#sand snakes

[yosb]

“all of prince oberyn's daughters have his viper eyes. the color does not matter.”

[jaydeewis]

[rosenroot]

Sand Snakes persuading Doran to go to war (failing tho)

[dorneuniverse]

Martell Week 2024: Day 6 - Favorite Quote

[shripscapi]

hi!! i am SO obsessed with your asoiaf book art. i was wondering if you would ever do a sketch of the martells/sand snakes! i would absolutely love to see them in your style

hi!! this is rusty bc i’ve been on break/ drawing some personal work but here are a few of the sand snakes! ^-^

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

New snake species just dropped!!!!! Psammophis cornusafricae/African horn sand snake, discovered in Somalia!

Psammophis cornusafricae!!! They join the other 35 species in their genus, and like all others in the genus, are incredibly handsome.

There are so many sand snakes left to discover because they're so secretive - there's so much for us still to learn! Snakes in Africa are so often underprioritized in research, especially when compared to rainforest species...I interned in South Africa and I won't get on my whole soapbox about it, but anyway, I'm so excited to see another new sand snake described.

Here's the paper that broke the news if anyone's interested!

Cool little dudes.

[torchbearerkyle]

Game of Thrones didn’t do justice to Dorne, the Dorne Plot and Princess Arianne. Her chapters were EASILY the best in a Feast For Crows and the way that she handles what she think is her father’s rejection is so realistic, coming from a young adult with daddy issues.

The fans who only watched the show will never know about the gem that is Princess Arianne. They have robbed us of our queen🙏🏽 and the good characterisation of the sand snakes

[aegonx]

GAME OF THRONES - 5.10 - Mother's Mercy

[martellspear]

this arc could have been everything, we were ROBBED

[martellweek]

TOMORROW

— Elia Martell

"But, rare for a woman of our land, her flower came with no thorns. She was kind and clever, with a gentle heart."

[game-of-style]

Sand Snakes - Alberta Ferretti Resort 2024

[yosb]

"'girl or boy, we fight our battles. but the gods let us choose our weapons.'"

— obara sand

obara sand | nymeria sand | tyene sand

[a-song-of-art-and-fire]

Tyene Sand, The Poison Viper

"Tyene is so sweet and gentle that no man will suspect her."

The last of the core three Sand Snakes. I think I've made it pretty clear I'm not Sand Snake fan number 1, especially the clunkiness of the chapter where we meet the three of them in sequence, but one touch I like is that their characteristics and their proposed plans dont quite match up - Obara the warrior proposes war, but then it's Nym the politician who proposes an assassination (or four), and Tyene the assassin who proposes a more political solution. It's not much, but it does break up the formulaic structure, and shows the sisters operate as a group.

Tyene was fun to paint, as a bit of a contrast to her family. I like the white and green look she has described, managing to convey both purity and poison at once. If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times, I love a hand behind the back pose for making the sculpt more interesting in 3D space, and telling a micro narrative of an untrustworthy character.

[aconiteflowerart]

i like lady nym because she has knives 😊

[elia-nymmeros]

""A start?" said Ellaria Sand, incredulous. "Gods forbid. I would it were a finish. Tywin Lannister is dead. So are Robert Baratheon, Amory Lorch, and now Gregor Clegane, all those who had a hand in murdering Elia and her children. Even Joffrey, who was not yet born when Elia died. I saw the boy perish with mine own eyes, clawing at his throat as he tried to draw a breath. Who else is there to kill? Do Myrcella and Tommen need to die so the shades of Rhaenys and Aegon can be at rest? Where does it end?" "It ends in blood, as it began," said Lady Nym. "It ends when Casterly Rock is cracked open, so the sun can shine on the maggots and the worms within. It ends with the utter ruin of Tywin Lannister and all his works."" The Watcher, ADwD

Rereading ADwD, one of the most interesting aspects of the Dorne plot for me is that constantly, over and over again, the elder Sand Snakes mock Doran for his perceived weakness, for being slow to act, for planning and disguising and lying instead of outright fighting, claiming that he was a lesser man compared to Oberyn, and yet part of me wonders what they thought/might've thought of Elia while she lived, especially when Gregor's head was brought back to Dorne and the Sand Snakes demanded vengeance not only for Oberyn, but also for Elia and her children.

"Her sister Tyene gave answer. "What he always does," she purred. "Delay, obscure, prevaricate. Oh, no one does that half so well as our brave uncle."" The Watcher, ADwD

It's hard to know because we only have second-handed accounts, but we've been told that Elia was someone agreeable, kind, with a good heart, someone precisely like Doran and very unlike Oberyn. No account of Elia presents her as a bold, outspoken, bloodthirsty, or vengeful woman, which of course doesn't mean that she wasn't, but it means that she didn't choose to present herself as one in front of Dorne and King's Landing court; in fact, some people even remember her as "drab" and "frail". It's very poignant to see the Sand Snakes asking to spill blood and kill innocent people in the name of a woman dead some 17 years ago who, as a matter of fact, probably never wanted to see the entirety of Casterly Rock and Oldtown destroyed and slain, children and smallfolk included.

"Princess Elia was a good woman, Your Grace. She was kind and clever, with a gentle heart and a sweet wit." ADwD, Daenerys IV

""We could kill him, to be sure," said Tyene, "but then we would need to kill the rest of his party too, even those sweet young squires. That would be … oh, so messy."" ADwD, The Watcher

It's interesting for me that they learned this bloodthirsty attitude from Oberyn, who of course had almost two decades of virulent resentment because the brutal rape and murder of his sister and her children went unpunished, but who was also the man who probably knew Elia the best and what ideas she held about retribution, not some idealized version of a woman who they probably don't remember. Part of me wonders if the Sand Snakes wouldn't have found Elia cowardly and weak and useless too, simply because she displayed the same ideas about politics and power than Doran, because all accounts of Elia (all three of them) shows us a genuinely gentle and easy-going person who did not murder and poison her way to power as it is common in the royal court.

"I am not blind, nor deaf. I know that you all believe me weak, frightened, feeble. Your father knew me better (...)" The Watcher, ADwD

"It must have been the madness that led Aerys to refuse Lord Tywin's daughter and take his son instead, whilst marrying his own son to a feeble Dornish princess with black eyes and a flat chest." AFfC, Cersei V

I'm not saying that Elia wouldn't have wanted The Mountain dead or that the Sand Snakes were in the wrong for wanting their family members avenged, because Tywin Lannister and his lackeys were evil men who committed several crimes against the Martells and faced no direct repercussions, but the extreme level of hatred that the Sand Snakes show towards everyone who happens to be named Lannister, their willingness to go to a war they cannot hope to win with allies they aren't sure they can trust without any kind of well-thought plan, and the constant derision they show towards Doran and his attitudes... part of me feels like Elia has already been forgotten by them, replaced by an empty figurehead who they can rally around and use to justify their cruelty, while at the same time disdaining the same attitudes that Elia herself was known for...

"Written? If you were half the man my father was—" AFfC, The Captain of Guards.

""Obara would make Oldtown our father's funeral pyre, but I am not so greedy. Four lives will suffice for me. Lord Tywin's golden twins, as payment for Elia's children. The old lion, for Elia herself. And last of all the little king, for my father." "The boy has never wronged us."" AFfC, The Captain of Guards.

Something something about letting vengeance and senseless violence consume you, about a woman dead so many years ago and yet still loved by her people and her family, about the attitudes we teach our children and how they might end up twisted without a specific contextualization in time and space...

[thaliajoy-blog]

Arianne Martell as The Chariot of the tarot deck. This particular card is associated to vengeance, trouble, presumption, quarrel and defeat, so I could not pass Arianne for this one ; she is so iconic, causing problems & failing hard, playing the game of thrones like a drunkard rolling dice.

The eight snakes underneath her and Myrcella represent the eight Sand Snakes.