The sun ran high on the Prince's Pass, the spearmen bold on the burning grass.
They laughed at threats from a stony king, And the fragile peace that the ravens bring. "A dragon's fire cannot burn the sand, we'll turn their host with a steady hand."
But the wind brought whispers, a distant dread, of a lord of bronze and a sky painted red.
And so he spoke, the Bronze Lord spoke. "Your towers of gold shall wear a cloak. A cloak of ash, a crown of flame, and no one shall remember your House's name."
And now, the sun sets on the Dornish halls, with no one there to hear when the Scorpion falls.
The Vipers planned their vengeful art; the snakes poised with a vengeful heart.
But a shadow fell on the Water Gardens, a mercy colder than northern wardens.
The dragons came on a windless day, when the rivers of Greenblood ran away.
With a roar and a hissing breath… that whispered silence, that whistled death.
And so he spoke, the Bronze Lord spoke, "Your towers of gold shall wear a cloak. A cloak of ash, a crown of flame, and no one shall remember your House's name."
And now, the sun sets on the Dornish halls, with no one there to hear when the Scorpion falls.
The orange smoldered, the arches fell, in the halls where the fountains used to well.
The spear was broken, the banner torn, the pride of Dorne on the anvil born.
He watched them burn, the Bronze Lord still upon his hill with a dragon's will.
No song of grief, no tear was shed, just silence where the Sunspear bled.
And so it was, the Bronze Lord's word, a final truth the whole world heard.
Your cloak is ash, your crown is flame, and no one will remember your house's name.
And now, the sun has set on Dornish sands… beneath the shadow of the Bronze Lord's hands.
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Prince Qoren Martell had never cared for poems and songs as much as this.
Not the triumphal kind, nor the mournful kind that smallfolk favored when kings burned and banners fell.
Yet those verses lingered in his thoughts all the same as he stood beneath the painted ceilings of the Red Keep, waiting his turn before the Iron Throne.
Those words of that ballad... crude, half-true, but already spreading through taverns from Planky Town to King's Landing... rang in his mind with every rhyme.
Even though the so-called Bronze Lord did not actually speak those rhymes himself.
For Qoren knew that Ser Ronan Royce never once uttered the grand, ruinous promises the singers now placed in his mouth.
And yet, Qoren reflected grimly, he might as well have. The result had been much the same.
Even with those bards and their gross exaggerations...
It felt like yesterday that the banners of Dorne had ridden east to meet the Triarchy upon the contested waters of the Stepstones.
With promise and ambition... all swallowed by waters and burnt by flames.
But many moons had passed since that convergence... moons of fire and shadow, of raids that came without warning and dragons that struck with unconventional terror.
Truly, the terror had not been conventional. That had been the cruelty of it.
The dragons did not descend in grand hosts to meet Dornish spears in open fields. They came at dawn, at dusk, and in the dead of night. Storehouses vanished. Fleets burned at anchor.
Keeps found their wells fouled and their granaries reduced to blackened ruin.
Where once Dorne had endured conquest through heat and distance, now it endured something colder... a relentless pressure that allowed neither rest nor certainty.
And always there was the sense of bronze behind it. Not always seen... but present.
Under such an enemy and under such circumstances... the lords of Dorne had held as long as their pride allowed. Some longer than wisdom advised.
One by one, however, they came to the same conclusion. This war could not be won as wars once were.
So they had come.
With him reinstated as their leader... Qoren stood now within the Great Hall of the Red Keep, beneath banners of red and black, amid a gathering the like of which had not been witnessed in generations.
The Iron Throne loomed ahead, its jagged silhouette framed by torchlight.
Before it sat King Viserys, serene and almost gentle in appearance… for the storm that had broken Dorne had been conjured by some other hand entirely.
Already the great Houses of the desert and rivers had bent the knee.
House Yronwood, ancient wardens of the Boneway.
House Dayne of Starfall, pale and solemn.
House Fowler of Skyreach.
House Wyl of the Boneway.
House Blackmont.
House Manwoody.
House Allyrion of Godsgrace.
House Jordayne of The Tor.
House Uller of Hellholt.
House Santagar of Spottswood.
House Vaith.
House Gargalen of Salt Shore.
House Toland of Ghost Hill.
House Qorgyle of Sandstone.
House Dalt of Lemonwood.
Each had knelt. Each had spoken the same words, or close enough to them.
Each had risen not as conquered rebels, but as sworn lords beneath a new order.
Not wishing to be the House whose name no one will remember.
Last remained the sun and spear.
When his name was called, the hall seemed to still.
Qoren Martell stepped forward at a measured pace, his orange robes subdued, his spear left behind in deference to the court.
He felt every gaze upon him... his fellow Dornish, lords of the Reach and Stormlands, riverlords, crownlords, the Westerlands, the Valemen, the Northerners, and the silent white cloaks of the Kingsguard.
Under those judging and watchful eyes... he knelt.
The stone beneath his knee was cool.
For a moment, he considered the long road that had led him there... the burning passes, the fallen banners, the negotiations conducted in the dungeon and its cage.
Pride stirred, but so too did a harder truth. Dorne endured not by refusing change, but by surviving it.
When he spoke, his voice carried clearly through the hall.
"Your Grace, I am Qoren of House Martell, Prince of Dorne and Lord of Sunspear. In the name of the Rhoynar and the Dornishmen, I swear fealty to King Viserys of House Targaryen, First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, and Protector of the Realm."
"I pledge our spears, our ships, and our honor to the Iron Throne, to stand as loyal subjects from this day forth. So long as the sun rises over Dorne, we shall hold to this oath."
With that, he bowed his head.
For a brief moment, silence lingered.
Then the king rose... not with triumph, but with something closer to relief... and bade him stand.
The acceptance was gracious, almost warm, as if this had been the desired end all along.
Thus did a Martell kneel whose house words were... Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken
Also, with that oath, the claim long spoken by kings of Westeros ceased to be mere pretense.
The realm of the Rhoynar… was no longer beyond their grasp nor beneath their notice.
It was within the fold, bound not solely by conquest, but now by necessity and a shared future.
Trade routes once contested would now flow freely. Armies that had long eyed one another across borders would stand beneath a single order.
The marches would be quiet, and the Narrow Sea would feel the weight of a united coast.
It was, Qoren knew, a turning point whose consequences would ripple for generations.
And yet, as the hall murmured and the court moved to mark the occasion with all due ceremony, one presence was notably absent.
The bronze power that had made this moment possible did not stand among the gathered lords.
No seat had been claimed in his name, and no honors sought or accepted.
The man whom singers alluded to as the Bronze Lord had not come to witness the submission that he had, in many ways, wrought.
He could not be bothered, some whispered.
Others said that no one dared to summon him.
Qoren suspected the truth lay somewhere between.
For it is said that the man had never cared for courts or crowns.
That war had been a business he took upon himself... and that business, at last, was sort of done.
Now he was said to remain far from the capital, in quieter halls of a fortified island, attending not to campaigns but to a child newly come into the world...
A babe who might one day inherit not lands alone, but the weight of a legend forged in bronze and fire.
As the court of King's Landing celebrated the union of Dorne and the realm, that man remained unseen.
And none present, not even a prince of the sun and spear, thought it wise to disturb him.