Dorne is the southern realm that stood apart from the rest of Westeros during Aegon I Targaryen’s conquest and whose resistance exposed the limits of a campaign built on superior numbers and dragons. Its dry landscapes, mountain passes, and ability to avoid set-piece battle repeatedly frustrated invaders, while later Dornish rulers pursued influence through seaborne alliances and regional diplomacy.

A Realm Apart

When the Three Sisters and the Iron Islands submitted, all of Westeros south of the Wall was ruled by Aegon I Targaryen except Dorne. His first approach was diplomatic: a delegation of high lords, maesters, and septons went to Sunspear to negotiate with Princess Meria Martell and persuade her to join her realm to his. Talks lasted for most of a year but achieved nothing. The failed negotiations gave way to war, making Dorne the outstanding challenge to the new Targaryen dominion.

Dorne’s later history in the account also shows it acting as a principality with its own rulers and interests. In 83 AC, Prince Morion Martell planned an invasion of the stormlands, hoping to surprise King Jaehaerys I Targaryen by approaching across the Sea of Dorne rather than through the Prince’s Pass. In the following century, Princess Aliandra Martell negotiated directly with Lord Alyn Velaryon, and Dorne became one of the powers that gained territory in the Stepstones. Across these episodes, Dorne appears not simply as a target of conquest but as a political actor able to choose its strategy and exploit the rivalries of its neighbors.

The First Dornish War

The First Dornish War is generally dated from 4 AC, when Rhaenys Targaryen returned to Dorne. Riding Meraxes, she attacked Planky Town, setting the floating settlement ablaze. Its inhabitants fled by river, and fewer than a hundred died, most by drowning rather than dragonfire. The attack nevertheless marked the shedding of first blood and the transition from negotiation to open war.

The invasion advanced on two fronts. Orys Baratheon led one thousand selected knights up the Boneway, while Aegon I Targaryen marched through the Prince’s Pass with an army thirty thousand strong, including nearly two thousand mounted knights and three hundred lords and bannermen. Lord Harlan Tyrell judged that the royal forces could overwhelm any Dornish army that met them in the field. The Dornish did not offer that battle. Instead, they withdrew, burned crops, poisoned wells, and abandoned watchtowers in the Red Mountains. In the high passes, Aegon’s vanguard encountered a barrier of rotting, shorn sheep carcasses. By the time the army emerged from the Prince’s Pass, its food and fodder were already running short.

The landscape and the withholding of supplies turned the invasion into a test of endurance. With winter thought near, the invaders expected cooler desert weather and more plentiful water. Instead, the heat remained severe, and poisoned waterholes and oases killed horses and then their riders. Harlan Tyrell lost a quarter of his men and almost all his horses on the march toward Hellholt, only to find the stronghold abandoned when he arrived. The campaign’s numerical advantage could not solve the problem of reaching an enemy that refused to stand and fight.

Orys Baratheon’s force was caught by the terrain of the Boneway. Horses balked at steep, twisting roads cut into steps; unseen defenders sent boulders down the slopes, and Dornish archers attacked while the column crossed a bridge over the river Wyl. When Orys ordered a retreat, a rockfall blocked the way back. His troops were trapped and slaughtered, while Orys and a dozen other lords were spared for ransom and taken captive by Wyl of Wyl, known as Widow-lover. The defeat contrasted with Aegon’s progress farther east: he stormed Skyreach, took Yronwood after a brief siege, and received the surrender of the Tor without a fight. At Ghost Hill, Lord Toland’s fool was presented as a champion and killed by Aegon, while Toland himself had already escaped.

Resistance, Geography, and Later War

Dorne’s approach in the First Dornish War made its geography an instrument of resistance. The passes could channel and delay an invading column; the desert’s heat and scarce water magnified the cost of every mile; and abandoned strongholds denied the attackers the decisive encounter their strength promised. Burning crops, poisoning wells, and withdrawing before the enemy connected military resistance to the invaders’ supply problem. The result was a campaign in which movement and sustenance mattered as much as battlefield strength.

Prince Morion Martell later chose a different route for his own intended attack. Determined to avenge what he regarded as Dornish dishonor during Rogar Baratheon’s War, he planned to gather forces at Ghost Hill and the Tor, carry them by ship across the Sea of Dorne, and strike the stormlands as far as Storm’s End or Cape Wrath. He vowed to burn a hundred towns and destroy a hundred castles, although Cape Wrath contained far fewer than that number. Morion’s fleet was assembled with help from pirates of the Stepstones, sellsails from Myr, and corsairs of the Pepper Coast. Its ships carried crossbowmen and large scorpions, weapons chosen because Dornishmen had seen the remains of Meraxes at Hellholt and feared another dragon attack.

The plan depended on surprise, but that advantage was lost before the fleet sailed. Jaehaerys I Targaryen had informants at Morion’s court and contacts among more cautious Dornish lords; the hired seafarers also proved poor guardians of secrecy. The king knew of the planned attack six months before Morion set out. The episode places Dorne’s independent strategy within a wider contest of intelligence and alliances: its ruler could prepare a substantial maritime threat, but his reliance on outside forces also exposed the plan to disclosure.

Diplomacy and Influence Beyond Dorne

Dorne’s regional influence was especially visible during the conflicts around the Stepstones. In 134 AC, Lord Alyn Velaryon’s large fleet appeared off Sunspear, alarming the Dornish, who lacked comparable sea power. Princess Aliandra Martell chose to treat his arrival as a visit rather than an attack and met him with her favorites and suitors. Alyn needed fresh water and provisions; Aliandra’s attention to the admiral was reported to have displeased her lords and angered her younger siblings, Qyle and Coryanne. Whatever the private nature of their encounter, the practical outcome is clear: his fleet received water, food enough to reach Oldtown and the Arbor, and charts marking dangerous whirlpools along Dorne’s southern coast.

Dorne also participated in the wider Daughters’ War. When that conflict ended, Racallio Ryndoon fled to the Basilisk Isles, Lys, Tyrosh, and Myr divided the Disputed Lands, and the Dornish took control of most of the Stepstones. The settlement left Myr with the greatest losses, while the Archon of Tyrosh and the Princess of Dorne gained the most. Dorne’s reach therefore extended beyond its mainland not through the conquest of Westeros but through an outcome negotiated and fought across a contested maritime region. In the account, its history moves from resisting incorporation to shaping the balance of power around the Narrow Sea.