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Dorne is lost....?


Leto Atreides

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Hasn't it been thrown out the window hastily by Danenerys?

Sure, Ellaria and her sand snakes are gone, but Dorne still has an army that has not taken part in any battle so far. Unlike Highgarden and The Riverlands which have suffered heavy losses.

Surely whoever takes over Dorne will have an axe to grind with the Lannisters as well?

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The problem is not so much that the Sand Snakes and Ellaria are gone, but distance and communications. The Dornish needed the fleet to ferry their army to the North, and the Sand Snakes to communicate to the Dornish lords the plan to march to war. What do you think this is, some badly written hack show where messages get instantly transmitted from castle to castle, and armies march across the continent in winter within days, without concern for supplies or logistics? What makes this show special is the realistic portrayal of a fantasy world, but also the consistency the show-runners have shown for these concerns throughout the seasons, so that your suspension of disbelief is never broken.

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On 30/08/2017 at 4:11 PM, Iotun said:

The problem is not so much that the Sand Snakes and Ellaria are gone, but distance and communications. The Dornish needed the fleet to ferry their army to the North, and the Sand Snakes to communicate to the Dornish lords the plan to march to war. What do you think this is, some badly written hack show where messages get instantly transmitted from castle to castle, and armies march across the continent in winter within days, without concern for supplies or logistics? What makes this show special is the realistic portrayal of a fantasy world, but also the consistency the show-runners have shown for these concerns throughout the seasons, so that your suspension of disbelief is never broken.

Distance and time have not been D&D concern lately. But apparently Dorne is only populated by bitches like Ellaria and her SS. They are interested in killing Cersei, nothing else. And honestly, if someone may expect to survive Winter alone, it is Dorne.

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From a Westerosi perspective, it absolutely makes sense to try and keep Dorne in the fold.

From a writing perspective, I think they realised what a mess they made of it before... so it's best to avoid wasting what little screentime they have left on another Dornish adventure.

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2 hours ago, Khorkalba said:

From a writing perspective, I think they realised what a mess they made of it before... so it's best to avoid wasting what little screentime they have left on another Dornish adventure

So frustrating that when Dorne was uninteresting, at least to me, that they

spent so much prescious time on it. Now that I'd actually like to know what's going on there...nothing. 

Ah well they are probably being held in a Deus ex machina reserve for next year after everyone forgets about them. 

But I would like to know, who is leading Dorne now? Do they care what had happened at all? Do they plan to mobilize or ride it all out in isolation? 

Danearys should at least fly a dragon on down there, let Drogon preen and strut around and show off, and arrange some kind of lasting commitment from them. Do Dornish knees not need to bend too?

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12 hours ago, #teamNightking said:

But I would like to know, who is leading Dorne now? Do they care what had happened at all? Do they plan to mobilize or ride it all out in isolation? 

It's pretty clear that they plan to ride out the war for the throne in isolation. Tyrion knocked over the Dornish chess piece, Cersei said Dorne were no longer a problem—the only possible conclusion is that Dorne are no longer in the war.

And it's not hard to understand why that should be. Prince Doran wanted to stay out of the war. They got dragged into it because of Ellaria. Now (as far as anyone in Dorne knows) she's dead, along with the only three people who agreed with her. The next person in line to the throne is one of Oberyn's underage daughters who deliberately chose, unlike the three Sand Snakes, not to "take the spear". So she's unlikely to want to go to war, and unlikely to be able to even if she wanted to.

Medieval armies don't like to go to war. Calling the banners pisses off your vassals, because they have to pull all their men off of the fields and administrative duties, and spend a bunch of their own money, and usually risk their own sons. Of course they can be motivated just by a strong liege pointedly reminding them of their oaths. Or by a charismatic one getting them all fired up about the same thing they're fired up about, or by promises of plunder and wealth, or whatever. But they have to be motivated by something, or they'd rather just stay home.

As for the war against the dead, that's a different story. It's a lot easier to get people to fight for the survival of all humanity than for one Queen they don't much care about against a different Queen they don't much care about.

At the end of the armistice meeting, Cersei announces—in front of Dany and her crew—"Call our banners. All of them." The implication here is that she's ordered Qyburn to send a raven to every lord in the realm and tell them something like "Dany and I just signed a truce to save the world from the dead, so we're both calling on you to come fight". Which would probably get most of the Dornish army to turn up. Except that we know that Cersei is lying to them and isn't actually going to do that. So we're not going to see the Dornish.

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2 hours ago, #teamNightking said:

But, I don't understand why Danearys isn't insisting on them "bending the knee" Dorne was always traditionally pro Targaryen. Seems odd for her to just let it go. 

Of course after she wins, she'll call all the Lords Paramount, and maybe all the Lords in Westeros, to attend her and do fealty.

But there's no strategic reason to do that now. If the Princess can't feasibly raise and lead a decent army, it's a waste of time and diplomatic capital.* The only reason to do it would be arrogant pride. (Which, fortunately, Dany seems to be getting better at holding down.)

And there is a cost to doing it. If you wait until you've won, it's pretty much guaranteed that everyone will bend the knee when you ask. If you demand it now, you're putting them in a bad spot, and if they're more afraid of Cersei invading as soon as you go north, they may well say no.

---

* Maybe Dany could get much of the same army by going through the major Dornish houses one by one and calling their banners directly, rather than relying on the Princess to do it for her—Stannis clearly did something similar off-screen in S1, and we saw Cersei make a half-hearted effort to do something similar this season in case she couldn't turn Tarly. But that's a lot of effort, and it makes both her and the Princess look weak, and the payoff probably isn't worth it. That's half the point of feudalism—the hierarchy is there so you don't have to do that.

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11 hours ago, #teamNightking said:

But, I don't understand why Danearys isn't insisting on them "bending the knee" Dorne was always traditionally pro Targaryen. Seems odd for her to just let it go. 

I believe they never "bent the knee". They kept their princes. Never had kings since Nymeria.

Wanting the others to bend the knee is what we got with Tywin, Stannis, Renly, and Robb. Everyone dead. Tragically, the Lannisters men bent the knee to Daenerys. But everyone could see it meant nothing to them. The only ones who didn't bend, who were true, were the Tarlys, the Tyrell's Bannermen, Daenerys allies.

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3 hours ago, Graydon Hicks said:

what ive been wondering is who gets dorn now that the sand snakes and the martells are gone. the show has been bad about not mentioning other noble houses in certain regions.

There's no need to mention other noble houses, because Oberyn still has 5 living daughters. Doran's eldest niece is Sarella Sand. If Ellaria was Princess of Dorne, Sarella isn't hers, so the heir is Elia Sand instead. Either way, she probably doesn't think of herself as a Sand Snake and didn't "choose the spear" when offered by her father.

Elia is probably underage, we know that she's "willful", and she's named after Elia Martell, and that's all we know about her.

Sarella is not underage, and that's all that we know about her.

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1 hour ago, falcotron said:

Elia is probably underage, we know that she's "willful", and she's named after Elia Martell, and that's all we know about her.

Spoiler

Elia is 14, in the books. She is Lady Lance. Guess what is her weapon. There is some of her in 2 Arianne's chapters (samples from TWoW).

 

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7 hours ago, BalerionTheCat said:
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Elia is 14, in the books. She is Lady Lance. Guess what is her weapon. There is some of her in 2 Arianne's chapters (samples from TWoW).

 

Yeah, but we really can't assume any of these girls are anything like their book equivalents. Especially so for Elia, who was supposedly merged into Tyene very late in the process, after they'd already started casting.

 

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On 9/2/2017 at 0:32 AM, BalerionTheCat said:

The Dornish needed the fleet to ferry their army to the North,

Well... If they had started marching in episode 2....

Sunspear (Dorne) to High Garden: Same distance as Kings Landing to High Garden. In this Season Lannister Forces went to High Garden and back. 

 

 

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3 hours ago, #teamNightking said:

Well... If they had started marching in episode 2....

Sunspear (Dorne) to High Garden: Same distance as Kings Landing to High Garden. In this Season Lannister Forces went to High Garden and back. 

 

 

HG to KL is along a road. From Sunspear it is through a desert and across the mountains.

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On 8/29/2017 at 6:42 PM, Leto Atreides said:

Hasn't it been thrown out the window hastily by Danenerys?

Sure, Ellaria and her sand snakes are gone, but Dorne still has an army that has not taken part in any battle so far. Unlike Highgarden and The Riverlands which have suffered heavy losses.

Surely whoever takes over Dorne will have an axe to grind with the Lannisters as well?

Yes, but the showrunners (I'd say correctly in this case) have washed their hands of the whole Dorne mess and have no desire of going back there.  There are 6 episodes left- 1 second wasted on Dorne is a second too long IMO.  

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1 hour ago, Tagganaro said:

Yes, but the showrunners (I'd say correctly in this case) have washed their hands of the whole Dorne mess and have no desire of going back there.  There are 6 episodes left- 1 second wasted on Dorne is a second too long IMO.  

Yeah, they don't even want viewers thinking about Dorne. (I wouldn't be surprised if the reason they came up with the term "Great War" that everyone's suddenly using this season is that "War for the Dawn" in a British accent sounds a little too close and might bring up bad memories…)

Also, they haven't even bothered to tell us who's ruling the Stormlands (they left Stannis Baratheon as the Lord Paramount on the viewers' guide for two years after he died, until they finally just stopped listing the regions and their LPs), so we shouldn't be surprised if they leave this one up to us to work out on our own.

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