Arianne Martell

Arianne Martell is a Dornish princess whose political identity is defined by her insistence that inheritance cannot be reduced to male preference. Known in connection with her failed Queenmaker plot, she treats Myrcella Baratheon’s seniority over Tommen Baratheon as a claim to the Iron Throne and attempts to turn that claim into action. Her story places a regional legal principle against the customs of the wider Seven Kingdoms, while showing that a right recognized in argument may still be vulnerable when opposed by armed authority.

Identity and Political Principle

Arianne’s position is sharpened by the succession disputes surrounding her. In the Iron Islands, the maester states that the Seastone Chair belongs by right to Theon Greyjoy, or to Asha Greyjoy if the prince is dead, but Aeron Greyjoy rejects this as “Green land law” and insists that no woman may rule the ironborn. Elsewhere, Arianne confronts the same male-preference principle directly. When told that a son comes before a daughter, she asks why she should surrender her rights to her brothers and argues that Myrcella is more fit to rule. Her reasoning invokes the precedent of Viserys I intending his daughter Rhaenyra to succeed him, even though the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard altered the succession as the king lay dying.

The contrast makes Arianne’s politics more than a personal quarrel. The Ironborn dismiss outside law in favor of their own religious and customary order, while the Seven Kingdoms present male succession as established practice; Dorne stands apart from both. Arianne’s claim therefore depends on a distinction between what a law or precedent says and what a kingdom is prepared to recognize. Her conviction supplies the moral energy of the Queenmaker plot, but the surrounding succession debates foreshadow the difficulty of converting principle into power.

The Queenmaker Plot

The title “The Queenmaker” marks Arianne’s decisive political role. At the abandoned holdfast of Shandystone, she gathers allies and waits for the moment to move Myrcella through Dorne. The ruined well and retreating sands provide a stark setting for the scheme: a place once guarded as a source of life has become an exposed remnant, and Arianne’s plan likewise depends on resources that may not hold when tested. With Drey, Sylva, Garin, and the knight called Darkstar, she escorts Myrcella toward the Greenblood.

Arianne presents the plot to Myrcella as a defense of the girl’s throne. When Myrcella asks whether Tommen has suffered some misfortune, Arianne tells her that he has fallen in with evil men who conspired to steal her throne. Myrcella’s confusion exposes the gap between the political plan and its supposed beneficiary: she does not initially understand that Arianne means the Iron Throne, and she answers that Tommen is younger than she is. Myrcella is older by a year, giving Arianne the concrete succession fact on which the plan rests.

The route itself reveals the scale of Arianne’s preparation. She intends to travel up the Greenblood and then continue along the Vaith as far as a poleboat can go. After that, the party will need assistance from Sandstone and the Hellholt to cross the deep sands. Arianne expects that support because the Red Viper was fostered at Sandstone and Ellaria Sand is Lord Uller’s natural daughter; four of the Sand Snakes are also his granddaughters. Her plan is to crown Myrcella at the Hellholt and raise her banners there, transforming a disputed inheritance into an open Dornish declaration.

The Ambush and Collapse

The plot fails at the Greenblood. The party finds a carved and painted poleboat hidden beneath a willow, but its apparent emptiness is a trap. Areo Hotah emerges with his longaxe, while guardsmen rise behind the rails and atop the cabin, armed with throwing spears and crossbows. Arianne reacts with visceral shock when she sees him, recognizing that the encounter has reached an ending she had not anticipated.

Her immediate response is to flee and order Arys Oakheart to protect Myrcella. Hotah, however, declares that Arianne must yield or the guards will kill everyone except the child and Arianne, acting under her father’s command. Garin stops with his hands raised, and Drey unbuckles his swordbelt, judging surrender the wisest course. The confrontation therefore ends not with a crowned queen or a battle, but with the political scheme contained by the authority it sought to challenge. Arianne’s initiative has carried Myrcella across Dorne, yet the final decision belongs to the armed agents of Prince Doran Martell.

Family, Secrecy, and the Larger Succession Game

Arianne’s conflict with authority is inseparable from her relationship with Doran Martell. Her father reveals that Quentyn Martell has undertaken a long and perilous voyage with Cletus Yronwood, Maester Kedry, and three of Lord Yronwood’s young knights to bring back what Doran calls their heart’s desire. That desire is vengeance and justice, expressed through the language of “Fire and blood.” The disclosure places Arianne’s failed western-facing intervention beside Doran’s concealed eastern strategy: both seek to answer old wrongs, but they operate through different kinds of secrecy and political timing.

The evidence surrounding Arianne also makes succession a recurring structure rather than a single dispute. Petyr Baelish explains to Sansa Stark how the Eyrie passes through a complicated network of seniority, collateral descent, marriages, deaths, infertility, and surviving branches. Harrold Hardyng is not Lady Waynwood’s heir but Robert Arryn’s heir; if Robert dies, Harrold becomes Lord Harrold, Defender of the Vale, and Lord of the Eyrie. That calculation shows how inheritance is repeatedly shaped by both genealogy and anticipated mortality. Arianne’s argument for Myrcella belongs to the same world, but unlike Petyr’s scheme it is declared openly and placed in motion before its political foundation is secure.

Significance and Unresolved Legacy

Arianne’s decisive significance lies in the tension between legal equality, political legitimacy, and coercive power. She identifies a real contradiction in the succession order: Myrcella is older than Tommen, and Dornish inheritance law does not automatically erase a daughter’s claim. Yet her attempt to enforce that principle becomes a conspiracy requiring allies, concealment, armed escorts, and a carefully chosen place of coronation. The plot’s failure does not disprove her reasoning; it demonstrates that succession is never governed by law alone.

Her arc also reverses the conventional shape of a triumphant political quest. She receives a cause, gathers companions, crosses a hostile landscape, and reaches the threshold of public action, but the expected return with a new order is denied. At the Greenblood, the threshold becomes a blockade. Arianne remains the figure who tried to make a queen, but her action is absorbed by the larger structures of family command, military force, and competing succession traditions. The Queenmaker’s power lies finally in making the conflict visible: she turns an abstract disagreement about daughters and sons into a dangerous political test whose consequences expose the limits of principle without control of the state.