, Jaime's what?!?

Oh, gosh, sorry. Er... spoilers?

Oh, hadn't thought about the Trystane/Myrcella thing but it seems legit. Sadly the other possibility is very ugly but also very very pausible... *shakes head*

It depends on how cynical I want to be on any given day. But I would have loved the Dorne stuff to be female-centric as a counterpoint to be very testosterone-y the Wall can be.

what I wouldn't give for ruling princess of Dorne!Elia and her biggest supporter Oberyn fic./ - That'd be awesome...

I can just imagine people idly wondering if it might be better if Oberyn was the heir rather than Elia, and Oberyn leaping out at them from behind tapestries going: WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!?

[endeni]

LOL, it's OK I really don't mind spoilers, it's just the first time I'm hearing this. Just, are they sending him to Dorne instead than to the Riverlands? Or in addition to?
LOL, drapes!Oberyn would be hilarious...

[netgirl_y2k]

This appears to be the latest:http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/10/game-of-thrones-spoiler-footage-jaime-in-dorne

[endeni]

wow, thanks for the link! And oooh, look at the pretty costumes... *_*

[fyrdrakken]

I've read about a couple of different historical queens who were hoping that if they married a man with a realm of his own, he'd rule his kingdom and let her rule hers, instead of the more usual practice of the husband of the ruling queen expecting to become king upon marrying her and taking over rule of the country. Specifically I'm thinking about Mary Tudor hoping that she and Philip of Spain could have the same kind of marriage that her own grandparents of Aragon and Castile had enjoyed (separate kingdoms ruled separately by the king and queen but working in tandem), and then there was the bio I read of Joanna of Sicily (IIRC) who had like three nightmarish marriages to men who expected to rule her kingdom before she finally wised up and married a man "beneath her" who was very happy and grateful to have been made a duke and cheerfully took orders from her. (ETA: The Joanna of Sicily comment wasn't quite so tangental -- she was married to a cousin of hers, a teenager who was like a younger brother or something of the king of Hungary, and then a prince who did in fact have a kingdom of his own. I cannot remember whether the prince gave her such headaches because he had lost his kingdom and needed her to help him fight a war to win it back, or whether he got it back but was a little but nuts from having been imprisoned for a while after he'd been deposed.)

[netgirl_y2k]

I find the life of Mary Tudor such a fascinating train wreck. I don't know anything about Joanna of Scicily, but this certainly sounds cool: she finally wised up and married a man "beneath her" who was very happy and grateful to have been made a duke and cheerfully took orders from her.

I think the thing that throws me with Arianne - surely in Dorne there's a history of husbands who've married "up" accepting the rule of their wives, that there really isn't in the rest of Westeros. It just seems like an ass-backwards way of securing her claim to Sunspear. But then, maybe Arianne just wanted to defy Doran and hadn't thought the rest of it through.

[fyrdrakken]

Given that Dorne does have such a tradition of female rule (strict primogeniture should mean that about half the noble houses would be ruled by a lady rather than a lord due to the coin flip of gender of the firstborn), there should indeed be a reasonable expectation that the wife may outrank her husband and he shouldn't expect any stronger influence over her decisions than that provided by affection and respect.

There was that thing that the woman who'd expected to marry Brandon Stark pointed out in ADwD, that it was the accepted habit for the ruling family of each subkingdom of Westeros to marry amongst their own bannermen (if not their own kin), until a few years before the time of the opening of the first book, when a bunch of great lords fought together during a war and made friends and started fostering their children with each other and arranging betrothals between their houses. So yeah, it would have made sense for Arianne to be examining her father's bannermen for her potential future husband, though I guess I can see her being attracted to a pretty face or having some vague thoughts about a great union between subkingdoms. Ambition, but not being allowed to know her father's actual plans. And he really failed her amazingly -- not only in keeping her ignorant of his own treasonous planning on her behalf (possibly a good idea for her own protection), but in never giving her training in how to rule Dorne (which would have been good preparation for being queen of Westeros, and as it now turns out is a really massive oversight since she's going to be princess of Dorne after all). GRRM seems to be cheerfully oblivious to the role of most medieval great ladies in terms of holding down a castle in their husbands' absences (or serving as regent in the event of their widowing while the heir to their husband's title is still a minor) and at least some of these ladies should have had much more practical training.

(That's a whole damned overarching theme in the book, about women being kept from learning how to rule and thus having to fumble around learning on the fly. I've really noticed the extent to which Cersei and Dany mirror each other in terms of their pawn-to-queen transformations and their respective mistakes as they find themselves trying to wield increasing amounts of power. And there's the whole thing where GRRM has drastically overestimated the fatality rate of childbirth (unless those maesters really have no fucking clue what they're doing obstetrically and are killing women right left and center) and pretty much every adult character lost their mother young and almost none of the women had a mother around to steer them into adulthood teaching them the female road to power. Margaery Tyrell is the really huge exception, having both her mother and most importantly her grandmother around to train her, as the TV series is making really blatantly obvious. Aside from the Tyrells, Cersei and Catelyn seem to be the only noble mothers who have lasted long enough to teach their daughters, and neither of them had a mother around during her own adolescence to teach her.)

ETA: Book rec of sorts, for Philippa Gregory's The Constant Princess, being about Catherine of Aragon as the daughter of a ruling queen of Spain and as a queen of England whose second husband knew less about properly ruling a country than she did.

[dhampyresa]

DOOOOOORNE! So excited to see it in the show.

[netgirl_y2k]

I KNOW. Whatever else I can sometimes say about the show, the locations and the set dressing are usually spot on. I can't wait to see what they make of Dorne.