Burning of the Planky Town

The Burning of the Planky Town was the opening attack of the First Dornish War: in 4 AC, Rhaenys Targaryen brought the conflict to the mouth of the Greenblood by setting the floating settlement ablaze. The assault marked the war’s first blood, but its limited death toll also showed that the destruction of a town did not mean the destruction of its people.

Causes and Background

Aegon’s attempt to bring Dorne into his realm by negotiation had failed. A delegation of lords, maesters, and septons spent most of a year treating with Princess Meria Martell at Sunspear, without securing an agreement. Rhaenys’s return to Dorne therefore marked a change from persuasion to force; the account presents the attack as the fulfillment of her earlier threat to come with fire and blood.

The attack formed part of a broader invasion. Orys Baratheon led knights into Dorne by the Boneway, while Aegon advanced through the Prince’s Pass with a large army. Rhaenys’s strike at the Planky Town opened the campaign with an assault on the Dornish coast as the other forces entered by land.

The Attack

Riding Meraxes, Rhaenys descended upon the Planky Town and set it alight. The settlement stood at the mouth of the Greenblood, and the fire spread from boat to boat until burning wreckage choked the river mouth. The resulting column of smoke could be seen as far away as Sunspear, carrying news of the attack beyond the settlement itself.

The inhabitants fled into the river to escape the flames. Fewer than a hundred people died, and most of those deaths were by drowning rather than dragonfire. The account thus distinguishes the scale of the attack’s destruction from its human cost: the town burned, but many of its people survived by taking to the water.

Consequences and Significance

The assault established the First Dornish War’s starting point in 4 AC and was remembered as the moment when the conflict’s first blood was shed. Its position at the opening of a land invasion made the burning a declaration of the campaign’s change in method, rather than a conclusion to the contest over Dorne.

The event also reveals the limits of force as a means of subduing the region. Although the attack brought the war to Dorne in spectacular fashion, it did not itself secure the country’s submission. The ensuing campaign met a different form of resistance: the Dornish withdrew rather than offer battle, destroying crops and poisoning wells as Aegon’s army advanced inland.