i just saw a post comparing dorne & the north (weird choice, but ok). and i literally had to laugh out loud when one of the parallels was "unconquered by dragons".
dorne, i get it, their assimilation was through marriage. but north???
and the funny thing is they had said that torrhen stark knelt but dragons didnt conquer them... sure...
so, a quick question: why do you think torrhen stark knelt? was he doing yoga? was he tired of standing for too long, so decided to give kneeling a try?
this is utterly laughable to be honest! this is fact-denying levels of fandom worship!
I would say there is an interesting analogy, there, but not in that sense.
Dorne and the North are two kingdoms with different approaches than any of the others, but that above is just putting it wrong and simplifying it to near insignificance instead.
Dorne WASN'T conquered, the North WAS.
- Dorne was burned by dragons without kneeling.
- the North knelt without being burned by dragons.
(One might add the Eerie but not really. That was not a decision by a ruler as to what it meant to a nation, but a mother deciding for her son, and Visenya went in there knowing she didn't even have to try either way, given Sherratt silly attempts with her portrait; she was clearly out of her depth, and not a ruler in more than name).
The above shows a different approach to these two kingdoms where it came to how they valued the integrity of their kingdoms.
We have the examples of the Stormlands, Riverlands and Reach (edit: oops, also Westerlands!) which both fought AND knelt, walking into it with pride and then walking away with their tail between their legs, defeated.
But Dorne and the North both earned their own in ways the others never did. Torrhen looked at what was happening, and decided what the integrity of the North meant to him, and kneeling came as a dignified decision instead, unlike the kingdoms brought in with fire, with leaders who proved their pride didn't match their actions. He saw pointless death and destruction leading to the same result in all cases before him.
Meria also looked at what was going on, but saw the meaning of Dorne's integrity differently. She saw the kingdoms that capitulated after some fighting, and knew that if she chose to fight, to prove her own, fighting would be long and brutal. As a different extreme, she ended up not kneeling, at the expense of immense destruction, famine and death.
Clearly, Dorne and the North are in a way outstanding, but not in the sense as to whether they were "conquered/unconquered".
#in the grander scheme of things #Martin is clearly experimenting as ever #drawing examples of all options and what all the outcomes of a leader's choices might mean #one looks at the other 3 kingdoms and wonders if fighting was worth it #so you'd agree with Torrhen #then you look at Dorne and think fighting might actually work #then you think of all that befell the Dornish for the sake of it and many more generations of lower grade fighting #and you get back to wondering if it REALLY was worth it #and if it wouldn't have been a speedrun for Meria herself to be like I want one or my female descendants to be queen asap tho #from the get go since that was later considered as the WIN WIN way to join the Targaryens anyway... (via @intheairwewilllookmonstrous)