Volantis sprawls across both banks of the lower Rhoyne, joined by the Long Bridge, and calls itself without apparent irony the first and greatest of Valyria's colonies. Within the two-hundred-foot Black Walls, said to have been fused by dragonfire and never once breached, dwell the Old Blood, who can trace an unbroken line to the Freehold and adorn their palanquins with elephants in place of the dragons they no longer have. Beyond the walls sprawl the tenements of the freedmen, tattooed on cheek or brow with the mark of their old trade, in a city where roughly half the population remains enslaved.
The Free Cities
Volantis
Valyria's eldest daughter, and the least willing to admit the mother is dead
- Region
- The Free Cities
- Kind
- city
The oldest and proudest of the Free Cities, split between an Old Blood that still dreams of empire and a merchant class that would rather count coin than corpses.
Trade, faith, and rule
Three triarchs, elected yearly by every freeborn landowner of Volantene blood, share what passes for a crown, though the office has for three centuries run chiefly to the mercantile Elephants rather than the war-hungry Tigers of the old nobility. The city's great temple to R'hllor is said to be the largest in the world, its red priests wielding an influence in Volantis that the faith enjoys almost nowhere else. Slavery, outlawed only in Braavos among the Nine, remains here entirely lawful and entirely ordinary — which a maester notes without further comment, the fact speaking for itself.
Volantis in the novels
This carries the place's part in the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
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.
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Where is Volantis?
The oldest and proudest of the Free Cities, split between an Old Blood that still dreams of empire and a merchant class that would rather count coin than corpses.
Is Volantis from the books or the show?
Book canon. This entry follows George R. R. Martin's novels and histories, and notes where the television series diverges rather than following it.