(⅓) Hi! I've been rereading the Dorne chapters and going back to your blog to read your great metas. Something that came across really strongly this time was just how frightening and disturbing the older Sand Snakes are (particularly Tyene for me, who despite being Arianne's bestie seems almost sociopathic and lacking in any of the charming qualities we find in the rest of Arianne's friend group, even though we meet them so briefly). In an AU where Arianne and Quentyn's relationship was more

You know, one of the things I find fascinating about the elder Sand Snakes is that Obara is the loudest and brashest and most outwardly angry, but she is easily the “safest” of them. And by that I mean...she’s very upfront. At no point does anyone express worry about what she might do.

Hotah is nervous about Tyene and Nymeria, but not about Obara. He demonstrates no fear that she would try to hurt either Doran or Arianne. Sure, he thinks to himself that he could beat her in a fight, but it’s not a serious consideration that she’d attack. When she storms out of the hall during the feast and Arianne goes after her, Hotah is not at all worried about his little princess - no, he thinks to himself that Obara would never turn heranger on Arianne, because she loves her cousin. That’s the kind of person Obara is - grieving, traumatized, fiercely protective.  She’s angry and she’s hurting. People are always theorizing that she’ll betray Doran, but you know what? I think she’s by far the least likely of the Sand Snakes to do such a thing.

She is the one that’s aghast that Cersei would try to hurt Trystane because he’s just a child; she is the one that was in favour of war but not murder. She’s hurt and grieving and lashing out in the only way she knows how to do things - really, the only way anyone in this world knows how to do things. All there is is an endless cycle of war. Robb Stark waged war for the sake of his dead father, like his father did before him. Oberyn Martell wanted to raise his banners for his dead sister, but was talked down, and that did nothing. Now he is dead, too, and Obara wants to do something.

Obara doesn’t hide things - not her anger, not her hatred, not her horror. The one thing she tries to hide is her grief, and she’s really freaking bad at it. She really does wear her heart on her sleeve. While it’s not fair to dismiss Nym and Tyene as just vicious and disturbing - not saying that’s what you’re doing! I just think it’s worth reiterating -, I think there’s also something to be said about how they are scary. They’re smart, driven, and with a much cooler burning anger than Obara.  They’re not kids. They’re grown women that think differently and have different world views and aren’t just acting out of a misplaced belief in their just cause prevailing - they know the risks and have accepted that they’re worth it.

We are talking about a deeply fucked up ethical system here. In the first chapter, Ned Stark chops off poor Gared’s head - Gared didn’t deserve to die by any reasonable standard! He hadn’t hurt anyone and was terrified out of his mind! Tommen doesn’t deserve to die. But neither did Elia; neither did Rhaenys; neither did Aegon. Killing Tommen would be both horrible and deeply unfair. Of course it would be. But given the context of the world they live in and how there are countless characters that want to do the same thing, what makes Nymeria stand out as incredibly scary isn’t that she wants to do it and is thus uniquely evil. It’s that unlike these other characters, for her, it’s not couched in terms of being for a greater cause. Unlike Stannis, she’s not trying to justify it to herself or argue that one child must be sacrificed for the sake of her becoming queen, so she can save the world. No, she sees it as a scale that must be balanced. Four Lannisters for four Martells. It’s cold, it’s literally calculating, and it really drives home the difference between her and Obara.

I agree that all the issues wouldn’t necessarily be fixed if Arianne and Quentyn had a better relationship, but I think it depends on why they had this better relationship. While I don’t think the rift between the Sand Snakes and Quentyn, to whatever degree it exists (it’s possible that Quentyn’s fear of their scorn has more to do with his own insecurities than their actual thoughts on him), is tied with Arianne’s issues with him, I do think pretty much all the family tensions were exacerbated by Doran’s communication issues. Arianne and Quentyn, of course, but pretty much all of the conflict with the Sand Snakes in Feast and Dance could have been avoided - they were upset because of the perception of him as doing nothing to avenge their father. Had he not refused to trust and confide in them, they would not have reacted nearly as strongly as they did. In many ways, all the rifts in the family hearken back to Doran.

If Arianne and Quentyn had a better relationship because she never found the letter leading her to believe that he and Doran were planning to supplant her, I don’t think anything would change in terms of the Sand Snakes’ relationships with Doran and Quentyn because the core issue that caused that tension would still exist: Doran’s secrecy. Arianne and Quentyn’s relationship would only be better by chance. Even Arianne and Doran’s relationship might still be bad because of the suitors. If on the other hand, Arianne and Quentyn had a better relationship because Doran was honest with Arianne, then I think a lot of the problems with the Sand Snakes would be cleared up, too. Either because Arianne would be there to soothe tensions, or because Doran was honest with them, too.

...I definitely don’t remember what I was supposed to be talking about, but I’m just going to hit post because this has been languishing in my drafts forever.

What do you think could've happened if Doran sent Arianne or Quentyn to King's Landing and Oberyn to Meereen?

I think it's important to avoid presentism in this sort of what-if situation. Keep in mind that for the vast majority of both Quentyn's and Arianne's lives, Doran had kept his plan of a Targaryen restoration a secret from them. By contrast, Doran himself told Oberyn's daughters that "[y]our father and I worked more closely than you know", hinting that Oberyn's brash and violent personality was a complementary cover to Doran's quiet plotting. Whatever Doran and Oberyn planned for the latter to do in the capital, it certainly seems the case that Oberyn had to play a deft, dangerous game there, and one which very well may have relied on the knowledge that Doran was actively working to topple the Baratheon-Lannister regime and restore the Targaryens. Oberyn had the intelligence (in every sense of the word), skill, and experience to handle laying the groundwork for that restoration in the heart of the enemy regime in a way that neither Arianne nor Quentyn did (and, of course, Oberyn was dynastically expendable for a dangerous environment, in the way Doran's heiress Arianne and his intended Targaryen consort Quentyn were not).

Indeed, I would not at all be surprised if Doran genuinely believed that he was giving Quentyn the easier mission compared to Oberyn's. Of course Daenerys would want to reclaim her birthright of the Iron Throne (as, naturally, she does); of course she would be grateful enough for the spears of Sunspear being gift-wrapped for her to marry the man offering this present. Targaryen heirs had twice married Martells, and her brother's de facto regent Willem Darry had agreed to a third Targaryen-Martell match; there could be no dynastic qualm at the idea of Quentyn as a prince or king consort to Queen Daenerys. All - all - Quentyn had to do, in Doran's mind, was show up, present the offer, and Daenerys would pack her bags that night and leave for the Planky Town. Doran's plan with Quentyn was an utter failure, of course, but not because I think Doran knew it would be so difficult and dangerous, especially compared with Oberyn's task in the capital.

Too, that avoidance of presentism goes for Daenerys' situation as well. From the moment she stepped through the gates of Meereen as its new queen to the moment Drogon showed up in Daznak's pit, Daenerys was committed to staying in Meereen and making it work as a liberated city-state. This is why Daenerys ultimately rejected Quentyn - not because she was not physically attracted to Quentyn (although Quentyn certainly was not highly prepossessing in that area either) but because by the time Quentyn got to Meereen, Daenerys had become convinced (thanks to the Harpy herself) that the only way to guarantee peace in Meereen was to marry Hizdahr. While it's certainly possible that Daenerys would have been more physically attracted to Oberyn than she was to Quentyn, her motivations for staying in Meereen would not have changed, and it is at best speculative as to whether Oberyn could have convinced her otherwise. (I'll put aside the idea of significantly changing either the timing of the mission or the broad makeup of the mission's party or trajectory, since at that point the two missions would really be too different to compare.)

we know from a twow sample chapter that doran sent arianne to the stormlands to "check out" Aegon, so do you think she'll do the sensible thing, and make sure he's legitimate, or she'll conjure the impulsivity to marry him on the spot, as the theories claim?

This turned into just my rambling thoughts on the Arianne plotline in general, lol.

Well, first of all, I don’t think that we, the reader, will ever find out whether Aegon is truly legitimate or not. I believe that Aegon is the embodiment of this line from Varys:

While this quote is tied to Tyrion, I still think the concept fits the Aegon plotline. It does not matter who Aegon truly is. As long as everyone believes that he is Aegon VI Targaryen, son of Elia and Rhaegar, then that’s who he is. I believe that the truth will always remain ambiguous to the reader. If you believe that Aegon is Elia and Rhaegar’s son, then that’s who he is in your reading of the story. If you don’t, then he isn’t.

As for what Arianne will do, I don’t think that it’s “impulsive” for her to marry him. If it appears that Aegon has the best chance at being the victor, then joining Dorne to his cause through a political marriage is the right move. Even if Arianne personally doubts his legitimacy, if she sees that everyone else views him as legitimate, it’s in her and Dorne’s favor to go along with it. Play up the whole “we are Rhaegar and Elia come again, the King and Queen that should have been!” thing.

So, no, I don’t think that it would be impulsive for Arianne to “marry Aegon on the spot”, it would be a sensible political move.

Now, I’ve seen some people mention this line… 

… and say that Arianne will become tricked by Aegon in some way or become politically blinded because she finds him “pretty” or whatever. I reject that idea. The line literally ends with “I have learned that lesson”! Arianne’s story would just become redundant if that happened, it erases her development.

I’m very excited for Arianne’s plotline in TWOW, and to see her play the game of thrones her way. I also do not believe that she will die, and predict that she will actually be the only one out of the TWOW King’s Landing POV trio (JonCon, Cersei, and her) to make it out alive. I don’t think that she’ll be involved in the northern Long Night plotline (like I don’t think we’ll ever see her at the Wall or Winterfell), but I see her having like 2-3 chapters in ADOS to clear up the Dornish and southern plotline.

Honestly I don't see Loreza (let's call her by this name) as a very ambitious or power angry woman either. As confirmed by her words to Doran, she was very selfless and cared deeply about the wellbeing of her people, something that can't be said about the majority of Westerosi noble lords and ladies. This is pure speculation, but I think that we can grasp something else about her personality based on her children's bethrotal story: she decided to bring Elia and Oberyn on a trip among the seven kingdoms to make them know directly their potential spouses, rather than promising their hands to the most influential lord or lady of the time and not caring about their opinion on the matter. She let her firstborn marry a foreigner because he fell in love with her, does she sound like someone who desperately craves power? Also she wanted Jaime to marry Elia or Oberyn to marry Cersei because she was a close friend to Joanna, not because of some agenda. She didn't pressure Elia to marry Baelor Hightower despite her liking him the most among her suitors before Oberyn's joke, she could have done so to ally with the Hightowers who are one of the wealtiest family of the Reach, but she didn't.

If Loreza had been a power-hungry shrew like some people try to say she was, Doran would have married like a decade before he did, Elia would have been betrothed or married to either Baelor Hightower or some other lord before she was 20 instead of being available for Rhaegar when she was around 22, and Oberyn would have been at least betrothed to someone by the time of her death.

Again, this is my headcanon for her. She knew how to be ruthless if needed, but she felt she didn’t need to be when it came to her children. I like to imagine that she wanted to give her children a choice in their partners, as I imagine she chose her own husband.

Honestly, my thoughts about all of this can be summed up with this one passage I wrote for Children of the Western Sun:  “I do wish for you to marry well. As far as I am concerned, you do deserve to have as high of a position as you can in your marriage, to be a ruler a country deserves. But I gave Doran a choice in his marriage, and plan to do the same for Oberyn. If it is at all possible, I wish for you to have the same. And if I am not able to give you any say, we are in more dire straits than any of us would wish. If you do not wish to go so far, tell me honestly, and we shall find another way to secure Dorne.”

i think cersei is much more sexualized than arianne tbh. i think people just forget how hypersexualized book cersei is because the show desexualized cersei to an extent and bc lena is an older woman

I am in a position of agreement and disagreement on this. Yes, Cersei is sexualized by those around her, and Cersei uses sex as a weapon, but her relationship with sex is wildly different from Arianne’s.

Arianne enjoys sex. She has a penchant for attractive men, she dreams of having sex with said men in scenarios that please and excite her, and she has sex for sex’s sake. Cersei’s approach to sex is not the same. Very rarely does Cersei think of sex in a context that pleases her, unless she’s thinking of Jaime. Otherwise, sex is a tool of power and manipulation for her. She does not have sex with Lancel because she thinks it’ll be fun; she has sex with him to reward him for his role in Robert’s death. She does not seduce Osney Kettleblack because she thinks it’ll be fun; she does it as a transaction, and because of what he could do for her. She does not think about the times she licked Robert’s sperm from her fingers because she thought it was fun; she thinks about it because it was a moment of power for her, her personal revenge by “eating” his children. She does not muse upon seducing Stannis because she thinks it’ll be fun; she thinks about it because she wants to save herself should he win Battle of the Blackwater. She does not have fun sex with Taena; the whole time she thinks of Robert, she thinks of being a man taking what he wants without a care for the woman, she thinks of power and domination and of herself.

When Arianne manipulates Arys through sex, she has fun with it, and she even feels bad about it, since she feels responsible for his death in the end. Arianne has the empathy, conscience, and genuine enjoyment of sex that Cersei does not.

Moreover, Cersei’s sexualization is NEVER associated with her race or ethnicity. No one says that Cersei is sexy because she’s from the Westerlands; people do say that the Dornish (and thus, Arianne) are sexy because they’re Dornish.

someone (idk who) said that d&d gave margaery arianne's whole character (except arianne thinking that doran was passing her over for quentyn). the moment they said that it clicked for me. something about show margaery's behavior was familiar. it's interesting how beloved margaery is in the got fandom and how the asoiaf fandom is with arianne

Oh, god, that is so true! Book Margaery’s entire plot and character hinges on her youth and perceived innocence. She appeals to both Sansa and Tommen by being fun and approachable. She appeals to the masses in much the same way - buying from local merchants, giving a great deal to charity, making herself seen. Overt sexuality does not belong in the good queen image Margaery takes care to present. She’s young, sweet, pious, doing her duty to her family. She’s going along with her family’s plots, but not actively scheming for her own gain. All of this works because she’s sixteen. But in the show, they completely veered away from all of that.

Arianne being older enables her to be a more active character whose plans are independent - what she wants for herself, not just going along with what her family wants her to do without her own thoughts on the matter. She has plenty of strategies that she uses to do that. The obvious one is her use of seduction to get Arys on her side, but there’s also her genuine niceness. She appeals to Myrcella in much the same way as book Margaery appeals to Tommen and Sansa - words. Friendliness. I don’t remember if I ever posted this, but I remember writing something a while ago about the Arianne Cersei Margaery parallels as they pertain to these characters’ relationships with Myrcella, Joffrey, and Tommen respectively. In the show, though, Margaery veers way more towards Arianne than the book version of herself - older, more active in plots, way less focus on her as the cool older girl and more on her as a seductress.

I have to wonder how much of the love for Margaery and dismissiveness of Arianne comes from a) who they’re in conflict with and b) how much focus is on their flaws. For the first one, Arianne is not introduced until the fourth book. When she is introduced, it is really as part of a new conflict, not one of the existing ones. Strangely enough, even though the Dorne plot only makes sense because of connections to what happened outside of Dorne in earlier books - Myrcella, Arys, public sentiment after Oberyn’s death - it’s at first pretty damn isolated from what’s going on elsewhere. It’s shaped by those other characters and events, but it’s a whole new plot. The characters are new or so minor that they might as well have been new. Dorne is Arianne’s story, and when she’s introduced, it’s her conflict with her father and brother that first take centre stage, not the broader Martell conflict with the Lannisters, even though this is occurring four books into a series that was already juggling a lot of characters and plots, in a book that frustrated a lot of people for its shift in focus. I obviously love Arianne and Dorne, and A Feast For Crows is my favourite book in the series, but it’s also tough to deny that the structure of their introduction doesn’t do them many favours. I suspect that people would have been a lot more open to Arianne had she been introduced much earlier, when the various plotlines were first being established, so she felt like less of a departure, or if it had been immediately clearer how she connected to other plotlines. Contrast Margaery, who, in both the show and the books, is introduced earlier and whom we see working with her family and against first Joffrey, then Cersei, even as the Lannister and Tyrell causes are aligned. Both Joffrey and Cersei had been long established as villains opposing more sympathetic characters. So when Margaery and the rest of the Tyrells show up in King’s Landing, we get to immediately see the that conflict. There’s a sense of immediacy that’s not quite there with Arianne and Dorne, and one that gives the audience something they really want to root for. That’s not the sort of thing that’s the point of Arianne’s story, but it’s easy to see how that might play a role in audience perception of her.

Which leads to the focus on the flaws. Arianne’s story progresses extremely fast. A couple chapters of build up from other characters’ perspectives. One chapter of her executing a plan that ends with that plan failing. One chapter of fallout. Then in the next book, another chapter, again from someone else’s perspective, demonstrating the change since her failed plot. So five total chapters over two books. In her first substantive introduction, from Arys’s point of view, we see him wracked with guilt and Arianne manipulating him. It’s really not fair to pin all that on Arianne, given that she wasn’t the one that swore vows, but still, from the beginning, we’re shown the repercussions of Arianne’s actions by insight into the head of someone affected by them. Then we see her plan fall apart in a single chapter - Arys dies, Myrcella is hurt, Arianne’s friends are punished. There are immediate and brutal consequences. Then in the aftermath chapter, we find out that Arianne was operating on faulty information. Even though that’s not her fault, either, and Doran was just as at fault and had just as much to learn in that chapter - even though that chapter was a hugely cathartic moment of Arianne getting what she wanted and her father finally speaking to her at last - it’s so immediately clear that this could have been avoided. It’s just so much emphasis on Arianne’s flaws. The Tyrells - specifically Margaery - are not like this at all. The Tyrells come out on top a lot. They survive. They rescue the Lannisters from Stannis. Margaery becomes queen. They kill Joffrey. Margaery remains queen. There’s no real flaws or failures that really harm them - Margaery being arrested and put on trial isn’t a result of her screwing up or anything like that. The emphasis isn’t on their failings, it’s on their successes. And it does not help at all that we don’t see Margaery’s thoughts while seeing Arianne’s. Arianne is prone to self recrimination. She dwells on her flaws, keeping them fresh in the readers’ minds. But the Tyrells...they get bigger successes. No chapters from their perspective makes it easy to fill in the blanks with whatever readers want to believe. The slower pace means that there’s time to build up to their fall.

TL;DR: Arianne Martell is freaking awesome and the structure of the story works against her in terms of audience perception.

What kind of ruler of Dorne would Arianne Martell be in her own right, in your opinion?

I have my concerns. She’s clever, charming, and determined, but she doesn’t seem to look that one step further.

The fact that this goes over her head gives me more doubts about how well she’d rule in her own right than the fact that her education has this gap in the first place (which is down to Doran, and a bad mistake on his part). She can catch up on the reading, and catching up on the reading would probably help with the issue, but she needs to start asking herself why things happen as well as what and who.

While I think she could build and maintain political relationships on the strength of her personality, as things stand right now, I think Arianne might struggle to do things with said relationships. I’m also a bit leery of her ability to pick the best allies, because she’s not asking herself why people are doing what they’re doing.

A friend of mine who just finished A Dance with Dragons thinks that Arianne will survive The Winds of Winter but she would live to see the rest of her family die and I’ve been debating to myself whether or not that’s worse than her actually dying, because in that scenario her arc ends with her being the last Martell. In the same way Doran was the last of his immediate family, Arianne will too and I genuinely don’t know how to feel about that. Do you think that theory holds weight?

Oh, man. That’s rough.

I think it does make a lot of sense. To go on a slight tangent, I think this is also one of the issues with discussing an incomplete work. People often discuss the story - both events and themes - as if they’re foregone conclusions. They’re drawing conclusions and going from there, rather than considering alternative interpretations. This is something we see all the time when theorists discuss the Martells, because when it comes to them, the discussion is all about the idea of vengeance. Quentyn, discussions of Arianne’s possible future death - all of it is wrapped up in this idea. And it’s certainly true that the idea of vengeance is very important to the Martell storyline - vengeance, justice, fire and blood. But vengeance alone is not a theme, it’s a motif, and there are a lot of other themes and potential themes. You know what else is important to the Martell storyline? Family. Loss. Living after having lost the people you love most.

People are opposed to the “Quentyn is alive” theory largely because they think him being alive would be a betrayal of the main theme. But it wouldn’t be! They only think it is because they’ve already decided what the theme is! There are many ways equally valid (and less racist) ways the story could go. And the reason that they’re so fixated on this one is that they staunchly believe Doran is the main character of the Dornish storyline despite evidence to the contrary. Vengeance is a big part of Doran’s story. But it’s not Arianne’s driving motivator. It’s not Quentyn’s. If you read Quentyn’s chapters, is vengeance even a motif there? No! His story is all about family. Have these people considered that his story might in fact not be about the consequences of Doran wanting vengeance but about parents and children, broken pedestals, the futility of killing yourself trying to achieve someone else’s goal?

Now. Back to Arianne and Doran. The “I am the oldest, yet I am the last” thing is just such a powerful element of Doran’s character. It would be devastating to see Arianne in a similar position. It could be so powerful because of how she’s so many things in the story. She’s like Doran in personality while also being the narrative extension of Elia. And so in contrast to Elia, the first of her siblings to die, and like Doran, Arianne would be the last of her siblings to die. It would even be in the same order as was the case with Doran and his siblings - middle, youngest, eldest. But I worry about context and if it does happen, it will be framed as Arianne being punished. I don’t personally think that that’s the logical way for it to come about, but just as people theorize based upon conclusions they’ve already drawn, it’s hard not to view the possible ending in a light coloured by how fandom frequently discusses Arianne.

So many theories come across to me as people looking to punish her, purportedly for her ambition. But it’s not really ambition, is it? It’s true that Arianne has ambitions. But those aren’t driving her actions, and what’s more is, it shouldn’t matter if they are - what makes Arianne wanting the seat that should be hers by law any different from Tyrion wanting Casterly Rock? Different from Stannis declaring war to claim the Iron Throne? Arianne does not want a queenship over corpses, and people who push the idea that she will go rogue because she does are often ascribing motives to Arianne that aren’t hers. They’re obsessed with the idea of her wanting to be queen and betraying her father for that goal, but that ignores the fact that her actions are driven by her love for Doran. She’s devastated by the idea that Doran loves Quentyn more than he loves her, an idea that she has because he wants Quentyn to have Dorne. Dorne is a physical representation of Doran’s love. Queenship is not.

People come up with elaborate theories as to why Arianne will be punished for her ambition, but it’s not actually about ambition. They want to punish her for disobedience - because unlike Quentyn, she questions her father and reacts to him disappoint her by lashing out and acts to secure her own interests. Quentyn is obedient, but Arianne first demands answers, to be treated like an adult and not kept in the dark. So theorists talk about her getting greyscale, being burned alive, losing her seat to her younger brother. And sometimes, it even begins to sound convincing. But when I start to think about it in any detail, it just doesn’t make sense as a coherent narrative - so Quentyn is punished for being too obedient and Arianne is punished for being disobedient? Doran is punished for endangering his children, but Arianne is punished for questioning him? Oberyn should have been more patient, but Doran should have been less? It doesn’t actually make sense. It’s thematically incoherent.

I know I just brought up how it’s still possible for elements to not be what we think they are at this stage. But the reason I don’t think this makes sense isn’t because it counters what I think the specific theme is, it’s because it’s just random suffering, not any theme. It lacks internal consistency within these theorists’ own interpretation of the text. So I’m worried that Arianne living while losing her family will be presented as a different way of her being chastened and learning she was “wrong”.

You know the Villains Act, Heroes React trope? That’s interesting to consider here, because Arianne isn’t a villain, and yet she acts. She recognizes an injustice and acts to secure her best interests. That stands out in this series because the instigating action for a character starting to move is almost always a villain doing something. Just about every action by a Stark is somehow a consequence of Ned Stark’s execution. Dany’s plot kicks into gear when someone tries to kill her. Sam is pushed into the narrative by his father. Arianne, on the other hand, is in conflict with her father and distinguishes herself by taking action first. And I end up wondering if part of the resentment people have for her is that she is such an active character - the Villains Act, Heroes React trope is a trope for a reason, and while there are many real reasons for it to be inverted, people are less accustomed to seeing that, especially in the context of this story, where the sympathetic characters are the ones who are forced into positions where they have to do things. So to their eyes, Arianne must be in the wrong, even though that really doesn’t make sense.

I had a whole lot of other stuff written here, but I don’t know how it connects, so I’m just going to shut up before I babble for another thousand words. TL;DR: that would be so cool, but I’m afraid.

what are ur thoughts on the relationship between joncon and elia?? i think ppl are more willing to see the jealousy and exaggerate it into hatred, but don't see the nuances about their interactions that joncon implies. like when he writes to doran "i knew your sister well" that had me in tears 😭😭

i’m so glad you asked this because i do have a lot of thoughts on joncon and elia’s relationship! i totally agree with you that people exaggerate jealousy into hatred, and flatten out a relationship that i think was complicated and much more interesting than “he hated her”. 

the passage that always makes people think he hated her is this:

this is obviously a really rude thing to say, and i’m not excusing that, but to me it is also a reflection of average westerosi attitudes on women’s worth being tied to fertility and childbirth. he never specifically insults her character or her appearance (as both cersei and barristan do, though i rarely see people mention that). it’s also interesting to note that while he says that elia wasn’t worthy of rhaegar, joncon doesn’t even think that HE was worthy of rhaegar: 

joncon wanted to prove himself worthy of rhaegar’s love through battle during the rebellion, but the battle at stoney sept was a huge military defeat for joncon that resulted in him being exiled, and would eventually result in robert baratheon being alive to kill rhaegar. i think that taking this into account reframes jon’s opinion of elia not being “worthy”– it’s apparent that he doesn’t think either of them were worthy of rhaegar, who he’s deified and placed on a very high pedestal in his mind.

the other thought we get on elia from joncon comes during this quote: 

joncon explicitly blames himself for the way the rebellion turned out. he thinks that rhaegar’s death was directly his fault, and also blames himself for the deaths of rhaegar’s family, including elia and her little daughter rhaenys. this passage, to me, shows that he regrets her death and feels bad about it. 

and finally, we have the contents of joncon’s letter to doran requesting dorne’s aid to take the throne for aegon: 

he says that he knew elia well, and that he grieves her. you could make the argument that joncon is overstating his feelings for elia in order to appeal to doran to get his support, but i don’t feel like they can be immediately dismissed as lies. i think that envy can coexist with grief. people are complicated, and have complex and nuanced feelings and relationships. joncon was clearly jealous of elia– she married the man he was in love with, which is something he would never be able to do. but despite this he also threw away his entire life to raise her son, he regrets her death and blames himself, and he grieves for her. we don’t know what jon and elia’s interactions were like while they both lived, and we don’t know her feelings on him, and we’ve barely got a glimpse into what he felt about her. but i think that simply saying “he hated her” reduces the potential for an interesting and complicated relationship. 

What status do the Orphans of the Greenblood have in dornish society? If they rejected Nymeria's embrace of a new dornish homeland for the Rhoynar do they even defer to dornish laws and lords? Given that they seemingly rule Planky Town means that they must have some degree of economic power as well

The orphans clearly stand apart culturally from the rest of Dorne:

Too, from Yandel’s description in TWOIAF of the Red Princes’ attempt to exterminate the Rhoynish language, it seems that especially in the early days of Nymeria’s Dorne, there was resistance among the orphans to full politico-cultural integration with the new Dornish state. It is also worth noting that the very nature of the orphans limits the extent to which they can be fit neatly into the established feudal structure of Dorne: while the Planky Town is an established base, the Greenblood stretches from Godsgrace in the west (not even counting the Scourge and the Vaith feeding into it there) to its mouth at the Planky Town, along any number of Dornish lordly fiefs. 

However, there is clearly a degree of power Sunspear and House Martell hold over the orphans, given what Doran promises to do to them in AFFC after Arianne’s abortive “queenmaker” plot:

If the Prince of Dorne is in a position to send one of the orphans into exile abroad, and to demand “coin and hostages” from others, then the orphans clearly acknowledge the Prince of Dorne as their overlord. I would guess, then, that the orphans probably answer to Sunspear directly, paying taxes to and taking orders from the ruling Prince or Princess of the time. Indeed, this may even have been a settlement (maybe even an informal settlement) in the time of the Red Princes, or perhaps shortly after - that in return for the orphans not (openly) practicing the Rhoynish language and agreeing to respect the firmly Westerosi state of Dorne and its laws, Sunspear would let them do more or less as they wanted (so long as they paid their dues in gold and men, of course), and not have them have to answer to, say, the Allyrions or Dalts or any other lordly families along the river. Something along the lines, perhaps, of what Visenya did with the men of Crackclaw Point - respecting a culturally independent minority by taking them under the direct supervision of the ruling power.

Too, as @warsofasoiaf noted yesterday, there’s probably a fine balance of power between what the orphans might theoretically be able to do and what they could realistically do while maintaining their position. The Planky Town being Dorne’s only real harbor town, the orphans could certainly wield a degree of economic control by bottling it up if they chose - but if they did so, they might run the risk of the powerful families of the river retaliating against them with armed forces that the orphans certainly don’t have.