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Aliandra-as-Nymeria declares, “Our wanderings are at an end. We have found a new home, and here we shall live and die … and here our descendants shall live and die in glory, to the end of time.”
Coryanne frowns. Aliandra is adding to the speech again. She adds something different each time. This time, it is the part about descendants and glory, which Princess Nymeria most certainly never said. Coryanne knows the speech by heart. Aliandra does too, but sometimes she pretends to forget, when it suits her.
Her sister is beckoning to her. Now it is Coryanne’s turn to shine. She is cagey Mors Martell, aged Ullman Uller and dashing Davos Dayne in turn, one after another.
Qyle crosses his arms and grumbles, “Why must I be the daughters? I want to be a most puissant knight like Ser Davos. I should be him instead.”
Aliandra laughs, breaking character in the blink of an eye. “Because the game is more splendid this way,” she says. “Think about how dull it would be otherwise. Dull and ever so predictable. You would not want that, would you?”
“No, I suppose not,” Qyle says, though he looks far from convinced.
Nymeria returns. An ageing Nymeria this time, earnestly imploring her oldest daughter and heir to remember that the fate of their people will rest in her hands, after Nymeria breathes her last.
Qyle begins by mumbling his lines indifferently. “Yes, Mother, I will not forget,” he drones on, sneaking a sidelong glance at Coryanne and rolling his eyes to high heaven. Aliandra does not seem to notice, deep in character.
But as Nymeria’s death scene continues … and continues … and continues, Qyle looks completely overcome, close to tears. “I … I promise, Mother. I –“
Coryanne steps in. “Enough,” she snaps, at her older sister. “You do not need to take the role to the very extreme each time. This is only a game we are playing.”
“I am committed,” Aliandra says. “I am always committed. Even a game must be played with the highest degree of commitment. Otherwise, why play it at all?”
“You are not truly Nymeria,” her sister chides. “Pray do not forget.”
It is Qyle who replies, “I know. I know Alia is not truly Nymeria, and not truly dying. Only … when she said she has always been proud of me, has always been proud of her daughter, I mean … you were magnificent, Alia. The greatest Nymeria I have ever seen.”
He kneels on one knee in front of his sister, like a gallant knight offering his service to a princess. “When I am a knight, I will be your staunchest and most loyal defender,” he says, reverently.
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“He is setting you up on a pedestal,” Coryanne warns, “and one day –“
“One day I will fall from it, and our brother will see me as I truly am, with all my inglorious failings and flaws?”
“He will not see you at all. He will see only a fallen creature, fallen even lower because he has set her up so highly to begin with.”
“Whereas you, Corya, you do not idealize me at all?”
Coryanne thinks, You are too confident and too self-assured for your own good. Too brash and too reckless, in my eyes. I am afraid of you, afraid of what damage you may do to Dorne, when it is solely in your hands. I am afraid for you, afraid of what damage you may do to yourself, for you are my sister, my one and only sister, and we shared a bed till your moonblood came, and I will always remember the day you held my hand and wiped my tears as we prayed and prayed to the Mother Above and to the Mother Rhoyne too that our mother would live and the squalling little babe Qyle had been would also live.
She thinks, I remember how you never wept yourself, that day, until we were certain that our prayers had been answered, that both Mother and our little brother were out of danger. When I am the most wroth with you, the most frustrated, the most disappointed, I think of that little girl who tried so hard to stop her tears from falling, because she did not wish to make her younger sister even more distraught and even more afraid of the calamity they might suffer.
She thinks, But you are not that little girl anymore, no more than I am that other little girl.
She thinks, I am a second daughter, in a land where daughters are not disadvantaged on matters of inheritance.
Aliandra gives Coryanne an appraising look. “Our late uncle,” she says, “used to proclaim that he would have made much wiser and more prudent decisions than Father, if he were the Prince of Dorne. If I were a second son myself, or a second daughter for that matter, I would feel the same way, no doubt. Second sons and second daughters are not so different in Dorne.”
Are you a witch, to know what is in my heart?
Not long ago, Aliandra had shown Coryanne a book she was reading, a book written by a maester from the Reach. The maester claimed that Nymeria of Ny Sar was a witch, and that she had tricked and beguiled Mors Martell and the other Dornish lords who supported her with dark magic and evil sorcery.
“She was no witch! That is a slander concocted by her enemies,” Coryanne had exclaimed, indignantly. “We should not be reading this book at all. This maester from the Reach … it is clear that he bore a deep-seated grudge against Dorne. His enmity towards us is on full display in every page of the book.”
“True enough. And yet … we should know what our enemies have been saying about us, should we not?”
“What purpose would that serve?”
“We should know it, so we can use it to our benefit. Closing our eyes and ears to their lies and their slanders would do us no good at all, surely. And perhaps … in some ways, Nymeria was a witch.”
“We should believe the lies and the slanders that our enemies have invented about us, do you mean? That is wrong, Alia, wrong!”
“Hush, Corya. I do not mean that she truly was a witch who used dark magic as well as her feminine wiles to beguile the Dornish lords. This maester from the Reach was obsessed with the act of coupling, no doubt. That is all too common among those who have sworn an oath to forswear the act forever. But perhaps it was useful for Nymeria, to be thought to be a witch by her enemies. It would strike fear in their hearts, and fear could be a sharper weapon than any sword. And there was magic among her people, do not forget, the water magic of the Mother Rhoyne.”
“The Mother Rhoyne does not flow in Dorne. Our rivers do not whisper in our ears about every threat coming our way. You know our history as well as I do, sister. Neither the Greenblood nor the Brimstone nor the Torrentine rose to swallow Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters when they brought fire and blood to Dornish soil on the backs of their dragons. Our people fought, Dornishmen and Dornishwomen of all ages. It was no watery magic that defeated the Targaryens. It was the blood of our people. Too much blood. Too many of them dead. The Targaryens may rely on their magic of fire and blood, but we do not, not here, not in Dorne. If there was indeed magic in Nymeria’s blood, then it has not survived here in Dorne, at least not beyond her own lifetime. No watery walls will rise from the Greenblood to drown our enemies, you can be sure of that.”
“But can our enemies be sure of that? The blood of Nymeria flows inside us. Why should they not fear that the power of the great Mother Rhoyne survives alongside it?”
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“Dorne is now in your hands, sister. I pray that you will be a wise and prudent guardian of it.”
Aliandra smiles. “Your notion of what is wise and prudent may not be the same as my own, Corya.”
Qyle interrupts, “Why do you encourage them, Alia? You suitors … why do you encourage them in their foolishness? They are looking at you as if … as if …”
Aliandra is still smiling, though her voice has gained in sharpness. “What foolishness, pray tell, dear brother?”
“This is not you, Alia. You are not – you do not – you –“
“You were not such a prudish prig, brother, before you left us to squire for Lord Yronwood. I warned Father that it was not a wise choice, but he did not listen to my counsel. Lord Yronwood prides himself on making a public display of his piety, I told our father, and he acts as if there is a High Septon in Dorne and he is the present occupant of that position, with a duty to censor and condemn all in Dorne for our allegedly deplorable sexual norms and practices. I wonder if he forgets that he is a Dornishman himself, and he does not reside north of the Red Mountains.”
Qyle objects, heatedly, “Pray do not besmirch his good name, sister. Lord Yronwood is an honorable man. He is nothing like those opportunistic suitors of yours.”
“He has offered himself as one of my suitors, did you know that? He, too, has a hankering to become the consort to the Princess of Dorne.”
“You lie! He would not have done that, no – not he – never! With his lady wife dead less than half a year? It is impossible. He is still in mourning, I can attest to it myself.”
“It is not impossible, for he has done it already. But I do not judge him for it, as he seems to have taught you to judge me for my conduct.”
“I am capable of judging for myself,” Qyle says, offended.
Her sister wonders if Aliandra still recalls their conversation about Qyle and the pedestal. If Aliandra does indeed remember, she makes no mention of it at any time.
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Coryanne says, “You are incurring the wrath of the Dornish people, not just provoking the jealousy of your suitors. This Alyn Velaryon is the good-brother of the Targaryen king. The king who bears the same name as the one who brought fire and blood to Dornish soil. His good-brother brings a large fleet into Dornish waters without your leave as the Princess of Dorne, and your response is to treat this Velaryon as if he is an honored guest whose visit is very welcome indeed. How is that seemly? How is that fitting for the Princess of Dorne, for the defender of the Dornish people?”
“What should my response have been, Corya? Should I have sent out our warships to destroy his fleet? What warships, pray tell? By the time my reign comes to an end, Dorne will have become a great power at sea, I swear it. But for now, I must deal with the strength we do possess, not the strength I am determined to ensure we will possess in the future. I am taking the wise and prudent path, sister, as you have so often counselled me to do. If I were truly as reckless as my detractors have claimed, then I would have greeted Alyn Velaryon and his fleet with a show of hostility, instead of diplomacy.”
Qyle’s protest takes a different form. “In King’s Landing,” he says, “they will be laughing at you, and even worse, they will be laughing at Dorne. They will say that the Princess of Dorne behaves no better than – than –– than a common –“
Coryanne tries to stop him, before the word passes through his lips, but Aliandra says it herself. “They will say that I behave no better than a common whore? Well, let them. Why should we contort ourselves to fit their customs, their beliefs and their standards? If we are so worried about what our enemies might say about us that we grow ashamed of our own customs, is that any kind of victory to be proud of?”
Qyle replies, “‘Our customs’ is merely the excuse you are fond of using to justify your wanton conduct.”
“Is that your own view, or are those Lord Yronwood’s words you are parroting?”
“I am not his puppet! You do me a grave injury to think that of me.”
“And you do me a grave injury to think that I am a puppet of my lusts and earthly desires, or that I am a creature of pure whims and caprices and not much more. I have not bedded this Alyn Velaryon, nor do I ever intend to. I had hoped that my own brother and sister at least would know that much, but it seems that they know me not at all.”
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Aliandra is all smiles when she is greeting her councillors and soothing the ruffled feathers of the ruling lords and ladies of Dorne. “My discussion with the king’s good-brother has not been for naught,” she assures them. “It will bear fruit, soon enough, though not immediately. I ask for your patience in this matter.”
Even the previously most opposing voices, the ones who had sought out Aliandra’s siblings to share their concerns regarding her treatment of Alyn Velaryon, are nodding and smiling. Some of them are merely pretending, no doubt, but others look to be sincerely convinced by their shining Princess, buoyed by her reassurances.
In that moment, listening to Aliandra, even her sister is secretly doubting her own previous doubts.
This is one of Coryanne’s greatest fears: that Aliandra will carry them along – Coryanne herself included – with the tide of her brash confidence, and it will one day lead Dorne into calamity.
Aliandra always shines. She shines so brightly in red, gold and orange, in the colors of their House, in the various shades and hues of the sun.
“I am weary of trailing in her shadow,” says Qyle.
She shines too brightly that we only ever see the shadow she casts, Coryanne thinks.
She is coming to them, to her brother and sister. She saves them for last, and reserves the most attention for them, on this day. She holds out her right hand to Coryanne and her left hand to Qyle. She pulls them both into her embrace, in full view of the assembled lords and ladies of Dorne. “Let us not quarrel,” she says, in a voice loud enough to carry across the throne room. They are the focus of every eyes, these three siblings. “Each of us has a different way of looking at the world, but that need not cause us to always assume the worst about one another. And it need not prevent us from working together for the good of Dorne.”
She whispers, softly, “It need not cause us to forget the love we have for one another, surely?”
She is behaving as if she has never said what she said about her brother and sister not knowing her at all, as if the thought has never even crossed her mind. Not once. Not ever. She looks completely at ease and in earnest, and perhaps, even believes herself to be completely in earnest.
She is like a figure seen through shards of broken glass, Coryanne thinks. You could never see the full picture. She would never allow you to do so. You see a side, then another, and another, but the puzzle remains incomplete for all time. There are gaps; there are always gaps, gaps you would have to fill with your own preconceived notions.
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But even if you do not see your siblings clearly – as they truly are, or as they believe themselves to be – in times of grief, heartache and sorrow, if there is love, still, buried deep, then somehow the not seeing ceases to matter such a great deal anymore, at least during those moments of grief, heartache and sorrow.
When the man Qyle had spent many years squiring for drops dead of a stroke, his sisters sit drinking with Qyle to the early hours of the morning, trying to console him as he reminisces about this man. To say that Aliandra had never liked the dead Lord Yronwood is a massive understatement, while Coryanne had never given him more than a few moments of thoughts in her entire life. Yet, at this moment, he is being honored at their table as if he had been one of their own, for Qyle’s sake.
“He was like a second father to me,” says Qyle. “I never dared to admit it to myself, when Father was still alive, for it would have made me feel like the worst kind of son. But the truth is, I learned more about how to be a man from Lord Yronwood than from our father.”
Aliandra bites her lips and restrains herself from saying what Coryanne knows she would have said on other occasions: Not all the things Lord Yronwood taught you about being a man are good things. In fact, many of them are rotten. The sisters exchange meaningful glances. They nod, brief and fleeting. Qyle remains oblivious.
When her first husband Drazenko Rogare is assassinated, Aliandra’s constant refrain is, “Anger is better than tears, better than grief, better than sorrow.”
“Even so,” says Coryanne, “it is not a substitute for tears, grief and sorrow.”
“Nymeria did not weep, I would wager, when she buried her three husbands.”
“She must have wept at some point, I am sure. She was flesh and blood, Alia. And so are you.”
“The Princess of Dorne cannot be merely flesh and blood, not in the eyes of her people, and especially not in the eyes of her enemies. She must be more than that, much more. She must be an idea as well as a person, an eternal symbol as well as a mortal being.”
“But you are not among enemies here,” Qyle implores, speaking for the first time.
“And isn’t it lonely,” Coryanne asks, “so very, very lonely, to strive to be an idea and a symbol even in the presence of your brother and sister, your closest flesh and blood?”
Aliandra finally weeps, with Coryanne holding her in a tight embrace, and Qyle standing guard by the door, keeping out any prying eyes and ears.