Meria Martell

Meria Martell was already an old woman past eighty when Aegon Targaryen turned his eyes to Dorne: fat, blind, nearly bald, her skin loose and sallow. King Argilac Durrandon had named her the Yellow Toad of Dorne, but the years had not dulled her mind at all.

Aegon sent his sister Rhaenys to bring the country to heel, and she found its strongholds empty but for children, women, and old men. The Dornishmen would not give battle: they struck and vanished into the desert, and whenever Rhaenys asked where their men were, the answer was always the same, "away".

Frustrated, Rhaenys flew to Sunspear to demand Meria's surrender. Meria told her she would not fight, but she would not kneel either, for Dorne had no king to yield it. Rhaenys promised to return with fire and blood; Meria answered with her house's own words, Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken, and warned her that Dorne would not welcome her back.

The Targaryen army withdrew without taking anything. Around 3 AC, Aegon tried another way, sending a delegation of lords, septons, and maesters to Sunspear to persuade Meria to join her realm to the Iron Throne. A full year of talks reached no agreement.

In 4 AC Aegon launched a new campaign against Dorne, meaning to stay this time. Rather than hold Sunspear, Meria fled her own castle along with the rest of the Dornish lords, and the Targaryens found the land empty again. Lord Rosby was left as castellan and Warden of the Sands, and Lord Harlen Tyrell was tasked with putting down any uprising before the king returned to King's Landing. A price was put on the heads of the rebel lords, Meria's above all.

The Dornishmen were far from finished. They slipped back among the people like shadows, retook Sunspear, and took Lord Rosby bound hand and foot. Meria ordered him dragged to the top of the Spear Tower and thrown from the window.

Harlen Tyrell marched out of Hellholt, took Vaith, and pushed on toward Sunspear to wrest it back from Meria, but he vanished into the deserts of Dorne in 5 AC and was never found again.

In 8 AC a band of raiders crossed the Sea of Dorne and struck half a dozen villages along the Cape of Wrath, setting fires that ate through half the Rainwood. Meria answered with a single order: fire for fire.

The war left Dorne starving and sick. During the Dragon's Wroth, a knight taken captive by the Dornishmen said the princess would rather see her own people dead than enslaved by the Targaryens.

Meria Martell died in 13 AC, in her bed, worn down by age and poor health. Her enemies preferred another story, one of an old woman dying astride a stallion.

When word spread, Rhaenys Targaryen summed it up in her own way: "The Yellow Toad has melted into the sand." The chroniclers were less generous, saying she had fought like a woman, with lies, treachery, and witchcraft.

Her son Nymor took charge of Dorne and opened peace talks at once. Dorne would win in the end, but in a way that many of the war's survivors felt as a defeat.