Game of Thrones Could Have Made Dorne the Most Fascinating Kingdom of Westeros

Game of Thrones Could Have Made Dorne the Most Fascinating Kingdom of Westeros

Dorne has one of Westeros’ most interesting characters and history, but it was all grossly oversimplified in the HBO adaptation Game of Thrones.

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Game of Thrones Could Have Made Dorne the Most Fascinating Kingdom of Westeros

The Dorne of Game of Thrones is a far cry from its iteration in A Song of Ice and Fire, with the HBO series dramatically simplifying the Dornish subplots for the sake of expediting the novels’ increasingly complicated web of characters. Any adaptation looking to compress such a complex story into a smaller space would be forced to make the same decision, and in a lot of ways it’s easy to see why Dorne was an easy target for the show’s creators.

With the advantage of hindsight years after the 2019 controversial finale of Game of Thrones, however, it’s far harder to forgive the changes made. The Dorne of A Song of Ice and Fire is quite possibly the most interesting culture and court in all of Westeros, but fans of the show could glean only a shade of that glory without reading the books, thus wonder who were these complicated characters and what subplots were excluded from the show.

Game of Thrones Could Have Made Dorne the Most Fascinating Kingdom of Westeros

The longer that Game of Thrones continued the more it diverged from its source material, and in terms of understanding where Dorne fit into that narrative it’s easy to see why it was the simplest to change. One of the most fascinating characters in either iteration of the kingdom was Oberyn Martell, a prince of Dorne who first appears in the story when he comes to King’s Landing seeking justice against the Mountain and the Lannisters for the assault and death of his sister. Oberyn is a distillation of everything that is great about Dorne, showcasing its liberal attitudes toward tradition and sexuality while still demonstrating the scheming and subtle lethality of a people who fashion their warfare after poisonous serpents.

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In both iterations of the story, Oberyn dies prematurely at the hands of the Mountain during a heart crushing duel where his own singular focus on revenge ruins his chances at victory. The primary difference between the show and the books occur in the fallout of that death. Game of Thrones junks characters and subplots apart while scrapping them for parts, primarily reducing the remaining Dornish characters into sharing Oberyn’s short-sighted vengefulness. For instance, Oberyn’s paramour in the show, Ellarria, and his bastard warrior daughters, the Sand Snakes, end up with the greatest amount of focus of anyone and even then are forced to compete with the already-established Jaime Lannister and Bronn, as the two venture to the southern lands in a cockamamie plan to save Myrcella.

The longer-term plots of the Dornish are far better established and fleshed out in the books, where A Song of Ice and Fire introduces point-of-view characters later in the series who turn out to have schemes planted from the very beginning of the story. Princess Myrcella, for example, turns out to be key to these plans. Arianne Martell, completely missing from the show, capitalizes on Myrcella’s time in Dorne by ingratiating her to the kingdom’s customs, which are so drastically different from those in the rest of Westeros. Ultimately, Arianne plans to challenge Tommen’s appointment as the heir to the Iron Throne by using Myrcella’s status as the elder child as a trump card over Tommen’s status as the eldest son. The plan not only challenges the customs of Westeros, but the sexism baked into the world in a unique way that asks an important question: Why can’t women rule when they’re proven to be more qualified?

Parallel to Arianne’s schemes are those of her father, Doran, who she and much the rest of the world believe to be an ineffectual pushover as weak in ambition as his gout-ridden body proves to be in physicality. However, Doran shows some of the most farsighted thinking of any character in the books, secretly supporting plots to restore the Targaryens to power that initially hinge on his son, Quentyn, marrying Daenerys but eventually pivot to supporting Aegon inheriting the throne. A major plot point involves the discovery that the death of the infant Martell/Targaryens, which fuel Dorne’s quest for vengeance, was actually a ruse, and that the infant Aegon survived all along, yet the show hinted at none of this.

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Game of Thrones never introduced the plotlines involving Quentyn or Aegon, and made Ellarria so blinded by rage she killed both Doran and Myrcella, both of whom represented the kingdom’s only remaining prospects for grander ambitions. The result was not only that there were far fewer Dornish characters to care about, but that those that were left made rush, rash and poorly-thought out decisions, and they became flimsy excuses to further simplify the plot rather than flesh out characters with goals and realistic motivations.

Dorne was the only part of Westeros to successfully resist the Targaryen’s conquest, even when the mighty lineage had the full force of their dragons fighting on their side. As a tropical and exotic land filled with its own rich history and customs, it holds so much potential to change the often monotonous repetition of many of Westerosi stories. The show failed to do Dorne justice, and fans of the books will have to wait until The Winds of Winter to see how their far-sighted plotting works out as their decade-long seeds of conquest come to fruition.

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/game-of-thrones-dorne-kingdom-explained/

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