The line of House Nymeros Martell, generation by generation
The family tree of House Nymeros Martell
House Nymeros Martell, root and branch — 32 names across 8 generations, seated at Sunspear in Dorne. Each band below is a single generation, eldest first; the mono line beneath a name gives its parents, so the descent reads down the page. Dates follow the maesters, and where the songs outrun the records the chronicle hedges the legend as legend.
Seat
Sunspear (with the Water Gardens hard by)
Region
Dorne
Words
“Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”
Generation 1
The Coming of the Ten Thousand Ships (c. 700 BC)
Mors MartellFirst Prince of Dorne
fl. c. 700 BC, if the songs be true
Styled Lord of the Sandship; styled Prince of Dorne after the Rhoynish fashion
Wed Nymeria of the Rhoynar
A petty lord of a salty spit of coast until he wed a refugee queen and woke the greatest match in Dornish history. He fell to the sword of Yorick Yronwood at the Third Battle of the Boneway, and it was his widow who fought on two years more to finish what they had begun.
NymeriaThe Warrior Queen; Mother of the Rhoynar
fl. c. 700 BC, if the songs be true
Styled Princess of the Rhoynar; Princess of Dorne
Wed Mors Martell; later a Lord Uller of Hellholt; later Ser Davos Dayne of Starfall
She led ten thousand ships from the dying Rhoyne and burned them on Dornish sand so none might sail home again. She outlived three husbands and ruled unquestioned for near seven-and-twenty years; her heirs took her name before their own, and Dorne learned to weigh daughters and sons in the same scale.
Generation 2
Princes of the Conquest Era
Meria MartellThe Yellow Toad of Dorne
d. 13 AC, some sixty years a ruler
Styled Princess of Dorne
Fat, blind, near bald, and eighty when the dragons came, she promised Aegon's sister a war without battles and kept her word. The Conqueror subdued six kingdoms; the toad's Dorne was not among them.
Nymor Martell
Styled Prince of Dorne
Parents Meria Martell
An old man already when his mother finally died, he chose peace over glory and sent his daughter to King's Landing bearing a private letter. Aegon read it, burned it, and never troubled Dorne again — the maesters would give much to know what it said.
Deria Martell
Styled Princess of Dorne
Parents Nymor Martell
She rode into the Conqueror's own hall bearing terms of peace and the skull of the dragon Meraxes as a courtesy gift, which is the most Dornish diplomacy ever recorded. She won a full peace with Dorne's sovereignty intact.
Generation 3
The Old King's Contemporaries
Morion Martell
d. 83 AC
Styled Prince of Dorne
He launched a great fleet against the stormlands in defiance of Jaehaerys, and three dragons met it upon the sea. The Fourth Dornish War lasted an afternoon, and no Dornishman set foot on land.
Mara Martell
Styled Princess of Dorne
She took up the rule of Dorne after Morion's fleet fed the fishes, her kinship to him unrecorded — the Dornish keep their own histories and share them grudgingly. Her reign kept the peace the fleet had broken.
Generation 4
The Dance and the Lysene Spring
Qoren Martell
d. by 132 AC
Styled Prince of Dorne
Courted by green and black alike when the Targaryens fell to dancing, he declined both with the observation that Dorne had danced with dragons before. Half the realm burned; Dorne did not.
Aliandra MartellThe New Nymeria, as she styled herself
b. c. 115 AC
Styled Princess of Dorne
Wed Drazenko Rogare of Lys (d. 135 AC)
Parents Qoren Martell
Princess at seventeen, she set the young lords of Dorne vying for her favor and wed a Lysene banker-prince at the height of the Lysene Spring. Her consort choked upon a rasher of bacon, which some accounts ascribe to the Faceless Men — an expensive way to kill a man of Lys.
Qyle Martell
Styled Prince of Dorne (a younger son)
Parents Qoren Martell
Younger brother to the New Nymeria, remembered chiefly for his displeasure — he and his sister Coryanne fumed alike at the favor Aliandra showed the Lord of the Tides when Oakenfist called at Sunspear. Beyond his temper, the annals of Sunspear preserve little of him.
Coryanne Martell
Styled Princess of Dorne (a younger daughter)
Parents Qoren Martell
When Alyn Velaryon called at Sunspear it was her sister the princess who lavished attentions on him, to Coryanne's open fury — whether Oakenfist took what was offered or refused it is a matter on which the chronicles cheerfully contradict one another. He sailed away intact either way.
Generation 5
The Marriage of the Sun and the Dragon
Myriah MartellAlso written Mariah in the histories
Styled Queen of the Seven Kingdoms
Wed King Daeron II Targaryen (betrothed 161 AC; the wedding year the annals neglect to give)
Eldest daughter of the Prince of Dorne, wed to the future Daeron the Good to seal Baelor's peace. She gave the realm four sons — Baelor Breakspear among them — and gave the Blackfyre malcontents their favorite sneer, that Dorne ruled the Red Keep.
Maron Martell
Styled Prince of Dorne
Wed Daenerys Targaryen (wed 187 AC)
He wed the king's sister and knelt not as a conquered man but as a bridegroom, bringing Dorne into the realm by pact where two hundred years of dragons and armies had failed. He built the Water Gardens for his Targaryen bride.
Generation 6
The Last Generation Before the Present
The Princess of DorneHer name is not recorded in our annals
Styled Ruling Princess of Dorne
Wed A consort whose name is likewise lost to the record
Mother of Doran, Elia, and Oberyn, and fast friend to Lady Joanna Lannister, with whom she once schemed a double marriage of their children — Lord Tywin's refusal of it is a wound Dorne remembers. That Sunspear's own maesters have let her name go unwritten in the wider record is a small scandal of the Citadel.
Lewyn MartellPrince Lewyn of the Kingsguard
d. 283 AC
Styled Knight of the Kingsguard
Wed None wed; a paramour, it is whispered, kept in defiance of his vows
Uncle to Prince Doran, he led ten thousand Dornish spears up the kingsroad for Rhaegar and died in the red mud of the Trident. A white cloak, Dornish habits — the order forgave him the paramour, being in no position to ask.
Generation 7
The Present Princes
Doran Martell
b. 247 or 248 AC
Styled Prince of Dorne, Lord of Sunspear
Wed Mellario of Norvos (parted from him and returned east)
Parents The Princess of Dorne
Gout-swollen and grass-patient, he sits his rolling chair at the Water Gardens while lesser men mistake stillness for weakness. He himself has said it: he moves last, but moves.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Elia Martell
256 or 257 – 283 AC
Styled Princess of Dorne; Princess of Dragonstone by marriage
Wed Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone
Parents The Princess of Dorne
Frail of body and gentle of temper, she gave the dragon prince two children and was repaid at Harrenhal with a crown of winter roses laid in another woman's lap. She died in the Sack of King's Landing beneath Ser Gregor Clegane, and Dorne has neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Oberyn MartellThe Red Viper
257 or 258 – 300 AC
Styled Prince of Dorne
Wed Ellaria Sand (paramour)
Parents The Princess of Dorne
He forged six links at the Citadel for the pleasure of it, poisoned his blades by repute, and sired eight daughters without troubling to sire a single son in wedlock. He went to King's Landing to champion a dwarf and confess a mountain, and won his confession at the cost of his skull.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Generation 8
The Heirs of Sunspear
Arianne Martell
b. 276 AC
Styled Princess of Dorne, heir to Sunspear
Parents Doran Martell
By Dornish law, which ranks children by birth and not by what hangs between their legs, she and not her brothers is heir to Sunspear — a point she once armed herself to prove, having read a letter she was not meant to understand. Her father's game proved longer than her own.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Quentyn MartellThe Frog, his companions named him
b. 281 AC
Styled Prince of Dorne
Parents Doran Martell
A plain, dutiful boy sent secretly across the sea to bring home a queen with dragons, on the strength of a secret pact sealed in Braavos in his childhood — one that had promised his sister to the queen's brother, both since lost to it. The tale of how his errand ended is written in fire, and this chronicle will not spoil it here.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Trystane Martell
b. c. 287 AC
Styled Prince of Dorne
Wed Betrothed to Myrcella Baratheon
Parents Doran Martell
The youngest of Doran's children, betrothed to the little lioness sent south by the Imp's design. He plays cyvasse with her and, unlike most of his kin, has thus far been permitted a childhood.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Rhaenys Targaryen
b. 280 AC
Styled Daughter of the Prince of Dragonstone
Parents Elia Martell
Elia's dark-eyed daughter, who kept a small black kitten she named Balerion. What was done to her in the Sack of King's Landing, and by whom, is among the charges Dorne keeps sharpened.
Aegon Targaryen
b. 281 or 282 AC
Styled Son of the Prince of Dragonstone
Parents Elia Martell
Elia's infant son, reported slain in the Sack, his head dashed against a wall by the Mountain — so runs the accepted history. Certain persons lately come out of the east tell a different tale, and the maesters are advised to keep their ink wet.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Obara SandEldest of the Sand Snakes
b. 271 or 272 AC
Parents Oberyn Martell
Got upon an Oldtown whore, and given her choice at a tender age between her mother's tears and her father's spear. She chose the spear, and has been choosing it ever since.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Nymeria SandLady Nym
b. 274 or 275 AC
Parents Oberyn Martell
Her mother a noblewoman of old Volantis, her manners silk and her person reportedly furnished with a dozen hidden blades. She asks for vengeance sweetly, which is somehow worse.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Tyene Sand
b. 276 or 277 AC
Parents Oberyn Martell
Daughter of a septa, golden-haired and blue-eyed and sweet as a prayer, with her father's whole education in poisons. Wise men do not accept refreshment from her hand.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Sarella Sand
b. 280 or 281 AC
Parents Oberyn Martell
Her mother a Summer Islander, captain of the Feathered Kiss. She alone of her sisters is absent from Dorne, being over-occupied with a certain game in Oldtown that her father's death has not persuaded her to abandon — a curious student, by all accounts.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Elia SandLady Lance
b. 285 or 286 AC
Parents Oberyn Martell
Eldest of Ellaria's four, named for her murdered aunt and mad for horses and lances. At fourteen she outraces grown riders and trades boasts with knights twice her age, to the despair of her mother and the evident approval of her father's ghost.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Obella Sand
b. 287 or 288 AC
Parents Oberyn Martell
Second of Ellaria's daughters, sent to Sunspear to serve as a cupbearer. The chronicle notes with relief that she has as yet poisoned no one.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Dorea Sand
b. 291 or 292 AC
Parents Oberyn Martell
A child of the Water Gardens who goes about knocking oranges from the trees with a morningstar. The fruit, at least, has learned to fear the Sand Snakes.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Loreza Sand
b. c. 293 AC
Parents Oberyn Martell
Youngest of the Red Viper's daughters, kept close by her mother at the Water Gardens. Being not yet seven, she is the only Sand Snake the realm need not yet fear, and even that is not certain.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
Dashed cards mark bastards and baseborn lines. Names shaded behind the veil belong to the present tale; unveil them only if you do not fear to know.
Cadet branches and offshoots
Younger sons and daughters whose blood struck out on its own — some founding houses of their own name, some withered to a line in the annals, some disputed to this day.
Manfrey Martell
Styled Prince; Castellan of Sunspear
A cousin of the ruling line whose exact degree of kinship the appendices decline to specify, trusted to hold Sunspear — and, on one occasion, to hold the heir to Sunspear under lock and key. Dorne's family quarrels are conducted with excellent manners.
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
What the maesters dispute
Where the records quarrel, contradict, or fall silent, this chronicle sets the arguments down rather than settling for you what the texts leave open.
The queen of Daeron II is written Myriah in some accounts and Mariah in others, including the Citadel's own; Sunspear has never troubled to settle the spelling for us.
Queen Nymeria wed thrice — Mors Martell, a Lord Uller of Hellholt, and Ser Davos Dayne of Starfall — yet the succession passed to her eldest daughter by Mors, not her son by Dayne, an early proof of Dornish law that ranks the eldest child regardless of sex or of which husband got them.
The line from Deria to Morion, and from Morion to Mara, is unrecorded; the Dornish keep their genealogies close, and the Citadel's copies are shamefully thin for the first century of Targaryen rule.
When Princess Aliandra died and who followed her is nowhere established in the surviving annals, leaving a gap of some forty years before the parents of Queen Myriah and Prince Maron, whose own names are likewise lost.
The very name of the late ruling Princess of Dorne, mother to Doran, Elia, and Oberyn, appears in no record available to this chronicle — as does that of her consort — an omission this archivist finds frankly embarrassing.
What was burned in Prince Nymor's letter to Aegon the Conqueror remains the realm's favorite riddle; those who claim to know its contents are, without exception, lying.
Whether Princess Elia's son Aegon truly died in the Sack of King's Landing is a matter the accepted histories consider closed and certain recent arrivals from the Free Cities consider very much open.
How many members of House Nymeros Martell are in the books?
This tree gathers every named Nymeros Martell the novels and their histories record — kings and lords, daughters and bastards, cadet offshoots and all. The maesters count only what the texts preserve; where a name survives without its deeds, the chronicle says as much rather than inventing the rest.
How do I read this House Nymeros Martell family tree?
Each band down the page is one generation, eldest first. Beneath a name, the mono line names that person's parents, so descent reads from the top down. Dashed cards mark bastards and baseborn lines; cards behind the veil hold fates from the present tale, revealed only if you choose to unveil them.
Where does House Nymeros Martell come from and where do they sit?
House Nymeros Martell holds Sunspear. The tree opens with the earliest forebears the records name — legendary where the singers outrun the maesters, firmer once true dates begin — and this chronicle marks the myths as myths, never dressing a song up as a certainty.
Which House Nymeros Martell tales are still disputed?
A good many. Contested parentage, missing generations, bynames left unexplained, and legends the singers embroider all appear under 'What the maesters dispute' at the foot of this page, where the arguments are set down without pretending to close what the books leave open.