#chroyane

Warning, Spoilers Ahead...

The Valyrians conquered their ancient rivals and proceeded to run wild on Essos. The first Valyrians to arrive in Westeros were adventurers, exiles, and traders.

The Rhoynar made their first mistake by welcoming their Valyrians to their land. The Rhoynar, both the government and religious offices, believed all were welcome to the bounty of Mother Rhoyne. The Valyrians follow the “evyerthing is mine, not yours” philosophy.

Resentment between the two groups increased as Valyrian outposts turned into towns and then into cities. The two most prominent rivalries were between Sar Mell and Volon Therys, a Volyrian town in the lower Rhoyne, and between Sarhoy (a port city) and the Free City of Volantis on the shores of the Summer Sea.

Disputes led to wars. Sar Mell and Volon Therys started the first war over the butchering of the Old Men of the River – gigantic river turtles held sacred as the consorts of Mother Rhoyne.

The First Turtle War lasted less than a month. “Sar Mell was raided and burned” but won the war when Rhoynish water wizards flooded half of Volon Therys.

More wars followed: the War of the Three Princes, the Second Turtle War, the Fisherman’s War, the Salt War, the Third Turtle War, the War on Dagger Lake, the Spice War, and numerous others.

The name of the wars clearly describes either the cause or location of the war. I am intrigued by the “War of the Three Princes”. Is the war still only between Sar Mell and Volon Therys? If so, who is the third prince? Does Volon Therys even have a prince? Were princes rapidly dying?

Yandel notes Beldecar’s History of the Rhoynish Wars as the definitive source of the history of the Rhoynish-Valyrian conflicts.

The wars caused the destruction of cities and the death and enslavement of thousands. The Valyrians won the majority of the battles. The Rhoynar believed in independence and fighting your own battles.  The Valyrians believed in group effort and running home to daddy (the Valyrian Freehold) when they got into trouble. And daddy sent dragons.

The wars occurred over two and a half centuries. The conflicts reached its climax in the Second Spice War. Three Valyrians dragonlords joined the citizens of Volantis in annihilating Sarhoy – the adults were slaughtered, the children sold into slavery, and the city torched.

The destruction of Sarhoy caused the remaining Rhoynar princes to form an alliance. Finally!

Garin of Chroyane, the greatest Rhoynar warrior prince, declared: “We shall all be slaves unless we join together to end this threat.”

Princess Nymeria of Ny Sar disagreed: “This is a war we cannot hope to win”.

Because, you know, dragons!

Nymeria’s warriors wanted to fight so she joined the alliance.

Prince Garin assembled the largest army Essos had ever seen at Chroyane – 750,000 strong.

Garrin’s strategy was to keep the fighting close to the Rhoyne believing the Rhoynar water wizards would be able to combat the dragons.

Garrin divided his army into three parts: “one marched down the east bank of the Rhoyne, one along the west, whilst a huge fleet of war galleys kept pace on the waters between, sweeping the river clean of enemy ships.”

Garrin and company marched downward from Chroyane, “destroying every village, town, and outpost in his path and smashing all opposition.”

Garrin’s forces were on a winning streak: defeating a thirty thousand strong army at Sellhorys and destroying the city. Valysar suffered the same fate.

Garrin and company battled a hundred thousand foes, a hundred war elephants, and three dragons at Volon Therys. Garrin won but it was a costly victory.  Thousands burned but Rhoynish archers killed two of the dragons and wounded a third. The water-wizards caused the Mother Rhoyne to “swallow” Volon Therys.

The Rhoynar proclaimed Garrin as Garrin the Great. The Volantenes retreated behind their black walls and begged the Valyrian Freehold for help.

The Freehold responded by sending dragons – 300 dragons or more. Once hundreds of dragons are sent, its game over. Tens of thousands burned. The Rhoyne itself boiled and turned to steam.

The death of the dragons had to be the cause of the Freehold’s overkill response of 300 dragons. The Rhoynar and the Valyrians had been fighting for centuries and the Freehold’s response amounted to “whatever” but two dragons die and 300 dragons are sent in response?

Dragons are a precious resource to the Valyrians – its the backbone of their empire and the reason they’re able colonize everywhere. The Valyrians cannot let the death of dragons stand or allow the dragons to appear weak. There is now way the Freehold wants the death of dragons by mere archers to be widespread knowledge. Can you imagine if the numerous enemies of Valyria realized a highly skilled archer could take out a dragon? It lessens the awe and mystique of dragons. Not to mention every dragon-rider out on a pleasure ride would have to worry over a potential sniper attack from an archer.

Garrin was captured and forced to watch as his fellow Rhoynar were massacred. So many were executed that “their blood turned the great harbor of Volantis red as far as the eye could see”.

The Volantese and Valyrians followed Garrin’s route in reverse- savagely sacking Sar Mell before advancing on Chroyane. Garrin was locked into a golden cage and forced to watch the destruction of Chroyane – his home city.

Garrin was hung in his cage from the walls of Chroyane. Garrin’s conquerors wanted him to witness the murder and enslavement of his people. Garrin called upon Mother Rhoyne to avenge her people: “That very night, the Rhoyne flooded out of season and with greater force than was known in living memory. A thick fog full of evil humors fell, and the Valyrian conquerors began to die of greyscale.”

Was this an actual divine/magical response or simply the result of masses of corpses being near a body of water? Is this the first incident/cause of greyscale?

Centuries later, Lomas Longstrider “wrote of the drowned ruins of Chroyane, its foul fogs and waters, and the fact that wayward travelers infected with greyscale no haunt the ruins – a hazard for those who travel the river beneath the broken span of the Bridge of Dreams.”

If I remember correctly, Tyrion and company travel through Chroyane in A Dance With Dragons. I believe this is where Jon Connington caught greyscale.

Nymeria, in Ny Sar, hears of the destruction of Sar Mell and Chroyane and decides now is a perfect time to leave Essos.

But I love GRRM’s worldbuilding so much. I love the cities and the planets and the stars, and I love GRRM’s “long autumn” themes imbued throughout:

The city of the morning was a soft pastel vision set in a wide green valley. Gwen put the aircar down in the center of one of its terraced squares, and they strolled the broad boulevards for an hour. It was a gracious city, carved from delicately veined pink marble and pale stone. The streets were wide and sinuously curved, the buildings low and seemingly fragile structures of polished wood and stained glass. Everywhere they found small parks and wide malls, and everywhere art: statues, paintings, murals on sidewalks and along the sides of buildings, rock gardens, and living tree-sculptures. 

But now the parks were desolate and overgrown, the blue-green grass gone wild. Black creepers snaked across the sidewalks, the parkside plinths were empty more often than not, and the sturdier tree-sculptures had grown into grotesque shapes that their shapers never dreamed of. 

A slow-moving blue river divided and subdivided the city, wandering this way and that in a course as meandering and tortuous as the streets along its bank. Gwen and Dirk sat near the water for a while, beneath the shadow of an ornate wooden footbridge, and watched the reflection of Fat Satan float red and sluggish on the water. And while they sat, she told him of how the city once had been, in the days of the Festival, before either of them had come to Worlorn. The people of Kimdiss had built it, she said, and they called it the Twelfth Dream. 

Perhaps the city was dreaming now. If so, its sleep was the final one. Its vaulted halls all echoed empty, its gardens were grim jungles, soon to be graveyards. Where laughter had once filled the streets, now the only sound was the rustling whisper of dead leaves blown by the wind. If Larteyn was a dying city, Dirk reflected while he sat beneath the bridge, then Twelfth Dream was a dead one.

I can’t help but think of Chroyane in ADWD: “This was the most beautiful city on the river, and the richest. Chroyane, the festival city.” “All ruined, all desolate, all fallen.” This is one of my favorite parts of ADWD, one of the saddest and most beautiful imo:

The ruin was sad enough, but knowing what it had been made it even sadder. There was laughter here once, Tyrion thought. There were gardens bright with flowers and fountains sparkling golden in the sun. These steps once rang to the sound of lovers' footsteps, and beneath that broken dome marriages beyond count were sealed with a kiss. His thoughts turned to Tysha, who had so briefly been his lady wife. 

Chroyane suffered its own dying of the light: “Lomas Longstrider, in his Wonders Made by Man, recounts meeting descendants of the Rhoynar in the ruins of the festival city of Chroyane who have tales of a darkness that made the Rhoyne dwindle and disappear, her waters frozen”

Kroyut (v.) [‘krɔɪj.ʊt] *kroyut

To Cross a River

ASOIAF Locations | Chroyane