House Martell

Obara Sand

the eldest of the Sand Snakes

House: bastard daughter of Prince Oberyn Martell, by a woman of Oldtown

Last confirmed at Sunspear, chief among the voices demanding Dorne answer her father's death with war — a demand her own prince has so far refused to grant openly.

Oberyn Martell did not so much raise his eldest bastard daughter as arm her. The story told of her naming — that Oberyn tossed his spear at her mother's feet and dared the girl to choose it over her mother's tears, and that she chose the spear — may be more legend than transcript, but it is the legend Obara herself repeats, and a maester learns to weigh what a person chooses to believe about their own origin as carefully as the origin itself. She fights with spear, whip, and a round shield of steel and copper, favors plain speech over Dornish subtlety, and has spent her adult life proving — loudly, and to anyone within earshot — that she is her father's daughter in every particular that matters to her.

The arc of Obara Sand

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

After the trial by combat, Obara becomes the clearest voice for immediate war against House Lannister among Oberyn's daughters, proposing an attack on Oldtown that Doran declines. In its place, Doran assigns her the errand of leading Ser Balon Swann to the hiding place of Gerold Dayne, called Darkstar — the man Dorne has publicly, and not entirely truthfully, blamed for both Ser Arys Oakheart's death and Princess Myrcella's disfigurement.

Where the books leave Obara Sand: In the councils held at Sunspear after Oberyn's death, Obara pressed for the bluntest possible answer to it — a Dornish host driven north through the Prince's Pass to put Oldtown to the sword. Doran refused her that war as he refused Ellaria's; the concession he has given her instead is quieter and considerably more dangerous, a hunt for the man Dorne has agreed, for its own private reasons, to name as Ser Arys Oakheart's killer.

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 GuardsADWD · The WatcherTWOIAF · Dorne

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Is Obara Sand the eldest of Oberyn Martell's daughters?

Yes — she is the first of the eight, born to a woman of Oldtown before Oberyn's long attachment to Ellaria Sand began.

What weapon does Obara Sand use?

A spear paired with a whip and a round shield of steel and copper — a fighting style the text presents as deliberately unsubtle, much like the woman herself.