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1. Daemon Sand
It shouldn’t be a surprise that a bastard is the first person to catch Jon’s attention. They were so alike—both surnamed Sand, both natural-born, both skilled swordsmen, both handsome—that Jon almost forgets that they are eight years apart in age. In Sunspear, the two of them train day and night, and their time together changes the other. It is Daemon who suggests that Jon should take up the spear as well as the sword, while it is the younger boy who convinces the Dornishman to train with the bow.
Jon looks at Daemon and thinks that he sees how a bastard should be treated. Daemon starts as the squire for Oberyn Martell, accompanying the prince to treat with Targaryens in King’s Landing. Daemon's father remains in his son's life life. When Daemon is knighted, Jon thinks that Ser Daemon is just what any knight should aspire to be. And if Daemon can overcome his baseborn origins to be renowned as one of Dorne’s best swords, so can Jon. The Bastard of Godsgrace, Jon thinks when he is still young, is what a Dornish bastard can ascend to.
It’s not just be Daemon the Ser that interests him, Jon realizes. It’s also Daemon, the man with the strong jaw and the dimpled smile, and Daemon, the one who moves so easily in the company of both men and women.
Jon thinks he should tell someone about his budding feelings. Not Daemon perhaps, but maybe one of his other Dornish friends. Maybe Arianne, or one of the Sand Snakes, or even one of the Daynes. But Jon thinks they will laugh at them, and he keeps silent.
He swallows those feelings until one day in Sunspear, when he’s delivering a message to Prince Oberyn’s manse. And he hears a groan from the solar, causing him to tiptoe silently up to investigate the sound—the Prince is not supposed to be here today, supposedly on some trip to Oldtown or Pentos or Asshai for all Jon knows—when he sees and hears Daemon and Oberyn melded together in the throes of passion.
Jon wonders briefly if Daemon—naked, sweating, and straddling the prince like a knight on a destrier—spots him at all. But then an upward thrust makes Daemon’s eyes roll back into his head, and then Jon turns away, feeling embarrassed about his own feelings.
He continues to wield the spear, but Jon trains alone with the bow from that day forward.
2. Arianne Martell
The first time Jon thinks he is in love—a real love, not like his childish infatuation—is with a young woman he’s known all his life. But this woman is a princess, heir to Dorne, and Jon finds himself confused all the same.
On one hand, he’s been raised in Sunspear alongside Arianne, which should make her more like a sister than a lover. On the other hand, Arianne is a beautiful woman, and Jon can’t help but feel his breath hitch in his throat whenever he sees her. One day, when she invites him to her tower to play cyvasse, she leans forward in her seat to move the dragon piece. When Jon finds himself flushing red at the sight of her breasts, the nipples visible underneath the silk fabric, he realizes that Arianne has known about his feelings all along.
His indecision is cut short that day, when Arianne seizes the initiative and beds him.
Arianne is the first person who invites Jon to bed, and he thinks he knows why. Jon is not the first man to sleep with the Martell princess—though he knows that who Arianne sleeps with is none of his business—but he knows that he is different from everybody else Arianne has known. Even as a young adult, Jon knows what the allure of Targaryen ancestry can bring, and there is nobody else in Dorne quite like him. Jon’s grey Stark eyes and Valyrian blood are unique in a land known for smooth olive skin and dark brown eyes. For a brief second, Jon wonders if Arianne sees him as some exotic toy, but he brushes the thought away. They have known each other far too long to develop such misconceptions.
Jon knows why Arianne chose him, but he can’t answer whether he should be here. It doesn’t matter much whether Arianne chose him. He’s still a bastard, and she is still a princess. Jon thinks Dorne is the best place to be a bastard, but even Dornish bastards inherit no land and must take the surname Sand. And he is doubly an outsider in highborn Dornish society, almost totally lacking in Rhoynish blood as the son of a Northern woman.
After that one night, though, Arianne drags him out of his self-pity. She tells him that being a bastard and having Northern blood make Jon no more different than any other man in Dorne. In bed, Arianne says, bastards are no more wilder or fierce than any highborn noble, and Jon is equally as lusty as any Dornishman she’s ever met.
In a haze of bliss after his first time, Jon makes the act of stupidly thanking her for the revelation. Arianne laughs and presses a soft kiss to his cheek.
“Did you think you were different, Jon Sand?” She asks, before lacing her fingers together with his.
“I thought so,” says Jon, and he turns away from her. Arianne responds by pressing her chest against his back, nuzzling his shoulder.
“Stark mother, Targaryen father, Northern features,” she says, her voice growing soft as sleep begins to overtake her. “It doesn’t matter. You’re Dornish now.”
Arianne falls asleep soon afterwards, but Jon doesn’t. He lays awake, and he thinks Arianne’s words were the best thing that happened to him that day.
3. Aegon Targaryen
Jon learns to love many people as family. Aegon is the first person Jon loves as blood.
That’s not to say he loves his sister Rhaenys any less, but it is Aegon who Jon grows up around. The three siblings joke that Aegon inherited all of Rhaegar’s blood and Rhaenys inherited all of Elia’s blood. Jon finds the contrast between Rhaenys and Aegon to be fascinating. Rhaenys is not just Dornish, she is all Salty Dornish, with black hair and dark brown eyes and light brown skin. Aegon, in contrast, is only lightly tan, with light eyes and silver-gold hair.
It is Rhaenys, though, who is sent to the Water Gardens to tend to her uncle Doran, while Aegon and Jon remain in Sunspear under Oberyn’s protection.
And though he is younger, Jon can’t help but feel protective of Aegon, his older brother with the unserious face and the light eyes that rove towards every comely knight or lady who comes his way.
The two of them first squire together for various Dornish lords, serving an Uller here, an Yronwood there, and Jon realizes his brother inherited little martial prowess. Prince Aegon is terrible with the bow, embarrassing with the Dornish spear, and mediocre with the sword. His one redeeming accomplishment is his skill with a lance, though Jon reminds Aegon time after time that at the Trident, Prince Rhaegar’s lance was no match for a warhammer. Though Jon wants to goad his brother into improving himself, the other man smiles and returns to his poetry.
“I sometimes want to leave, little brother,” Aegon says one night with a laugh. They’re in the Old Palace again, in the Tower of the Spear, and Aegon is looking out towards the Narrow Sea. “Maybe there is a place for me in Essos, where I could pass myself off as a Lyseni and find work with some sellsword company. Our uncle does not want me around in Dorne.”
Jon nods. Viserys III has only grown suspicious and paranoid in recent years, and rumors abound that the current king inherited the Mad King’s madness. In secret, Jon agrees with his brother that Viserys is an usurper. Aerys had no right to disinherit Rhaegar’s children for a second son. It was Prince Rhaegar whose forces won victory for the Targaryens at the Trident, even if he did not survive the battle.
“There are people who will protect you. Your mother—” Jon answers, before he is cut off.
“Our mother,” Aegon corrects him, and Jon feels conflicted. Princess Elia has always been distant to her husband’s bastard child, but she has never been cruel, and she could easily have subjected Jon to a harsher fate. Yet all the same, she is not his mother. His mother is buried north, in a crypt lined with stone kings.
“She will protect you. Your two uncles will protect you. Dornish lords would fight for your claim. You could even press for the throne,” Jon says. Aegon is the rightful king, not Viserys, yet Jon knows his older brother is too gentle to wear a crown.
“Will you?” Aegon says, and his eyes twinkle. “Would you protect me in such a war and be my sword shield, Jon Sand?”
Jon nods immediately. “You only need to ask.”
“Then I won’t,” Aegon says, and he turns around towards the sea again. “I don’t want to put that burden on you.”
Jon doesn’t pay attention after that, hearing but not listening as Aegon recites tales he has read, about Volantis and elephants, and zorses, and cities made of black stone. Instead, he only thinks about his beautiful brother, the dragon prince with his head in the clouds, and he resolves to protect him against any threat in Dorne or otherwise.
In the end, Jon does take up arms, and he regrets nothing about that choice.
4. Rhaenys Targaryen
If Aegon is easy and gentle to love, as a lifelong friend and companion, then Rhaenys’ love is difficult and rewarding.
Rhaenys arrives in the middle of night, dressed in rough spun wool after a night riding through the Dornish desert. Her teeth are clenched and her brow is furrowed as she turns on Jon.
“You heard the news, didn’t you?” She says, and Jon tells her what the ravens told him. Both of them know that King Viserys has married Princess Daenerys, as they all had feared, and Rhaenys is particularly upset.
Jon knows Rhaenys has as much antipathy towards Daenerys as she has love for Viserys. But all of Dorne had clung to the hope that Viserys would marry his older, half-Dornish niece instead of the younger Daenerys. But Jon had predicted the king would make this decision. Daenerys was the daughter of two Targaryens, not just one, and her pale face bore no resemblance to Rhaenys’ Dornish features.
The Martells had hoped that Viserys would cement his claim on the throne by marrying into Rhaegar’s legitimate line, but those hopes were dashed now.
“I know about the news, and I’m no more happy about it than you are,” Jon says, unnerved at Rhaenys’ fury. “What do you plan to do?”
“I want to make sure we live,” she says, temper rising yet again. “Aegon should be king, not Viserys. Now that Viserys feels secure, he will surely try to eliminate us. We must thwart his plan before it happens.”
And Rhaenys spills forth a plot to seize the throne that is so daring yet well-conceived that Jon can’t help but wonder if the Targaryen princess is actually Elia and Doran and Oberyn distilled into one person.
When it is done, Jon points out gently that Aegon does not want the throne.
Rhaenys nods her head knowingly. “Our brother is gentle, but he needs to recognize our situation,” she says.
“We both know that,” Jon answers, still wondering how his sister will rope their brother into the plan.
And then Rhaenys shrugs, and changes her plan in a second. “I don’t begrudge Aegon for it. If Aegon does not want the Iron Throne, then I will take it. I have a better claim under Dornish law, anyways.”
Jon’s eyes widen, as he realizes that his sister inherited the bright ambition that Aegon lacked. He knows she would never need the same political protection that Aegon would. “And who would you marry?” He asks hesitantly. “Does your mother want you to marry Aegon?”
“I will marry who I want,” Rhaenys says, and shrugs yet again.
And Jon learns to love his sister, bright and ambitious, the way he learned to love Aegon.
5. Edric Dayne
Jon knows about full brothers, half-brothers, step-brothers, adopted brothers, and sworn brothers. And he thinks milk-brothers would be the weakest type of brothers possible.
His one milk brother, then, is a mystery to him. Edric Dayne has a name, Ned, shared with a now-dead Stark lord. When Jon had first heard of the Lord of Starfall, he had expected a tall, strapping man worthy of carrying Dawn.
Instead Edric is a proud, curious young man sent to Sunspear to serve Prince Doran as a squire.
Yet Jon quickly sees Aegon all over again, as he tries to teach Edric how to fight.
Jon is Ser Jon Sand now, and he takes it upon himself to train new fighters. New knights for Rhaenys’ army, Jon sometimes muses to himself, though only a handful of people know about this new Targaryen army. Any other outsider would only see Jon as a bastard knight trying to make himself useful in peacetime. Yet every other day brings a screaming match between with the young Lord, and Jon wonders if it would be easier to fight in battle instead.
Edric is hopeless at many things that matter. He can barely tell which end of a spear is the pointy end, and his aim would not decline if he fired a bow with his eyes closed. But he knows how to use a sword, is better at eighteen than Jon was at twenty, and might become the greatest swordsman of all time.
Jon asks Edric about House Dayne on several occasions.
“What does your family say about Ser Arthur?” He asks, reclining in the shade. One hand holds a skin of wine—Dornish red, of course—while the other wipes the sweat from his brow.
“He disappeared during the War of the Usurper,” Edric answers, sitting himself next to Jon. The blond’s dark-blue eyes, almost purple like Aegon’s, turn towards the knight.
“I heard. I just wanted to know if you knew anything more.” Jon responds, and he doesn’t bother to tell the tales. Ser Arthur Dayne had famously disappeared during the last days of the war while traveling to Greywater Watch.
“Why do you want to know?” Edric asks, and the tone is neutral.
“I wanted to know more about your family,” Jon answers blandly, and he doesn’t want to say the truth. Because I heard rumors that long ago, your uncle was the last person to see my mother alive, Jon would say if he was being honest. That my father entrusted my mother’s life to your uncle’s hands. But he says nothing of the like.
“Really? Daynes interest you?” Edric says, turning his eyes to Jon. Large eyes, of a bluer hue than the oceans, and Jon can’t help but regret that he ever thought they were purple.
Jon flushes, blinks twice, and then turns away. “No,” he answers, and Jon realizes it’s not Ser Arthur that he wants to hear about. It’s Lyanna Stark, daughter of a dead Northern lord and sister to three dead Stark brothers, that he wants to know about. “Just Ser Arthur,” Jon adds, trying to distract Edric from the topic.
The younger man seems to take no note, and his dark eyes seem ready to swallow Jon whole. And then Jon thinks about another man who trained him in this courtyard, and he hesitates.
“There’s a Dayne right here,” Edric says, and he presses his lips against Jon’s.
But Jon pushes Edric away and shakes his head. The younger man isn’t Daemon, and Jon knows that. Instead, he takes another swig of wine and gets to his feet. “Pick up your sword. Break’s over.”
“For now,” says Edric with a smile.
Jon smiles softly, but also sadly. “No, it ends here.”
Edric gives a disappointed frown and turns away, and the two men pick up their swords again. Yet they continue to practice together.
+1. Tyene Sand
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Jon ends up with Tyene Sand.
He doesn’t want to say she’s the only one left for him after the war against Viserys, but in some ways it’s true. Arianne is the first of their social circle to wed, marrying Edmure Tully to unite Dorne and the Riverlands. Queen Rhaenys ends up marrying Willas Tyrell, uniting the strongest kingdom with the Iron Throne. Meanwhile, mild-mannered Prince Aegon marries Margaery Tyrell, and follows her to Highgarden. Daemon Sand leaves to become a sellsword in Essos.
It’s Tyene—also a bastard, also beautiful, also a childhood friend—that waits for him, even though Jon thinks there’s nothing alike between them.
Tyene reads the Seven-Pointed Star religiously and prays to the Maiden every seven days, while Jon’s faith in the Seven is thin at best. On his visits north, especially during the war, he chooses to worship in every godswood he finds, praying that the old gods will keep Tyene and Dorne safe if he does not return home.
Tyene’s weapon of choice is different, choosing poison over the sword. Jon learns this by raven, when she tells him that that Viserys’ generals invading Dorne died of adverse reactions to Dornish reds. Jon doesn’t care that poison is called a coward’s weapon. Instead, he thanks the gods that Tyene can keep herself safe.
She is the only one, Jon realizes, that combines the best traits out of all the people he has ever loved. She is a bastard who has nonetheless reached the height of her station, like Daemon. She is beautiful yet intelligent, like Arianne, and forward like Rhaenys. She is warm, like Aegon. And like Edric, she also has interest in him.
For the first time ever, Jon thinks he can love her back. During the war against Viserys, in the north as battle rages, Jon lays awake at nights thinking of the girl in the white dress.
Tyene and her delicate features evoke the color white, and sometimes Jon thinks her lightly bronzed skin is the purest color he’s seen. And he thinks of her hands, soft and feminine, embracing him as they kiss.
When he returns, he asks her to marry him.
He knows, really, that he should be asking her father Oberyn, but the prince was no longer with them. The next person he should have asked was her uncle Doran, but he would not be with them much longer either.
So it is just the two of them, in the shadow of the Old Palace, when he broaches the topic.
“It’s just the two of us in Sunspear, isn’t it?” Jon asks. “Arianne, Aegon, Rhaenys, Daemon. They’re all somewhere else, doing their own things.”
“And what about you, Ser?” Tyene asks, her blue eyes meeting Jon’s grey ones with an inquisitive expression. “Is Sunspear enough for you?”
“It could be,” says Jon, noting her satisfaction at the answer. “The city needs a new castellan, now that so many Dornish lords now serve with Queen Rhaenys. Arianne will need someone in Sunspear while she rules from the Water Gardens.”
“And that someone can be you, can’t it?”
Jon gives a smile. “You like Sunspear, and we’ve both grown up here.”
“I love Sunspear,” Tyene corrects him, before crossing her legs in a ladylike manner. “The city is hot, frequently humid, small, dusty, and winding. I would never give up this city for King’s Landing.”
“We could live here together,” Jon says, trying to find space to bring up the subject of marriage.
“Like husband and wife? Man and paramour?” Tyene goes straight for the subject, arching her eyebrows in a teasing fashion, and Jon flushes red.
“Something like that,” Jon answers, and he realizes the broad strokes of their relationship matter more to Tyene than the finer points.
“Yes, something along those lines,” says Tyene with a laugh, and Jon knows they’ll fill in the details once they get there, as long as Tyene loves him back.
Later that night, with Tyene’s hands wrapped around his waist, Jon Sand finds the time to rest and think about his future in Dorne.
He finally decides that Sunspear is his first and greatest love.