zag ☿

will we ever go back

Number one, I don’t think we can call the Dondarrions “a very minor House”. Indeed, Yandel himself counts the Dondarrions (alongside the Swanns, Selmys, and Carons) as one of “[t]he greatest of the Marcher lords” and refers to the Dondarrion seat of Blackhaven as “[a]mong the sternest of the Marcher seats … with its forbidding black basalt walls and bottomless dry moat”. Lord Harmon Dondarrion seems to have been of equal rank to Lord Tarly and Lady Caron, as all served as commanders during the campaign in Aenys I’s reign against the Vulture King, and Lord Dondarrion served as one of the three Marcher representatives at the wedding of Queen Alyssa and Rogar Baratheon. Queen Alysanne clearly considered the Dondarrions important enough to include on the royal couple’s tour of the Dornish Marches in 54 AC, and later a Dondarrion was one of the “dozen fresh young maidens chosen from amongst a hundred who coveted the distinction of serving as a companion to the queen [i.e. Alysanne]" - proof, I think, of the rank of the Dondarrions even relative to other Westerosi aristocrats. Notably as well in the main novels, Sansa thinks that while Jeyne Poole - herself an aristocrat, albeit an actually low-ranking and probably landless one - mooned after Lord Beric, the Lord of Blackhaven “would never look at someone so far beneath him”. 

Number two, it seems almost certain that Baelor and Jena were married prior to the First Blackfyre Rebellion. Valarr, their elder son, was not only old enough to joust as a knight at Ashford in 209 AC, suggesting that Valarr was at least 16 or so at that time, but was also big and tall enough for his nearly 40-year-old warrior father to plausibly borrow and wear his armor during the trial of seven, suggesting that Valarr was old enough to have reached his adult build and height. Personally, I think Baelor and Jena were married roughly around the mid to late 180s and Valarr was born around the late 180s, but whenever the actual wedding occurred, it’s impossible that Valarr was born in or after 196 AC, and as such his parents had to have been married ahead of the First Blackfyre Rebellion.

All of that said, why do I think Prince Baelor and Jena Dondarrion were married? Put very simply, I think Daeron II correctly recognized the fault lines of political factionalism in his kingdom and wanted to repair, rather than deepen, those divisions. From the beginning of his reign, King Daeron had very publicly advertised his desire to unite Dorne with the Targaryen kingdom. Not only was Daeron himself happily married to Myriah Martell, but as Yandel notes, “one of [Daeron’s] earliest significant acts after assuming the throne was to begin negotiations with his good-brother, Prince Maron, to unify Dorne under Targaryen rule” - negotiations which ended with the homage of Prince Maron and his wedding to the king’s sister, Princess Daenerys. Between the unique “significant rights and privileges” granted to the Dornish lords and the Prince of Dorne in particular in the peace accord, and the Dornishmen who were given places at court and “offices of note” under Daeron II, the king was making very clear that his government was openly and ardently pro-Dorne. 

Yet as Daeron II certainly realized, such courtly and political favoritism toward Dorne generally and House Martell specifically would hardly be received rapturously by the entirety of his realm. From the earliest days of the Targaryen monarchy, the dragonkings had, in the tradition of the Plantagenets and any number of other real-world monarchies, claimed dominion over Dorne, in title if not in fact. Daeron I had come closest, if relatively briefly, to making this paper crown of "King of the Rhoynar" a reality, and Daeron II’s own father Aegon IV had (albeit almost certainly for selfish and petty reasons) attempted to reignite (pun intended) the conquest of Dorne by House Targaryen. Daeron II’s pro-Dorne policies, then, were very much poised to be seen, at least by some of his subjects, as a jarring reversal away from a century and a half of Targaryen posturing and conquest and toward a political reality where the Dornish were, to borrow Yandel’s phrase, “rivals for the king’s attention or largesse”. That suspicion extended to Daeron’s heir: according to Yandel, “many men looked upon Baelor’s dark hair and eyes and muttered that he was more Martell than Targaryen”. This Martell-looking eldest son of a Martell queen, double first cousins with the future of the ruling dynasty of Dorne, may have seemed to suspicious factions to be the living guarantee that Martell, and more generally Dornish, royal favor was going to continue, if not indeed be increased, in the next generation of the Targaryen monarchy. 

The solution, I think, for Daeron II was to marry his eldest son and heir into one of the marcher lord dynasties. These families, founded explicitly according to Yandel to “[protect] the realm of the Storm Kings from the ancient enemies to the west and, especially, the south” and to “create a bulwark against incursions from the Dornish”, would almost certainly have been the most natural opponents of Daeron II’s pro-Dorne policies (and, given their famous pride, perhaps among the most vocal in their opposition). By choosing from among these lords for not just his daughter-in-law but the future (expected) Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and (expected) mother of the next king, Daeron II was making just as public a statement that his was not a client state of Sunspear but a united realm - one in which the proud marchers would have just as much opportunity for courtly favor and advancement as the Martells and other Dornish nobles did. The Dondarrions, and by extension any of their relatives and allies among the marchers, would be directly invested in the dynasty, with a tangible incentive for supporting Daeron II’s government (as opposed to, say, looking to Daemon Blackfyre as a rival for the throne). Too, if I can quote myself, the future (expected) royal children of Baelor and Jena, especially their (expected) eldest son and heir, “would be a microcosm of the peace Daeron sought”, as “Dornish blood and marcher blood, eternally spilled at the other’s expense, would mingle in a single person, a future king of the united state of Westeros”. 

One question I do have - though we’ll probably have to wait until Fire and Blood Volume 2 for an answer - is why Daeron II selected a Dondarrion rather than, say, a Swann or Caron. It could be that there were no daughters of the right age among any of other other prominent marcher families; it could be that Daeron II knew or liked Jena’s family more than he did, say, other marcher families; it could even be that Daeron chose the Dondarrions to temper the local geopolitical ambitions of the Swanns and Carons to each be counted “the oldest of the Marcher houses” and superior over the rest, with the king perhaps quietly reminding the Swanns and Carons that he had the power to humble as well as exalt. 

Rhaenyra and Alicent over Season 1

I got a lot of questions over the course of this series over the "opposites" I was talking about in Alicent and Rhaenyra's costumes, so hopefully this sort of side by side makes their fashion decisions more dramatic. Not all of these outfits are worn in literally the same scenes but they are lined up to the ones they match on the time-line.

I am the artist! Do not post without permission & credit! Thank you! Come visit me over on: instagram, tiktok or check out my coloring book available now \ („• ֊ •„) /