Doran Martell's second child never expected to inherit anything grander than a minor Dornish keep, which made him, in his father's calculation, the safest of his three children to risk on a gamble seventeen years in the planning — a betrothal to Daenerys Targaryen, sealed in secret before most of Westeros had settled on calling her a queen or a rumor. Quentyn is described by those who meet him in Volantis and Meereen as plain, dutiful, and entirely out of his depth among sellswords, magisters, and dragons, a young man who did everything his father's letters asked of him and discovered, too late, that obedience is not the same virtue as luck.
House Martell
Quentyn Martell
- Allegiance
- House Martell
- Culture
- Dornish
- Notable for
- Sent by his father to press a secret marriage claim on Daenerys Targaryen
Sent east on his father's business to treat with Daenerys Targaryen, Quentyn's fate at the time of the last confirmed report remains unresolved for readers keeping to the public record.
Appearances
In the novels
- A Dance with DragonsPOV
Perspective
Quentyn's chapters in A Dance with Dragons follow a dutiful, out-of-his-depth Dornish prince through Essos, giving readers a ground-level view of Meereen's war and the gap between his father's careful planning and the world's indifference to it.
Key events
- 281 ACBorn the second child of Prince Doran Martell, never expected to inherit Sunspear
- ~281 ACSecretly betrothed by his father to the exiled Daenerys Targaryen, years before Robert's Rebellion's dust fully settles
- 300 ACSent east by Doran to press the marriage claim on Daenerys Targaryen in person
- 300 ACArrives in Meereen to find Daenerys already married to Hizdahr zo Loraq
- 300 ACGambles on proving himself a dragonrider in the Great Pyramid's dragon-pit
- 300 ACIs burned by Rhaegal rather than mastering Viserion, and dies of his wounds days later
Reading the character
Quentyn Martell gives the story a rare thing: a viewpoint character whose entire function is to be ordinary in a genre-normal cast full of exceptional people. He isn't unusually gifted with a sword, unusually charming, or unusually lucky, and the text is fairly candid that this ordinariness is the point — Doran chose his least remarkable child for the riskiest gamble precisely because he was the one Dorne could most afford to lose.
His chapters also serve as the reader's introduction to Essos's political texture away from Daenerys's own court — Volantis, the Windblown sellsword company, and the deals of men who have never met a dragon queen but have very firm opinions about her anyway. Quentyn's plain, dutiful narration makes an unfamiliar world legible in a way a flashier POV might not have.
The arc of Quentyn Martell
This carries the character’s road through 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.
SourcesADWD · DaenerysADWD · The WindblownADWD · The Spurned SuitorTWOIAF · Dorne
Explore further
House
Why did Doran Martell send Quentyn to Daenerys Targaryen?
To press a marriage claim negotiated years earlier — part of Doran's long, quiet plan to see Dorne's grievance against the Iron Throne answered through a Targaryen restoration rather than open war.
What does Quentyn Martell attempt in Meereen?
Having found Daenerys already wed to someone else, he gambles on a second plan to win standing in her war — attempting to prove himself before her dragons in the Great Pyramid's pit, a wager that does not go the way he hoped.