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The Dornish Ladies <3
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This had been bothering me for awhile but I only now stumbled into this by accident. Certain people love to whine that Rhaenyra is a "hypocrite" for not forcibly instituting realm-wide genderless succession. They favour the line "this isn't Dorne" and then claim that she's a bad person for not making it into Dorne, while pretending that they wouldn't call her reckless or tyrannical if she'd tried to do so.
Of course (at least, people should see it as "of course"), that simply wouldn't work. Not just because it would be unprecedented for the Crown to enforce their own rules of succession, but also because you just cannot implement an involuntary system like that in a patriarchal society. If you left it uncertain, enforcing it on a case-by-case basis upon Houses that did not agree to it, you create uncertainty from which countless succession crises will occur after the head of house dies without naming the daughter over the younger son. If you implement it on a universal basis, you pretty much guarantee mass rebellions in a realm like Westeros. Those were the concerns of the Black council. But there's yet another. Even if the Crown had the power to enforce genderless succession, to squash or dissuade rebellion, you're left with yet another inevitability that we have seen in real life when you tell families in a patriarchal society that their legacy might be reduced to only a daughter.
In my opinion, there is no "realistic" way to write a change like that going through, being forced through in Westeros that doesn't result in mass infanticide and abandonment of first-born girls. And that's on top of the rebellions.
And this whole time I've been assuming that "Dornish" genderless succession was either a world-building error on GRRM's part, or something he meant to clarify or flesh out later on (misunderstanding or not, Arianne's worries must have had a deeper, environmental foundation after all). Because it's been so long since I read the books cover-to-cover (between GoT seasons 6&7 do NOT make me think about the year and time passing) I suppose I might have just let "fanon" shape my view of it. Because there IS a very widespread assertation, one that's gotten very loud as of late (very interesting how one "other" is so often used to tear down the worse "other." For another time though.) that all of Dorne somehow has embraced genderless succession and this is of course for some reason mostly brought up to argue about how Rhaenyra is a bad person for wanting to be the special exception, or how House Targaryen is bad for wanting to be the special exception in this regard.
A ruling princess of Dorne would =not= take the name of her consort. And some of the major Dornish lordlings also follow this custom, in imitation of the ruling house.
And this is why before diving in further to a Targ-Martell comparison I ask you, resident expert in remembering and cataloging all those kinds of details, if there's some line in the main series outright contradicting this. Because if not, I'm pretty sure House Martell made itself a special exception. That the genderless succession they follow is the exception and not the rule even in Dorne. And by making themselves a special exception, they ended up setting an example that some houses follow on a voluntary basis.
And for some reason... no one is whining about it. 🤔
No, it is true other houses in Dorne have female heads and heirs before/during the main series timewise and thus practice absolute primogenture:
So yes, some Dornish houses do practice absolute primogeniture and the Martells are not an "exception". It's not ubiquitous nor is it rare or uncommon. Nymeria had her warrior women marry many pre-Nymeria Conquest Andal-dornish lords as well as shared Rhoynar metal and customs that over time simply reshaped a lot of Dorne forever; the northmost Dornish tend to be "less" Rhoynar in custom or practices, but apparently the non-Dornish marcher lords still see them as Other and gripe about their accents a lot. The northenmost Dornish are called "stony" by Daeron I, and tend to have members who can be lighter in ski and hair than other Dornishmen. Same tredn for absolute primogeniture, though yes, much less specific bc George doesn't really get into Dorne aside for the Martells, Arianne, Dorna, and the Sand Snakes/Areo Hotah.
When I say "exception" I mean more the way naysayers refer to Rhaenyra as an "exception" (in a way she never did for herself) rather than a literal exception that implies some kind of broader law or staunchly enforced rule. "Exception to the rule" as in, not the default. Because Nymeria doesn't seem to have taken a different approach to succession of other houses than Rhaenyra did. No law was passed declaring "henceforth, genderless succession is the law across all of Dorne." Absolute primogeniture was not implemented and enforced upon houses that did not voluntarily adopt the custom for their own heirs, as far as I have seen, that is.
Or more accurately, Rhaenyra did not distinguish herself from Nymeria in that regard. Or at least she didn't have the chance to. The Targaryens didn't come into Westeros with the numbers the Rhoynar did, and the other two Valyrian houses were seemingly more Andalized or "Valyrian" in a different way than the Targs were. So there's not an equivalent between the two in that way. And we're never given an example of what Rhaenyra would do if a leal lord/lady declared that they wanted to emulate the royal family and name their daughter heir over their son. That was in fact the deal-breaker when it came to Rosby-Stokeworth — they were not named heirs, their houses had not opted for absolute primogeniture, and the Crown was not in the business of overruling the wish of a lord or standard custom of an individual house.
I guess we could go into the whole "Rhaenyra would have reverted back to male preference for TARGARYENS." But that's kind of a separate argument (one I disagree with for a variety of reasons but not now).
The main difference just seems to be, aside from not having Rhoynar numbers, that we don't have a centuries-long scope where those practices are "adopted" by others. There's no reason to believe that some other houses wouldn't eventually see it as fashionable to adopt the same system, if that's indeed what happened with the many Dornish houses that didn't marry/merge with Rhoynar newcomers. Either that, or many of them simply never did make the change. Because neither GRRM's words nor anything from the text suggests it was enforced the way people cry that Rhaenyra or Viserys should have done. And unless anything else comes up, it kind of seems like Dorne had the same approach the rest of Westeros did: there is no one "law" imposed from above, and a lord decides upon succession. They just had the absolute/genderless option while the rest of the realm oscillated between agnatic and male-preference. And less misogyny due to... *gasp* cultural exchange and quite possibly Nymeria's legacy???? Which is why I find all the "but in Dorne" comments around the Dance... more than a little unfair.
Edit: After looking into those examples, I don't think any of them are noted to have brothers. Which kind of makes it ambiguous about whether they're cases of absolute vs. male preference primogeniture. Another example of how the subject is so murky, I suppose. Part of me wonders if it's intentional on GRRM's part. Either because he wants people to make some kind of assumption that he'll later challenge, or because he didn't feel like answering that question in detail and wanted to leave options for himself in the future.
Perros Blackmount is the younger brother of Jynessa, Larra Blackmount's first child and heir. (A Storm of Swords) So we can surmise if not all, there is a good possibility that some or most Dornish houses that practice absolute primogeniture aside from the Martells will have still have firstborn girls inherit/lead before the younger existing brother.
However, I did see what point you're making about Dorne's history towards getting a absolute primogeniture NOT coming from an actual law or dictation form the Martells/Nymeria but from the houses' successive decisions to do it this way from the cultural reset that comes from a woman/women (again, Rhoynar's mostly female warrior population at the time and many intermarrying with the "local" lords while assumedly still having backing from the rest and Nymeria AND the other exchanges of cultural items and practices like the iron and foods and ideas which would have occurred over a large period of time) conquering them.
So trying to use Dorne as the example for how Rhaenyra should do that (dictation, law) is a really insufficient and thus unfair argument against her character as well as a misunderstanding of non-Dorne Westeros vs Dorne.
This had been bothering me for awhile but I only now stumbled into this by accident. Certain people love to whine that Rhaenyra is a "hypocrite" for not forcibly instituting realm-wide genderless succession. They favour the line "this isn't Dorne" and then claim that she's a bad person for not making it into Dorne, while pretending that they wouldn't call her reckless or tyrannical if she'd tried to do so.
Of course (at least, people should see it as "of course"), that simply wouldn't work. Not just because it would be unprecedented for the Crown to enforce their own rules of succession, but also because you just cannot implement an involuntary system like that in a patriarchal society. If you left it uncertain, enforcing it on a case-by-case basis upon Houses that did not agree to it, you create uncertainty from which countless succession crises will occur after the head of house dies without naming the daughter over the younger son. If you implement it on a universal basis, you pretty much guarantee mass rebellions in a realm like Westeros. Those were the concerns of the Black council. But there's yet another. Even if the Crown had the power to enforce genderless succession, to squash or dissuade rebellion, you're left with yet another inevitability that we have seen in real life when you tell families in a patriarchal society that their legacy might be reduced to only a daughter.
In my opinion, there is no "realistic" way to write a change like that going through, being forced through in Westeros that doesn't result in mass infanticide and abandonment of first-born girls. And that's on top of the rebellions.
And this whole time I've been assuming that "Dornish" genderless succession was either a world-building error on GRRM's part, or something he meant to clarify or flesh out later on (misunderstanding or not, Arianne's worries must have had a deeper, environmental foundation after all). Because it's been so long since I read the books cover-to-cover (between GoT seasons 6&7 do NOT make me think about the year and time passing) I suppose I might have just let "fanon" shape my view of it. Because there IS a very widespread assertation, one that's gotten very loud as of late (very interesting how one "other" is so often used to tear down the worse "other." For another time though.) that all of Dorne somehow has embraced genderless succession and this is of course for some reason mostly brought up to argue about how Rhaenyra is a bad person for wanting to be the special exception, or how House Targaryen is bad for wanting to be the special exception in this regard.
A ruling princess of Dorne would =not= take the name of her consort. And some of the major Dornish lordlings also follow this custom, in imitation of the ruling house.
And this is why before diving in further to a Targ-Martell comparison I ask you, resident expert in remembering and cataloging all those kinds of details, if there's some line in the main series outright contradicting this. Because if not, I'm pretty sure House Martell made itself a special exception. That the genderless succession they follow is the exception and not the rule even in Dorne. And by making themselves a special exception, they ended up setting an example that some houses follow on a voluntary basis.
And for some reason... no one is whining about it. 🤔
No, it is true other houses in Dorne have female heads and heirs before/during the main series timewise and thus practice absolute primogenture:
So yes, some Dornish houses do practice absolute primogeniture and the Martells are not an "exception". It's not ubiquitous nor is it rare or uncommon. Nymeria had her warrior women marry many pre-Nymeria Conquest Andal-Dornish lords as well as shared Rhoynar metal and customs that over time simply reshaped a lot of Dorne forever; the northmost Dornish tend to be "less" Rhoynar in custom or practices, but apparently the non-Dornish marcher lords still see them as Other and gripe about their accents a lot. The northenmost Dornish are called "stony" by Daeron I, and tend to have members who can be lighter in ski and hair than other Dornishmen. Same trend for absolute primogeniture, though yes, much less specific bc George doesn't really get into Dorne aside for the Martells, Arianne, Dorna, and the Sand Snakes/Areo Hotah.
Nymeria seized the power over Dorne by murdering its native kings and sending them to the Wall and replaced Dornish customs with Rhoynar as well as put Rhoynar settlers there while Targaryens kept everything untouched, except maybe for stopping the wars and improving the general state of the land, and there’s no Valyrian settlers in Westeros.
Anon maybe talking about this post.
She didn't "replace" any Andal customs. Her people and their people intermarried and influenced the already there culture. Her people were also not "settlers", or that sort; she teamed up with Mors Martell in conquest of other Dornish people. And there is no Ny Sar/motherland that directs the supposed colonization of Andal-FM Dornishmen for her people to really go back to if they so choose or were ordered to and for them to send the resources they supposedly seized for the economic benefit of said motherland...which you kinda need to call something a settler sort of colonialism:
people from one country settle in another country for the purpose of exploiting its people and natural resources
the act of taking control of an area or a country that is not your own, especially using force, and sending people from your own country to live there
the exploitation of the valuable assets and supplies of the nation that was conquered and the conquering nation then gaining the benefits from the spoils of the war.”
Stanford - “The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root reminds us that the practice of colonialism usually involved the transfer of population to a new territory, where the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin.”
https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/
In settler colonialism the most important thing is land (water, earth, and air), because it is the source of capital and the new home of the settlers. It is also key to settler colonialism because “the disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence.” This violence continues with every day of occupation as settler colonialism is a structure and not an event.
Beyond this the colonizers, in the process of settler colonialism, redefine the relationships between people and land as only being those of an owner to his property. All other relationships and connections to land are made to be pre-modern and backward as land is recast as property, a resource, and nothing more. This is done by the settlers through the destruction of Indigenous peoples, Indigenous communities and Indigenous peoples’ claims to land under settler regimes. In order for settler colonialism to occur, land is seen as a ‘resource’ and Indigenous peoples are erased so that the settlers can “truly claim ownership” of the land.
We really don't need to confuse the words in order to defend the Targs from Targ antis.
GRRM literally put Mediterranean, Palestine, Moorish Spain and WALES in a oriental cauldron and created Dorne. On the other hand, ASOIAF fanartists be drawing Dornish women in sarees and ghagra cholis and fancast Golshifteh Farahani, an Iranian actress, as Elia. Be serious y’all.
Penelope Cruz, Nina Dobrev, Mila Kunis are olive-skinned but they’re still unambiguously white.
"Olive" skin/toned skin is supposed to mean:
moderate or lighter tan or brownish skin, and it is often described as having tan, brown, cream, greenish, yellowish, or golden undertones
Therefore, anyone of any race can have an "olive" tone to their skin, as you see above.
The Dornish who live around/closer to the coasts are described as having "olive" skin. Therefore IF we wanted to, we have a lot of justification to have white Martells AS WELL AS actors of other races play them....bc the Martells have married many different peoples of Dorne and beyond and Dorne is not a brown territory nor a PoC one. It's pretty diverse and there is no real "racism" within the actual territory where they recognize each other as socially different by skin color like in real life except to say maybe that that person comes from the desert/the mountains/the coast or from this-that house. And that' not racism. Maybe.
However, I also don't think all Dornish characters NEED to be PoC and Pedro Pascal is not PoC. There are white Latinx i can't totally fault people for thinking the Martells are PoCs bc many came into this series from GoT where some PoC actors played some Dornish people AND people want to see themselves on screen/fantasy genre and its fans can be and are often racist asf. I mean, look at HotD!
However, if we're talking about Dorne having been always a PoC territory bc of the show, that's just false. And Baelor Breakspear? I said this on Twitter:
I have a very long and repeatedly edited post for how/why Dorne is Dorne HERE. Proceed at your own cost.
In general, I don't like to call out individuals for contributing to what I see as a larger trend, if I don't think they're intentionally, actively, or regularly doing so. Which is why I didn't really get into it, didn't rant the way I wanted to, when I corrected yet another person about Nymeria's... conquest. A conquest that very much parallels Aegon's Conquest, similar to how post-Nymeria Dorne very much parallels post-Conquest Westeros.
And I do think this larger trend of trying to deny any similarities or parallels between Targaryens and other Westerosi families is motivated by the not-always-conscious desire to frame the Targaryens as a singular evil for doing... what literally everyone else does but just with evil-coded-by-Catholic-worldview symbols, "queer customs," and foreign "oriental" aesthetics (jk those are the same thing).
And it's especially obvious with that post (which, with how CLOSE in the book their passages were to the passages that I added, came off to me as dishonest but I can acknowledge that it might have just been wishful thinking and negligence) that people really want to craft this narrative where all was well and good until everything changed when Fire Nation attacked those bio-essentially evil degenerate pagans came along to subjugate the peaceful, medieval european feudal lords and ruin the Realm held together by Catholic-patriarchal hegemony by turning it into... a land of medieval european feudal lords held together by Catholic-patriarchal hegemony.
It's a sentiment that's equal parts annoying, fucked up, and impossible to reason with. Because it makes it impossible for these people to truly engage with the text or how it parallels real-world issues because that is the very motivation of that sentiment. If there's one singular evil that ruined everything, it means they don't need to examine how the underlying system is flawed, how every character participates in that system, and most importantly, how ASoIaF criticizes that system.
But these people want to be "fans" of ASoIaF without needing to struggle with that complexity. They want the parts of the "complexity" that make the eurocentric worldbuilding feel rich, but they don't want to pay the price by acknowledging the other side of that eurocentric coin. So to preserve their rich, "complex" eurocentric fairytale, they point their fingers at the participants who stand out the most specifically because they are the most different from those who wholly embody those problems.
It's honestly one of the most blatant examples of scapegoating I've ever seen, to the point where I wonder if it could be studied as an abstract example and used to examine real-world parallels. And that... I actually do find troubling in a way that goes beyond literary analysis or media literacy.
If there's one singular evil that ruined everything, it means they don't need to examine how the underlying system is flawed, how every character participates in that system, and most importantly, how ASoIaF criticizes that system.
@rhaenin-time talks about this ask they reblogged.
it gets tiring, repeating the same points to people abt the Targs and what "conquest" means.
Bad news for people who headcanon the Martells as POC... HBO cast Bertie Carvel, a white British man, as Baelor Breakspear 🤭
https://x.com/theblacks_/status/1803158135298838789
You are the second ask taking pleasure in this, you are as naughty as them, lol.
I couldn't really answer that other one bc I hadn't seen the news or the actor, but wow, how funny. Does he at least tan "easy"? (jk) At least he's good looking.
Onto being more serious, I don't begrudge those who sincerely wanted the Dornish men to be canonically PoC after seeing PoC or PoC "look alikes" act as Dornish people. Again, popular non sci fi fantasy had been lacking and real fans of several fandoms experience racism from white or nonBlack fans (I just got off of Twitter from a literal Vietnamese-killing-idiot who had spearheaded the whole "Mad Dany" shit from her being angry at herself for forgetting a girl's name...out of guilt, mind you).
The issue is when some will insist on them being canonically PoCs or that if they were "translated" into Western racial systems they'd be racialized as anything from South Asian, SouthEast Asian, Central Asian, etc. bc of the presence of canonical Westerosi xenophobia/racism(?) against them. Forgetting that Western Europeans are very xenophobic towards Central and further East Europeans a swell as having a history of such towards Italians and Greek people. And that Spain has a lot of Arabic influences in language and architecture, but is still a "white" place.
So the casting is not much of a "victory" for me.
On Reddit, I see lots of people saying that Daeron's conquest of Dorne was completely justified because Nymeria herself was a conquerer. I can see the logic on a basic level, but I'm not certain that's the message GRRM intended. What do you think GRRM was trying to say when he wrote Daeron's conquest?
That is an odd take.
For one thing.
Dry, desolate, and thinly peopled, Dorne at this time was a poor land where a score of quarrelsome lords and petty kings warred endlessly over every river, stream, well, and scrap of fertile land. Most of these Dornish lords viewed the Rhoynar as unwelcome interlopers, invaders with queer foreign ways and strange gods, who should be driven back into the sea whence they'd come. But Mors Martell, the Lord of the Sandship, saw in the newcomers an opportunity...and if the singers can be believed, his lordship also lost his heart to Nymeria, the fierce and beautiful warrior queen who had led her people across the world to keep them free. [...] When Mors Martell took Nymeria to wife, hundreds of his knights, squires, and lords bannermen also wed Rhoynish women, and many of those who were already wed took them for their paramours. Thus were the two peoples united by blood. The World of Ice and Fire, Ancient History - Ten Thousand Ships
It's clear from this that Nymeria did not roll in trying to invade Dorne and set it up as her own personal fiefdom, but that she and her people were instead refugees who, after some internal politicking, were ultimately welcomed into Dorne. Like. The text says it right there. The people were united. They became families to each other. Even if a lot of Dornish lords started out skeptical, most were legitimately persuaded.
So, you know, we can be sure Nymeria conquering Dorne is not what GRRM intended, because it's...there. Spelled out.
And even if she did conquer Dorne, it's hardly as though Daeron came through trying to liberate the place. For the Dornish, it would have been replacing one conqueror with another. Which it wasn't, since like we see above, Nymeria did no such thing.
Daeron, I suspect, was more written as a commentary on the whole 'young conqueror' trope as a person, rather than as part of the worldbuilding - the worldbuilding was filled in behind the fatally flawed idea of Daeron.
I... look I don't like to nitpick at what's not the main point, but I see too many people try to deny that what Nymeria did was a conquest. It doesn't really matter what someone's motive is or whether or not it benefitted the conquered. It was considered a morally neutral description. Within a feudal system (the clue is in the name), it doesn't need to mean liberation nor subjugation. Conquest is simply a description of what anyone needs to do to accrue power and redirect power and resources from other feudal lords in a feudal system.
The very next page:
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Nymeria's marriage didn't unite her people with Dorne. It united her with House Martell and their allies — to combine their strength for a conquest of Dorne. It's blatantly described as a conquest.
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Given that GRRM literally uses the word "conquered," and describes it as you would any other conquest, I do think that's what he intended.
Hi
How do you think traditional Andal culture still affects Dorne ?
I say this because the Red Princes have tried to ban the Rhoynish language even tho they themselves have rhoynar ancestry and the reason house Martell came in power was because of Nymeria of Ny Sar and the rhoynar who came with her . Sorry if this question is stupid but I just got into ASOIAF and I don't really understand the world . Your blog helped me a lot but I still have a lot of questions :)
Things in Westeros that came from the Andals:
In Dorne, they worship the Seven (except those "orphans" of the Greenblood), they have knights/knighthood, and they have the same writing system as other Westerosi. There are a few "stony" Dornish people who live close to the border of Dorne going into the rest of Westeros otherwise created by the expanse of the Dornish Marches, and those few (out of the already few stonymen) practice male primogeniture or favor it over absolute, which comes from contact and history of Andal peoples and those nondornish Westerosi above.
The Red Princes didn't just try; only those "orphans" of the Greenblood speak the Rhoynar language and secretly.
Hi !!!!
What do you think about the fact that people say that the northman smell ? I always thought that this was some kind of lie or stereotype because they are different from the rest of the 7K .
But I've seen people say that there is only one kind of people that smell and they are the northman not the dornish . I thought that both this and the stereotypes about dornishman were due to their differences from the rest of the people . But some people take it literally.
What's your opinion on this?
It's a very old and habitual thing for people to claim a certain "foreign" group of people "smell funny" or "bad" bc it's a complaint of the proximity to said foreign peoples. You know, if you're close enough to smell, you'd be confronted with how "rank" they innately are and should be somewhere else from you/yours. This is an example of how xenophobia and racism can overlap, bc racists will also/have also claimed non white people smell weird or their food smells weird and "gross" when it's simply different and/or stronger bc they actually season it with different things...or just season. Or whatever. Same idea, proximity and being in the presence of "weird" things, which in racism is then used to justify there being inherent differences b/t the groups that makes the non-smelly one innately superior and the only one capable of not being smelly/having "good" food within an burgeoning or existing racial system. Xenophobia gives easy rise to racism; racism affirms xenophobia. A cycle.
The "smelly" Dornish thing is stereotyping; the "Northners are actually smelly one" is anti-stereotyping and flipping the narrative. even though both groups are subject to xenophobia in-world, even to different degrees.
I actually have never heard people in the fandom say the northerners smell. And I don't remember any in-world character of any of the books claim such or hear another say so. Northmen are usually referred to as "savages" by some Andal-descents, esp septons (Eustace). So I'd have to see an example of that.
But it sounds like people are trying to defend the Dornish--or rather come back at the clear racism and xenophobia some fans have against the Dornish (I say racism bc the Dornish are PoC in many fans' eyes, esp from the show and so they treat them as such and base their theories and assessments of the world based on that). and doing so by doing what people often do in real life when white people--of any and all countries--try to make xenophobic and racists remarks about PoCs and Black peoples or just people from other countries: point out the hypocrisy by bringing up facts abt how they do not escape the facts of their own criticisms. Or just emphasize something else that show how they shouldn't be the authority to judge bc they are the bad actor that perpetuate/cause/set up the conditions being criticized (if the criticism is pointing out a fact but in bad faith to then lead up to imply that the PoCs and Black people cause such things themselves to themselves or that they innately show their inferiority by doing such things that the criticizer removes context of for such a claim of superiority).
Like English people vs Americans with traveling; Brits claim Americans don't travel and are uncultured bc of it, therefore are also dumb, but ironically, their island is not even the size of Texas and people travel 5 European countries worth sometimes to just see family, important landmarks, and end up also exploring indigenous tribes (hopefully respectfully). And because there are frankly thousands of different ethnicities and cultures and indigenous nations across this country that have influenced and grander "American" culture, the U.S. is already very "cultured" even if citizens stay within the country--Americans actually travel more going to work than Europeans tend to for their work. It doesn't make them/us necessarily superior, but that's how many Europeans on the Internet and some of real life like to think bc that's what they are looking for--innate human "superiority" AND an unchallenged justification of such so that they can continue their racism, some whites-first agenda, bc that's what it is. Then there's the whole business of rising far right groups in Europe reflecting how such has happened in the States but Europeans refusing to acknowledge how these are fascists they themselves enabled to be in power. And then there is when I talked about Israel and Eurovision, although that could have also been an Israeli 🙄. So it's most likely this.
Now, for them to use the northerners as the element of "white-people-saying-shit-to-be-superior", we need to know what facts could give the idea that northerners "smell" in the first place (bc it is a fact that many white people don't wash their legs and they had comparatively bad systems of hygiene and sewage compared to what we see as PoC civilizations AFTER the Romans at least). The northerners, I think, would be more inside often bc of the weather and have less access to water unless you are a Stark. Or at least this is what I think Andal people would think, too. So the other possibility is that people have headcanoned that the Northerners actually do stink in comparison to Andal descents but that this stink is made a part of their very being instead of being conditional. Again, removal of context, but as a way to show how the "other side" removes the context and push it in their face.
Because unlike the Dornish, the northerners more often practice male primogeniture AND are universally pale. Even as they worship the Old gods and practice much more subsistence-based practices form both the environment and those old god-based traditions they adopted form the twstsote/children of the forest.
They are, in a word, as less diverse than Dornish people and relatively have similar cultural practices amongst themselves as the Andals do themselves due to the isolation the Neck affords them. So they have less phenotically different features than the Andal people that we'd call "white" features (a range of very diff eye colors & "straight" features). The deal with Ned, his father, brother, and Lyanna plus the Strks of the main series? This is an anomaly in Westerosi history, where the Starks are more active than they've really ever been in "southron" politics. And the Starks are the second most fav house in the fandom.
Taking all this into account, the xenophobia towards the Northerners isn't quite as prominent in Westeros and in the fandom itself since people watched GoT and read the main series. People have misunderstood the Starks place in the politics and society of Westeros b/c the Starks are such a (usually positive) presence in the story that we had & which existed before AWoIaF, the Dunk and Egg series, Rogue Prince, TP&TQ, and F&B.
So it is useful AND truthful to re-foreignize them by pointing out how they have been "foreign" to the "majority" Andal-nonDornish descendants for thousands of years to throw off annoying/racist Stark stans. This is totally different "work" than when people (inworld or in the fandom) claim the Dornish "smell". They are not the same acts. Because Dornish people, rather than northerners, will face more bigoted readings from fans than northerners will.
since some askers keep conflating the two, i just want to make it clear as someone from the latter region that south Asia (the indian subcontinent) is a different region altogether from southeast Asia (the asean member states) with very different cultures
In lieu of this ask, maybe.
Which is why race, ethnicity, and nationality are all different. In the U.S., you'd be racialized as just Asian or south Asian. Your ethnicity is a clan, tribe, ethnoreligion, etc you were born into. Your nationality is, I'm assuming, Indian. what i have been trying to get to people is that Dornishmen are pretty varied in terms of ethnicity but can be racialized almost as a monolith/oversimplified as the very concept of race tries to do in real life (stony, vs sandy, salty).
It's why people tend to get ethnic Indians confused with those from south East Asia when they are a bit darker than what they think ethnic Asians look like. And many white people in the U.S. would still see (bc it's how they were taught to look at the world) you as similar "enough" to South East to be just "brown" Asian and call it a day. While they go crazy with the whole "I'm a natural blonde" vs "ginger" as if these are two different sub groups of human beings sometimes.
It's not so much "stupidity" so much as historical racialization in U.S. history. And it's why we had the whole Tyla controversy. Race is a tool of boxing people in boxes that never work but nonetheless determine a lot of sociopolitical and economic infrastructures and certain people's access to resources all over the world.
Rhaenys is mixed race so her being on the whitish side isn’t unusual. The other Dornish characters in Asoiaf comics do look more brown.
The Dornish are not PoC. They are "spicy" white people; even in today's society, the British/Western EU white people can be both xenophobic and racist towards Southern/Central white Europeans.
Rhaenys' mother, Elia, was "white" bc the Martells (yes, translated into modern racial identities) are "white". Rhaenys was "white" and Rhaegar certainly wasn't any sort of PoC or PoC adjacent.
In her world, Rhaenys was just not the "right kind" of "Westerosi"/"white" that we'd also consider to be "white". Which is pre-extensive slave trade England-France-Germany--NorthWestern Europe pale people--in our specific matrix of global racial systems.
Which also doesn't include her own father; he is not shown to be xenophobic towards Dornish people.
Her maternal lineage/ethnicity.
So really, she did not have the "right kind" of lineage even as these people didn't actually think of her as "Dornish" bc she was born into the Targaryen royal family...just a "Dornish person's child". Any child born into the Westerosi royal family is not considered "Dornish", northerner, etc. They are considered part of the nonDornish Westerosi family, but with a different lineage. Remember Larra Rogare (mother to Aegon IV, Queen Naerys and Aemon the Dragon Knight), how non-Dornish Westerosi were xenophobic towards her and her brothers despite the fact that she was pale skinned/pale-haired AND had Valyrian roots/lineage? Because she refused to speak the Common tongue, kept to herself and her Essosi/Lyseni ladies-in-waiting, and worshipped various Essosi gods instead of adopting the Seven?
At the same time, there was the idea that people who worshipped different gods or/and looked as if they came from an area associated with such "foreign" types of worship or speak the same language a particular "native" way or eat similar enough sorts of food (i.e., Rhoynar are Essosi and Essosi don't worship the Seven near-ubiquitously like and Dornish people eat much more spicy foods), xenophobia can overlap with racism or really lead into it. As it would have done if Daeron I had been successful in conquering Dorne. That is how racism originated, btw--religion & class distinctions and not necessarily skin by itself.
It'd be more accurate to say Rhaenys is a mixed-lineage child.
I raise these maps bc I want to make it clear that Dorne is not that populous compared to other realms; only a few people live in the Red Mountains, the southern deserts, and the Greenblood river valley. As you can see, the major castles and most people live near or on the few rivers
This is the description of Dorne in terms of cities in AWoIaF -- "Dorne":
There are no cities in Dorne, though the so-called shadow city that clings to the walls of Sunspear is large enough to be counted as a town (a town built of mud and straw, it must be admitted). Larger and more populous, the Planky Town at the mouth of the river Greenblood is mayhaps the nearest thing the Dornish have to a true city, though a city with planks instead of streets, where the houses and halls and shops are made from poleboats, barges, and merchant ships, lashed together with hempen rope and floating on the tide.
AND
The Red Mountains that compose its western and northern boundaries have kept Dorne separate from the rest of the realm for thousands of years, though the deserts have played a role as well. Behind that wall of mountains, more than three-quarters of the land is an arid wasteland. Nor is the long southern coast of Dorne more hospitable, being for the most part a snarl of reefs and rocks, with few protected anchorages. Those ships that do put ashore there, whether by choice or chance, find little to sustain them; there are no forests along the coast to provide timber for repairs, a scarcity of game, few farms, and fewer villages where provisions might be obtained. Even freshwater is hard to come by, and the seas south of Dorne are rife with whirlpools and infested with sharks and kraken.
For more reading, you may look at 🔗this essay [excerpt]:
In the mountains, access to rivers and rainfall raised the Daynes and the Yronwoods to kingship - although clearly trade was equally an important factor, given the rise of the Fowlers who claimed no such water access but who dominated the Wide Way that is the major caravan route in and out of Dorne. In the southern deserts, water was so important that the political class were called "the lords of the wells," although technically the Drylands and Ullers were/are riverine rather than oasitic. The Greenblood gives us the best example of how geography and culture interact: here, the necessities of cooperation to construct extensive irrigation works, which take larger labor forces than any one in-group could provide, as well as the common reliance on a single river (which requires some means of negotiating water rights between upstream and downstream), contributed to the creation of an elective High Kingship in that region. Other aspects of geography can be shown to have shaped Dorne in other ways: the wind and water currents that cause the "big storms that formed down in the Summer Sea would pick up moisture moving north until they slammed into Cape Wrath. For some strange reason the storms never seemed to strike at Dorne, "which restricts agriculture to a few regions and leads to Dorne's "thinly peopled" status. The lack of accessible harbors along the southern coast of Dorne which restricts maritime commerce to the far east of Dorne (although I remain puzzled as to how merchants going from and to Lannisport or Oldtown do for water and other supplies).
So to that past anon who was all like "like climate and geography is not the same as culture", no it is not, but it definitely and always gives rise to the particular character of a culture as culture is basically humans' response to their environment.
This is the Greenblood, described as having "shallow" waters:
🎨: Juan Carlos Barquet
So we're trying to pin down whether the Martells AND Dorne are a PoC realm/people/etc, right? If we are talking about how "race" exists within the world itself, it is almost impossible to really transfer what we know as "race" onto characters from Dorne based on skin color alone bc their world is simply not like ours at the end of the day. The history & current conditions are not the same, even with it being similar in some ways I already described below to Spain's own history and the Welshmen's own histories.
I know that the comics may have Dornish characters that are "browner" than nonDornish Westerosi in skin color. But it is just a fact that GRRM made the Martells (as a unit/popilation/a people/a collective) and several "salty" Dornish to look more like European Southern and Mediterranean white people [look at the 2nd link above--that pic I showed of his blog answer to a specific question abt it]. Those white people that English and German people have thought of/racialized as the "spicy" whites bc their culture is a lot closer to the non white ME, North African, and other Asian influences throughout their own history and thus have had ME, North African, etc. influences in their own culture. It doesn't make those "white" EU territories any less "white" in our own many racial systems. But they are considered "lesser" whites, esp the darker they are.
Spain has a lot of Arabic architecture, the language is heavily influenced by Arabic bc of Ottoman, "Moor" (an exonym that encompassed several people: Arabs, Amazigh, and Muslim Europeans), and other non"white"EU peoples. There were "interracial"/interracial marriages here and there. There was the Umayyad conquest and the subsequent Muslim imperial control from 711–720s. You see all these influences in the foods and some other practices....it doesn't make Spain a non white country. Dorne is the fictional analogy of Spain (imperfectly, but closest of all we have) if Spain constantly fought to keep itself out of others' imperial rule, like the Welsh and Irish.
But to continue anyway:
AND the population of what we call Dorne also has paler skinned non-Martells like the Daynes, the Fowlers, and the Yronwoods. All these houses have pale skinned, a range of eye colored, and blonde haired members from time to time. They are what Daeron I called "stony" Dornish; those who had the least Rhoynish "influence", but still have the accent and some Rhoynar ancestry.
In that post I linked all the way above, I also already gave the picture of Oberyn Martell GRRM had referenced made by Amok, one of the few artists he says represents many of the canonical physical features of his characters. Some of which he personally instructed Amok with detailed descriptions himself. And Oberyn has "olive" toned skin, but so do many Greek, Spanish, Portuegese people.
As for "sandy" Dornish people they tend to be much darker than either the exonymically named "salty" and "stony" peoples. Examples are the Ullers & the Qorgyles. They also existed before Nymeria came around and were First Men/Andal peoples then, like most other Dornish Houses I listed. They were "white" before her arrival. Some maybe married a few of her female warriors OR the children of those women and the Martell/other "half" Dornish people and thus you have a line of people stretching from before the Conquest who people would call "mixed" but that's like saying that Spain is full of mixed people bc of their own long past history of mixed marriages. The Dornish are uniquely themselves, or supposed to be:
LINK to So Spake Martin on Dornish Influences
Now why did the population per mile, or the "thinly-populated" detail matter? To paint a picture of how many people we can actually maybe say a "brown" racially vs "white", and thus from what we see here, Dornish people are mostly "white", and even the Ullers and Qorgyles, in our own world's racialization, is racially "ambiguous" (again, how U.S. and I assume England would racialize...GRRM is born-raised American writing to a mostly American audience and will likely be writing under the racial understanding of Americans). Therefore, it is a "spicy white" territory/state. And it is not like the U.S. that has a history a different race from somewhere else colonizing/enslaving the "native" populations and then down the line we still see differences b/t the Dornish populations where darker Dornish are put oppressed and deliberately segregated from paler people and yield a "nation" with several different ethnicities. Dorne is a territory with different Rhoynish influences-by-degree, and nearly all still worship the Seven like Andal nonDornishmen. Nearly all "forgot" the Rhoynar language but still speak the common tongue with a noticeable accent bc of that Rhoynish influence (I tend to imagine it like if a person were always speaking English with a Spaniard Spanish accent). Nearly all the houses practice absolute primogeniture, unless we go more north ("stony"), and even here it's told it's "some", not all.
In their world, racialization is just...not the same as ours (I'm talking U.S. and England) and even under the evaluation of race-translation, the Dornish are apparently more Spaniard/Portuegese white than South East Asian-East Asian-Mid Eastern, etc.
Even with Aerys making as if she "smells" like a Dornish person--NW Europeans often did the same to S and Medite Europeans towards renaissance and the early mod period. Sometimes continue to do so even today, and to Central Europeans like those from the Balkans.
I adore you drives into house Martell/Dorne and they not being poc. As a fanfiction writter and a woman who studies in college the medieval history of the iberian peninsula I try to Stay Away from writting house Martell fics because I do not believe they are poc the way fandom describes them (especially not as dark skinned) but I fear the backlash.
But I add my two cents to it because I feel the need to say it. (Sorry you'll be the one getting it)
I think the smallfolk around certain parts of Dorne are poc. Not the nobility. Nymeria and her descendents intermarried with the Andals many times. And if all dorne nobility is poc... How is Aegon V (grandson of Myriah Martell and son of Dyanna Dayne) isn't? Or his siblings. We meet all the men - no sign of a different "Race" in any of them.
I'm a little confused by this ask, ngl. You lost me here:
I think the smallfolk around certain parts of Dorne are poc. Not the nobility. Nymeria and her descendents intermarried with the Andals many times.
If the peasants, as you say, are PoC bc the Rhoynar female soldiers intermarried w/Andal-First Men Dornish people...are you saying they did with both Dornish peasant men AND nobles? Or they only did with peasants? If the latter, that wouldn't make much sense bc the petty nobles around or those "vassals"/oathed to the Martells at the time Nymeria arrived wouldn't go umarried to any of her soldiers, therefore we'd be forced to say that yes some nobles are PoC...and only if we assume that the Martells have become as PoC as them since Nymeria married Mors.
So it sounds like you're just saying that they, the nobility, are PoC.
Isn’t it so crazy that some stans love to bring up Criston being Dornish when it comes to a power imbalance with his relationship with Rhaenyra and never when it comes to acceptance of bastards which the Dornish are notably very supportive of. The Dornish who commonly raised their bastards among their true born children. While they may not believe in them carrying banners and titles it still doesn’t make sense for Criston to be SOOOO bastardphobic considering he was culturally Dornish and raised as a common man. Because it can’t be used to point out inconsistency or bigotry, it can only be used when convenient or when framing Rhaenyra as racist ☠️☠️
They do so to accuse her for being a rapist, too.
But exactly, similar to how they do this for Dany and Quentyn Martell, how she doesn't supposedly consider her as her own possible mate/husband...oh, how they contradict & repeat themselves.
Rhaenyra is racist and/or a rapist-SAer bc she pressures Cole into sex; Dany is a racist & shallow bitch for not marrying/putting out for Quentyn Martell as well as a rapist for Irri. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. No looking at the nuances of all their respective histories and class-gender positions that defy such claims--just liberal identity politic excuses.
Thinking of the most prominent succession struggles in asoiaf and realizing that a good majority of them are not even because of some evil bastard usurping their trueborn relative. Alys Karstark’s dilemma is caused by her uncle wanting to forcibly marry her and steal her birthright. Renly is Stannis’ trueborn brother and yet he declares himself king despite Stannis being older. Euron is Balon’s trueborn brother and Asha’s uncle and yet look at what he did. Littlefinger wants to use a trueborn Harry Harding to take over Sweetrobin’s rights (though not so openly). And the Dance of the Dragons was between a trueborn pair of brother and sister. And if we are to see a repeat of it, it will be between a trueborn daughter of the last Targaryen king (Dany) and a trueborn son (Aegon) of the previous crown prince.
That’s what makes the whole “Jon was a threat to Catelyn’s children” argument so frustrating because people act as if Jon was a ticking time bomb that was going to blow at any minute, purely on account of him being a bastard. When historically, we’re given much more precedent for trueborn relatives to usurp each other.
This frustrating argument arises out of two problems:
It is understandable (but not justifiable tbh) that Catelyn is biased against Jon; he is the ever present product of her husband’s affair. But that’s just it, she’s biased. So she has a biased application of history. And she has a biased (and bigoted) view of Jon’s place in it. We as readers have a full picture though. So shouldn’t we be having more nuanced dialogue regarding this instead of taking her biased word for it?
Did you know that Martell stans use Aerys saying Rhaenys “smell Dornish” to prove they are POC ??
I mean, why bring up “bad smell” to defend a “character is brown” headcanon, my god white people really do think we’re dirty and unwashed 😭😭😭
I mean, why bring up “bad smell” to defend a “character is brown” headcanon, my god white people really do think we’re dirty and unwashed 😭😭😭
I think that some are saying that bc the Andal and First Men Westerosi are known as "white" and how in real life white people can express racism towards to brown people by claiming they "smell"--esp Southeast Asians--they think that the Andal nonNorthmen Westerosi racially categorize the Dornish the exact same way that white people of real life do...it's a thing. And they observe how the Andal Westerosi hate Dornish people, call them barbaric for the supposedly unintelligible Common Tonugue in Rhoynish "accents", etc. . Like racism has as part of it claimed "smells" and "looks" told to be "bad" as if that race inherently had bad qualities that one can immediately sense.
Meanwhile, it's on record (Tiktok interviews) how they--esp the French--stink up every place they go and don't wash their legs in the shower or don't replace their towels as often as they should or just palm some soap and lather themselves with no sponge or washcloth. My guy....but i digress.
And I am not versed in how fandom moves & shakes like people who have been online since GoT came put, so 🤷🏿♀️.
Did you know that Martell stans use Aerys saying Rhaenys “smell Dornish” to prove they are POC ??
I won't say that the smelling bit wasn't some xenophobic mess on Aerys' part, but people take it to mean that Rhaegar didn't love or respect Elia/cheated on her for a Stark "white" girl bc he also had that xenophobia.
When there has been no indication that Rhaegar did AND the Starks/northmen are not as accepted as "Westerosi" or "one of us" people may think. Because they worship the old gods and have some traditions and ideas that the Andal-descended lords find "barbaric":
(AWoIaF -- "The Seven Kingdoms" -- "Dorne" )
(AWoIaF -- "The Seven Kingdoms" -- "The North" )
(from Fire and Blood, most from Septon Eustace, but even before Eustace, the Northmen are called "savage" in Jaehaerys & Alysanne's time)
For the last time, the Martells and Dornish people ARE NOT PoCs!! They are "spicy" white people the "whiter" people think are too unlike them to be one of them! Like German/English people vs Italians/Spaniards in medieval/early modern period Europe:
Rhaegel being described as the first ‘mad’ Targaryen and running around the Red Keep naked, a son of a Martell woman, and Aerion Brightflame literally being Aerion Brightflame, a son of a Dayne woman and people wanna tell me the Dornish didn’t start the Targaryen madness ? I’m sorry, take it up with GRRM. And not it’s not racist, the Dornish aren’t brown people, they’re just tan white people, just like the Spaniards, Italians, Greeks.
I don't know about that. That's still crazy business, bordering on xenophobia.
I rather think they lost magic access and understanding for a time and tried more than ever that they were colossuses onto themselves after losing their dragons, so they put themselves under a lot of pressure (the men, the women were decidedly more on the side than ever)a long with even more external pressures.
