re: casting the sand snakes
also known as: you’re about to fuck up george r. r. martin’s best characters, here, let me help you with that.
first of all, the martells are not white. oberyn martell is not white. and YES, even tyene sand, the blonde haired, blue eyed sand snake is not white. anyone who tells you otherwise has their head up their own racist ass. have you guys never heard of biracial people? no, but seriously — if you don’t understand this, please come to my askbox and i can explain, i promise i won’t be a jerk about it.
moving on, we have to look at the individual biracial-ness of each sand snake. they have different mothers, and those mothers have different ethnicities. in this post, i’ll be focusing on the older sand snakes, as they’re the ones we know most about. so keeping in mind that their father, oberyn, is a martell (you can cast this as indian, middle eastern, whatever your reading suggests — the show cast him as latino, but then again, d&d aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed — and i made a post about casting dornish here), and for the purposes of this guide, martell people will be considered to be indian in heritage.
so, it’s been established that the sand snakes are all half indian, at the very least. now, let’s go one by one here.
obara sand’s mother was an oldtown whore. obara is described as having “swarthy” coloring. “swar·thy; having dark skin”. obara sand, therefore, would have to be cast as half indian, half black — while “dark skin” might be interpreted in different ways, black is probably the most viable option. however, casting obara as half indian and half, say, filipino, might also work.
nymeria sand’s mother was a noblewoman from volantis. her skin color seemingly changes throughout the books — once described as pale white, once described as olive — but that can be blames on the sun. so, though lady nym is certainly indian on her father’s side, it is impossible to say what her mother’s ethnicity was, though it’s doubtful she was black. regardless, nymeria must be cast as half indian.
tyene sand’s mother was a septa. she has very fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, which leads us to believe that her mother would have been white. however, this doesn’t mean you can cast jasmine sanders or stephanie bertram rose as tyene — both models, though fair and beautiful, are half black, half white. tyene sand is half indian, half white. half-white PoC are not interchangable. you can’t simply swap out an indian person for a black one. genetics doesn’t work like that.
sarella sand (my personal favorite sand snake) was born to a trader from the southern isles. so sarella would be half indian, half black.
as for the rest of the sand snakes, it’s important to remember they are the daughters of ellaria sand. though we don’t definitively know her ethnicity, it is important to consider her a PoC when casting the younger sand snakes.
if anyone would like any help with faceclaims, fancasts, are if you’re just curious on what i have to say on the matter, feel free to drop by my askbox and hit me up! remember that this whole post rests on my interpretation of the martells being indian, and that that may not apply to every situation.
thanks to nobodysuspectsthebutterfly for helping me out with edits!