Does Doran actually plan on restoring the Targaryens?

[snow is the man]

Well the tyrells threw in with the lannisters and dorne has been fighting highgarden for centuries  or at least hated them for that long. So I think it's more about doran going against them then being pro targaryean. Also He see's it as his shot to make his family royalty.

[Vaedys Targaryen]

4 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

Lol I think you need to take 5 hours and watch all 20 PJ videos on Dorne. Most of his points on Dorne are spot on, which I don't think is true of all his theories at all. 

Even if Aegon is "real" that still isn't a great reason for Doran to back him or marry his daughter to him. Doran plays to win, and Aegon is in great danger of being in a war against Dany and her dragons.

And he sent his son, who is totally alive BTW, on a mission guarded by people who have a huge incentive to protect him and get him home safely, so Quentyn can marry Gwyneth Yronwood. I wouldn't be surprised if Doran himself staged the pirate attack that killed Kedry.

Still makes no sense to me on why he would send one of his children out to possibly die. Doran doesn't strike me as a parent who would willingly sacrifice his own children for a cause that has so little chance of success. Even if he has some grand plan, he doesn't tell any of his children what they're supposed to do to help him succeed in his plan and seemingly relies solely on their impulses to do what he wants them to. If he does have some kind of plan, I think it's bound to fail.

Littlefinger has the advantage of originally being a no one and has to everyone's misconception achieved his position through hard work and Cersei thinks that he is loyal. Hell, most people don't even suspect that he is up to something. He has sacrificed his own cronies and even a wife whom he did not love.

Doran however is the Prince of Dorne, he has had beef with the Lannisters since Elia's death and that rift has only widened since Oberyn died. Cersei also mistrusts him greatly, which is not good.

Sacrificing cronies and a spouse you dislike is one thing, sacrificing your own children is a completely different matter all together, and while I personally think that Doran would have no problem sacrificing cronies if he thought that they would betray him, he doesn't seem like a person who would sacrifice his own children, even if they would foil his plans. I think he would much rather just put them somewhere where they're safe, but still in his control and within his sights, which was the reason why he locked Arianne up in a tower after she attempted to crown Myrcella.

 

As for the bolded part, why would he do that? If his plan is for Quentyn to "fail safely" that is something that could massively backfire; if the orders were "don't kill the prince", how would the corsairs know who was who? if the orders were "don't kill the Dornish-looking guy", then what if they accidently killed Quentyn instead of Kedry? What if the corairs decided that maybe they could get more money from Doran by holding Quentyn ransom and killing him if Doran didn't oblige?

This plan is rather messed up.

[GyantSpyder]

9 hours ago, Vaedys Targaryen said:

Still makes no sense to me on why he would send one of his children out to possibly die. Doran doesn't strike me as a parent who would willingly sacrifice his own children for a cause that has so little chance of success.

...

This plan is rather messed up.

The plan is definitely messed up.

One thing we see Doran do a lot is stare at the children at the Water Gardens and ruminate on how all the children playing in the water look the same regardless of their family or social status - except he notes the conflicts between children with different skin colors.

If we take this as character development, we can consider that maybe Doran isn't family-centric like the Lannisters, but ethnocentric.

Maybe he has decided not to privilege his own children over the other children of his own race of people. Maybe he sees his responsibilities as broader than just to the Martells. The Dornish Rhoynar are his children.

To Oberyn at least, direct biological children don't come with the same sort of protective responsibility - Oberyn's kids are all enlisted in the cause, and even conceived, it seems, as means to an end rather than as ends in themselves, as they seem to be placed in strategically targeted locations (as "snakes in the grass," or sand, that will lie low and then strike).

Maybe Doran sees his own children the same way Oberyn did. They were, after all, very close and seem to have come up with their plans together, despite giving the world the impression that they are completely different.

So the actual Martell children are okay sacrifices for the larger family of the Dornish Rhoynar children, with the goal being to have the Lannisters, Tyrells, Stony Dornish, Stormlanders, Targaryans and (f)Aergaryans all kill each other but not bring the fight to Dorne.

It's like a racialist The Grapes of Wrath, where, for the Joads, it's okay, even good, for Tom Joad to die for the cause, but the starving man in the flood nurses from Rose of Sharon as if he were her own child. It's a different idea of family.

Maybe.

Although it also probably won't work. Just a hunch.