The tigers

In the centuries after the Doom of Valyria, the Free City of Volantis was divided by a fundamental strategic question: how best to achieve world dominion. The faction known as the tigers argued for the sword. Composed of the Old Blood—those noble families who could trace their unbroken descent from Valyria itself—the tigers held sway for almost a century after the Doom. During their ascendancy, a Volantene fleet took Lys and a Volantene army captured Myr, and for two generations all three cities were ruled from within the Black Walls. Their ambition overreached when they tried to swallow Tyrosh, drawing Pentos, the Westerosi Storm King, Braavos, and Aegon Targaryen into a war that left the Disputed Lands a waste and freed Lys and Myr from the yoke. The fleet sent to reclaim Valyria vanished in the Smoking Sea, Qohor and Norvos broke their power on the Rhoyne, and the Dothraki drove smallfolk from their lands. After a century of war, Volantis found itself broken, bankrupt, and depopulated. The elephants—the merchants and moneylenders who advocated trade—rose up and have held sway ever since. Some years the tigers elect a triarch, and some years they do not, but never more than one, so the elephants have ruled the city for three hundred years. The present triarchs reflect this balance: Malaquo is a tiger, while Nyessos and Doniphos are elephants. The distinction between the factions remains a living part of Volantene politics, taught to young nobles as a lesson in history and statecraft. Young Griff, for instance, could recite the difference between a tiger and an elephant from memory, explaining that the tigers favored the sword while the elephants advocated trade, and that the elephants had held sway for three centuries. The tigers' legacy is also visible in the city's statuary; when the elephants came to power, their followers went on a rampage, knocking the heads from the statues of those they blamed for all the wars and deaths, leaving many headless monuments throughout Volantis.