#the quarrelsome daughters awoiaf

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Whereas Lorath, Norvos, and Qohor were founded for religious reasons, the interests of Lys, Tyrosh, and Myr have always been mercantile. All three cities have large merchant fleets, and their traders sail all the world’s seas. All three cities are deeply involved in the slave trade as well. Tyroshi slavers are especially aggressive, even going so far as to sail north beyond the Wall in search of wildling slaves, whilst the Lyseni are famously voracious in seeking out comely young boys and fair maids for their city’s famous pillow houses.

A World of Ice and Fire, pg 263

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The wars, truces, alliances, and betrayals betwixt and between Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh are far too numerous to recount here. Many of their conflicts are so-called trade wars, fought entirely at sea, wherein the ships of the combatants are granted licenses to prey upon those of the foes—a practice that Grand Maester Merion once termed “piracy with a wax seal.” During the trade war, only the crews of the warring ships faced death or piracy; the cities themselves were never threatened, and no battles were fought on land. Far bloodier, though less frequent, were the land wars fought over the Disputed Lands—a formerly rich region that had been so devastated during the Century of Blood and afterward that today it is largely a wasteland of bone and ash and salted fields. Yet even in these conflicts, Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys seldom risked the lives of their own citizens, preferring instead to hire sellswords to fight for them.

A World of Ice and Fire, pg 264

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In history, culture, custom, language, and religion, these three cities have more in common with one another than with any of the other Free Cities. They are mercantile cities, protected by high walls and hired sellswords, dominated by wealth rather than birth, cities where trade is considered a more honorable profession than arms. Lys and Myr are ruled by conclaves of magisters, chosen from amongst the wealthiest and noblest men of the city; Tyrosh is governed by an archon, selected from amongst the members of a similar conclave. All three are slave cities, where bondsmen outnumber the freeborn three to one. All are ports, and the salt sea is their life’s blood. Like Valyria, their mother, these three daughters have no established faith. Temples and shrines to many different gods line their streets and crowd their waterfronts. Yet the rivalries between them are long-rooted, giving rise to deep seated enmities that have kept them divided, and oft at war with one another, for centuries—to the undoubted benefit of the lords and kings of Westeros, for these three rich and powerful cities, if united, would make for a formidable and dangerous neighbor.

A World of Ice and Fire, pg 261

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All this is also true of Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh, those three quarrelsome daughters whose endless feuds and struggles for dominion have so often managed to embroil the kings and knights of Westeros. These three cities surround the large, fertile “heel” of Essos, the promontory that divides the Summer Sea from the narrow sea and was once part of the land bridge that joined that continent to Westeros. The fortress city of Tyrosh stands upon the northernmost and easternmost of the Stepstones, the chain of islands that remained when the Arm of Dorne fell into the sea. Myr rises on the mainland, where an ancient Valyrian dragonroad meets the tranquil waters of a vast gulf known as the Sea of Myrth. Lys is to the south, on a small archipelago of islands in the Summer Sea. All three cities have claimed part (or all) of the lands between them, which we know today as the Disputed Lands, for all attempts to fix borders between the domains of Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys have failed, and countless wars have been fought for their possession.

A World of Ice and Fire, pg 261