“Recorded outside the printed novels as “We Guard the Way” — this chronicle has not located the phrase on any printed page, and prints it with that caveat.”
The seat, the words, the line, and the tale of House Yronwood — drawn from the novels and the Citadel's fuller histories, with the television series set aside wherever it parts from the books.
Seat
Yronwood
Region
Dorne
Founder
Unnamed. Stony Dornishmen of First Men stock, fairer-haired and paler-eyed than the Rhoynish blood that would later share their princedom with them — a line that ruled half of Dorne as High Kings before Nymeria's ten thousand ships ever touched a Dornish shore.
No house sworn to House Martell carries older grievances or a prouder memory of once having been the greater power — the Yronwoods ruled as Kings of Stone and Sky before the Martells were anything more than lords of a single sandship, and a Yronwood lord still styles himself the Bloodroyal, a title the family has never once let Sunspear forget was not always the junior one.
I
High Kings Before the Rhoynar
Before Princess Nymeria brought her ten thousand Rhoynish ships to Dorne's shores, the Kings of Yronwood already ruled half the peninsula outright, stony Dornishmen of First Men descent whose fair coloring still marks their descendants out from the Rhoynar's darker southern blood. Nymeria's marriage to Mors Martell, Lord of the Sandship, multiplied his modest host tenfold and set in motion the war that would unite Dorne under a single crown — but the war took a decade to finish, cost Mors his own life in its ninth year at a Yronwood king's own sword, and left the Yronwoods, even after their eventual submission, as by far the most powerful house Sunspear had ever been obliged to call a bannerman rather than a rival.
In the chronicle
The present tale
This chapter carries the house's fortunes into the novels' events — veiled until you choose to read on.
§
The Bloodroyal's Long Memory
That the Martells once, in the war's darkest turn, held their own principality only by Yronwood forbearance is not a fact House Yronwood has ever let fade from record — its lord still bears the title Bloodroyal, a distinction House Martell has been obliged to tolerate for a thousand years rather than a courtesy Sunspear extends freely. When Prince Doran Martell sent his own son Quentyn to foster at Yronwood rather than at any lesser Dornish seat, this chronicle's sources describe the arrangement in the language of an old blood debt being repaid — Anders Yronwood, called the Bloodroyal and Warden of the Stone Way, receiving a Martell prince as squire and page in his own household, a reversal of an older reversal that neither family, so far as the record allows, has ever spoken of quite so plainly aloud.
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.
The present tale
This chapter carries the house's fortunes into the novels' events — veiled until you choose to read on.
§
A Prince Sent East
Prince Quentyn Martell, raised in part under Lord Anders Yronwood's own roof and knighted, by his own choosing, at Yronwood's hand rather than his uncle Oberyn's, carried his fostering house's steel and its Dornish patience with him on a mission this chronicle's sources describe as considerably further from home than any errand a Yronwood or a Martell had previously attempted: a voyage east to Meereen, in pursuit of a marriage to the exiled dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen, undertaken on his father's authority and, this chronicle notes without further comment on how it concluded, on terms this account is not yet positioned to confirm as either a success or its opposite.
In the chronicle
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.
The people of House Yronwood
The lords, ladies, and branches of Yronwood the books name — the notable, the infamous, and the merely unlucky.
Anders Yronwood, “the Bloodroyal”
Lord of Yronwood, Warden of the Stone Way
fl. 298–300 AC
Cletus Yronwood
Anders's eldest son and heir, companion to Quentyn Martell
d. before 300 AC, slain by corsairs aboard the Meadowlark
Quentyn Martell
Prince Doran's son, fostered and knighted at Yronwood
fl. 298–300 AC
Explore further
Members
What is House Yronwood known for?
No house sworn to House Martell carries older grievances or a prouder memory of once having been the greater power — the Yronwoods ruled as Kings of Stone and Sky before the Martells were anything more than lords of a single sandship, and a Yronwood lord still styles himself the Bloodroyal, a title the family has never once let Sunspear forget was not always the junior one.
Where is the seat of House Yronwood?
House Yronwood holds Yronwood, in Dorne. The chronicle traces the house from its founding down to its part in the present tale, marking legend as legend wherever the songs run ahead of the record.
Is House Yronwood in the books or only the show?
Book canon. This history follows George R. R. Martin's novels first, then the histories — Fire & Blood and The World of Ice & Fire — and does not follow the television series where it diverges.