Water Gardens

Prince Maron Martell had the Water Gardens raised for his wife, Princess Daenerys Targaryen, to mark Dorne's joining with the rest of the realm. It was never meant as a seat of power, but as a secluded corner, its pools and ponds shaded by orange trees, linked by pillared galleries to a triple-arched hall.

Daenerys chose to keep its gates open to children of every rank from across Dorne, who could come as wards or simply to swim and play on the nearby beach. In autumn, with mild days, cool nights and a salt breeze off the sea, the Gardens show most clearly why they were built this way.

For years gout has left Doran Martell in pain, and he chooses to rule Dorne from the Water Gardens rather than from the seat at Sunspear. There, away from the court's eyes, his enemies cannot see how far the illness has worn him down.

He himself puts it in a few words: "The Gardens are my refuge." That line says enough about what the place means to a man ruling a country while his own body fails him.

After the death of his younger brother Oberyn, Doran leaves the Water Gardens to rule Dorne again from Sunspear. The change comes at an awkward moment: his niece Arianne tries to crown Princess Myrcella Baratheon, a move that does not go the way she planned.

Myrcella is wounded in the attempt and stays behind at the Gardens to recover, far now from the seat of power Doran has just returned to. The place built as a refuge for a sick man becomes, for a while, one for a convalescing girl instead.