Elia Martell

How it ends for them

Died in the Sack of King's Landing, before the story ÔÇö before this story begins.

Elia died in the Sack of KingÔÇÖs Landing when Tywin LannisterÔÇÖs soldiers stormed the Red Keep, and both tellings treat the manner of it as one of the warÔÇÖs defining crimes. Ser Gregor Clegane came to her chambers already bloody: in the books he had dashed the infant AegonÔÇÖs head against a wall before her eyes, and then raped and murdered Elia with her sonÔÇÖs blood still on his hands. The show has Oberyn recite the same three verbs like a litany ÔÇö raped, murdered, killed ÔÇö and stakes his life on making the Mountain confess to them, which, in the taleÔÇÖs cruelest irony, Gregor finally does, roaring the confession while he crushes OberynÔÇÖs skull.

Tywin later insists he never ordered Elia harmed ÔÇö the children were policy, he claims, and EliaÔÇÖs death was GregorÔÇÖs excess, unpunished because punishing it would have meant acknowledging it. Dorne was offered silence instead of justice, and the tale spends decades showing the interest that debt accrues: OberynÔÇÖs death collecting it, DoranÔÇÖs slow plots built on it, and a mad kingÔÇÖs daughter across the sea who eventually hears the name Elia Martell as one more reason the old order deserved to burn.