The Summer Islands

South of Westeros, between the Sunset Sea to the west and the Summer Sea to the east, lies an archipelago that functions as one single nation. Walano, the northernmost island, forms the core of the territory together with Omboru and Jhala; the Mar Sonriente separates the first two, and the Estrechos del Índigo mark the border with the third. On Walano's coast stands Puerto del Loto, the capital.

Around those three large islands floats a necklace of smaller lands: Moluu, Cabeza de Piedra, la Isla de los Pájaros, las Rocas Cantarinas, las Tres Exiliadas, la Isla del Amor, Doquu, Cabeza de Lagarto, and Los Huesos, among others. Each has its own name in the island chronicles, though few of them ever make it onto maps drawn in Westeros.

Visitors from abroad first notice the islanders' dark skin and their cloaks of bright feathers. They treat their elders with something close to reverence, bury their dead amid wine and carnal celebration, and see nothing shameful in prostitution being practiced even by nobles. Fruit and fish make up most of their diet, and the bow has become a mark of who they are: aurocorazón, a wood native to the islands, gives their arrows a range no other people can match, and it is what arms merchant crews against pirates.

For most of their history, the islanders believed theirs was the only people in the world. Their priestesses carved what happened onto the Talking Trees of Árboles Altos, and that record, together with verses memorized across generations, still serves as the islands' official memory. The maps carved into those trunks show no land but their own, ringed by an endless ocean. In Westeros, almost everything known about that distant past comes filtered through Hijos del Verano, the book in which Maester Gallard translated those carvings and verses.

The first known contact between the islands and the wider world was an accident: a storm blew a Ghiscari merchant ship off course, back when the Ghiscari Empire stood at its height, and drove it onto the coast of Walano. Rather than attempt to trade, the crew fled the moment they saw the islanders.

That was enough to change the islands for good. Their princes realized other lands existed and wanted to reach them, so they began building ships that could survive long voyages. The most ambitious of these shipwrights was Malthar Xaq, prince of Koj, remembered in island lore as the Windrider and the Cartographer; centuries later, his island's shipyards still turn out three of every four vessels launched across the archipelago.

Better ships brought new encounters too: the peaceful people of Naath, the Basilisk Isles, the northern coast of Sothoryos, and the southern shores of Essos and Westeros. No one knows exactly when each of those voyages first happened; Maester Jellicoe went so far as to suggest that Antigua itself began as a supply post where Valyrians, Ghiscari, and Summer Islanders could restock and trade with one another. Islanders even founded colonies along the western coast of Sothoryos, though those settlements were later wiped out by the same plagues, beasts, and raids that would later destroy the Valyrian and Ghiscari outposts nearby.

Less than half a century after that first stranded ship, the Summer Islands were already trading steadily with the Valyrian Freehold. The islands have no metal to speak of, but they have plenty of gemstones, spices, fine woods, and exotic animals, and the Valyrians paid gold for all of it. Valyria never tried to conquer them: they lay too far away, and Valyria had more pressing enemies closer to home.

Trade with Valyria brought its worst habit along with it: gold paid for slaves, and it wasn't long before island princes were willing to sell captured enemies and defeated rivals. Strong, striking, and quick-witted, Summer Islanders became a favorite target for slavers from Valyria, from Ghiscar, and from the Basilisk Isles, who launched fast coastal raids and carried off entire villages.

Worse than those raids from outside was what the islanders did to each other: internal wars fed by every prince's ambition to capture more rivals to sell. The period dragged on for nearly two centuries, and the carvings on the Talking Trees remember it under a name that leaves no room for doubt: the Years of Shame.

What ended it was a warrior, not a king: Xanda Qo, princess of the Valle del Loto Dulce in western Jhala, who had once been a slave herself. She united every island under her rule and set out to finish the slavers for good.

With iron scarce, Xanda armed her sailors with aurocorazón bows strong enough to punch through plate armor, and had new ships designed — taller-prowed and sturdier: the swan ships, built so archers could fire down from a raised platform as they closed on slaver vessels.

Her daughter and successor, Chatana Qo, finished the fight. The so-called Slave Wars lasted a whole generation, but the islanders won in the end, and slavery has been banned across the archipelago ever since.

By the time the war ended, at least three centuries had passed since first contact with Ghiscar, and that empire was at its height when Valyria destroyed it five thousand years ago — which means, if the count holds, Xanda and Chatana Qo lived a very long time ago indeed.

Chatana Qo, known as the Arrow of Jhahar, married unwisely and ruled worse than she fought; the unity she and her mother had built did not survive her death. Since then the islands have come under a single ruler only about half a dozen times, and never for long: every small island keeps its own prince or princess, and even Walano, Omboru, and Jhala are split among rival lords.

Even so, they are not a warlike people. They have defended their waters tooth and claw for thousands of years, yet none of their rulers has ever launched a conquest abroad or joined someone else's war. They prefer trade: their swan ships dock at Antigua, at Desembarco del Rey, at Braavos, and at Qarth, and even Ibbenese whalers stop at their ports.

Roughly a thousand years ago, at the close of the last Rhoynish War, Princess Nymeria of Ny Sar led her people out of Essos, fleeing the Valyrians. After a stop in the Basilisk Isles and nearly a year settled in Sothoryos, then a stay in Naath, she sought to settle her people in the Summer Islands. The island princes refused to let her land on any of the three great islands: they feared drawing Valyrian anger.

Nymeria and her people ended up on a small, deserted island northeast of Walano, its soil thin and rocky and unable to feed so many. Since most of those who stayed were women, the island came to bear that name. They held on for two years through hunger, disease, and slaver raids before Nymeria sailed north again, toward Dorne; several thousand of her people chose to remain, and their descendants still live there today.

Summer Islands merchant ships had been calling at Desembarco del Rey since the city's earliest years, when Aegon I's reign had barely begun and the future capital was little more than a cluster of mud-and-timber houses around his hill. By then, pirates had already learned to fear the mere sight of a swan ship on the horizon.

And yet in the year 19 After the Conquest, a pirate fleet managed the unthinkable: it sacked Árboles Altos, carried off thousands of people into slavery, and made off with a fortune in island wealth.

Word of it reached King Aegon and changed his mind about walling his own capital. He had assumed no one would dare attack a city guarded by dragons, but the sack of a port as well-defended as Árboles Altos taught him that the worst blows tend to come without warning. Árboles Altos, for its part, eventually recovered and was rebuilt.

Lord Corlys Velaryon sailed halfway across the world to the Summer Islands aboard the Doncella del Verano while still a young man.

Years later, three island princesses traveled to Desembarco del Rey to attend the Baile del Día de la Doncella.

A few years after Robert's Rebellion, civil war tore through the islands and drove out one of their princes, Jalabhar Xho, lord of the Valle de la Flor Roja, who found refuge in Desembarco del Rey.

He has spent the years since trying, without success, to convince the kings of the Seven Kingdoms to invade the Summer Islands and put him back on the throne he lost.