House Martell

Areo Hotah

Captain of the Guard at Sunspear

House: sworn sword of House Martell, formerly a hired blade of Norvos

Last confirmed still standing guard over Prince Doran at Sunspear, as steady and as tight-lipped as the histories have ever found him.

Norvos trains its bearded priests' guardsmen to a discipline the rest of Essos treats as faintly absurd — total obedience, a sharpened longaxe, and a vow of silence broken only for their sworn lord — and Areo Hotah carried that training out of the Free City and into Prince Doran Martell's household some fifteen years before the story proper begins. He has served as captain of the Sunspear guard ever since, a foreigner trusted with a Dornish prince's life in a court that trusts almost no one else with anything, and the chronicle's two windows into Dorne's innermost councils — Arianne's confession and Hotah's own watchful eye — exist largely because Doran needed one loyalist who owed nothing to Dornish blood or Dornish grudges.

The arc of Areo Hotah

This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.

Hotah's longaxe ends Ser Arys Oakheart's life on the road during Arianne's botched attempt to crown Myrcella queen, a killing Dorne's court then quietly reassigns, for reasons of state, to Gerold Dayne. He remains Doran's instrument and witness as the prince's long-delayed reckoning for Oberyn's death, and for the Sack of King's Landing before it, finally begins to move.

Where the books leave Areo Hotah: Hotah remains exactly where he has stood for more than a decade — at Prince Doran's shoulder, longaxe in hand — through the trial by combat that killed Oberyn, Arianne's arrest, and the invented account of Ser Arys Oakheart's death that Dorne now tells the rest of Westeros. He is the one man in Sunspear who knows the true account, because he is the one who swung the axe.

These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.

SourcesAFFC · The Captain of GuardsAFFC · The QueenmakerADWD · The WatcherTWOIAF · Dorne

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Where is Areo Hotah from?

The Free City of Norvos, where he trained under the bearded priests before taking service, eventually, as captain of Prince Doran Martell's household guard at Sunspear.

Did Areo Hotah really kill Ser Arys Oakheart?

Yes — his longaxe ends the fight, though Dorne's court publicly credits the killing to Gerold Dayne, called Darkstar, to keep the true circumstances from reaching King's Landing.