House Martell

Lewyn Martell

Prince of Dorne

Life: 283 AC, at the Battle of the Trident, killed in single combat by Ser Lyn Corbray after taking a mortal wound in the general fighting
House: House Martell of Sunspear (uncle to Prince Doran, Princess Elia, and Prince Oberyn); Kingsguard sworn to Aerys II

A Dornish prince of the blood who set aside his own succession rights to serve in the Kingsguard, killed fighting for the crown at the Battle of the Trident.

It is a peculiar thing for a ruling house to permit, and Dorne is the only region of the Seven Kingdoms the text records doing it twice: a prince of Sunspear surrendering his place in the succession to swear the Kingsguard's vows of celibacy and lifelong service. Lewyn Martell did exactly that, trading a Dornish prince's freedoms for a white cloak, and served Aerys the Second loyally enough that when the rebellion came, he rode north with Prince Rhaegar's host rather than staying to defend his own family's interests in the south. His niece Elia, married to Rhaegar himself, would suffer the war's cruelest reckoning at King's Landing — a horror Lewyn did not live to see and, the histories note dryly, could not have prevented from a riverbank in the Trident regardless.

The arc of Lewyn Martell

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

At the Trident, Lewyn Martell fought in the thick of the crown's collapsing host and took a wound the field's chaos did not allow him to nurse; Ser Lyn Corbray of the Vale found him in that state and finished what the battle had started. His death, alongside Ser Jonothor Darry's in the same rout, left Ser Barristan Selmy and Ser Jaime Lannister as the only two of Aerys's seven Kingsguard to survive the rebellion's end — and left Dorne to learn, in the following weeks, that it had lost a prince to the crown's war even as the crown's men were sacking King's Landing and murdering the rest of Lewyn's family.

Where the books leave Lewyn Martell: Lewyn Martell rode north with Rhaegar's great host to the Trident and did not ride back — cut down in the same rout that killed the crown prince, while in Dorne his niece Elia and her children waited for a war that had already, unbeknownst to them, been decided against their house's interests as much as the crown's.

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.

In the timeline

SourcesAGOT · EddardADWD · The Discarded KnightTWOIAF · Robert's RebellionTWOIAF · Dorne

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House

How did Lewyn Martell die?

He was mortally wounded in the general fighting at the Battle of the Trident and finished off in single combat by Ser Lyn Corbray of the Vale.

Why was a Dornish prince serving in the Kingsguard?

Lewyn Martell set aside his own claim to Sunspear's succession to take the Kingsguard's vows — a sacrifice Dorne's ruling house has made at least once before in its history, and one the text treats as a mark of unusual loyalty to the Iron Throne.