Quentyn Martell

Doran's quiet, dutiful elder son, unremarkable to look at, carrying a secret his father has kept for half a lifetime (book only).

A soul of House Martell, born at Sunspear.

The fuller tale

How it ends for them

(book only) ÔÇö before this story begins.

On the page. Burned reaching for a dragon (ADWD, ch. 70)

The quiet prince crossed half the world with a marriage pact to claim a dragon queen, and reached for Viserion's chains when she flew. The dragons answered fire with fire. He lived three days after; the books call him the frog prince who died far from home.

His death is book-only and among the saga's cruelest. With Daenerys vanished on Drogon's back and Meereen unraveling, Quentyn leads his two surviving friends and hired swords into the Great Pyramid's pit to steal a dragon, on the theory that the blood of old Valyria runs in Martell veins too. The theory is heard and rejected: in the darkness and panic Rhaegal's flame takes him full on, and the Tattered Prince's men scatter as the loosed dragons break free over the city ÔÇö the mission's final gift to Meereen being two ungoverned monsters on its rooftops. Quentyn lingers three days in a bed, burned past recognition, his friend's hand in what remains of his; the chapter that ends him is titled, with the books' terrible economy, after the dragontamer he briefly was. The show never so much as speaks his name.

Their chapters, book by book

A Feast for Crows 1 chapter that name them

Arianne II In a tower cell with courteous jailers, Arianne learns her father's game at last: Doran's patience is a fuse, Quentyn is gone east, and the watchword is fire and blood.

A Dance with Dragons 4 chapters of their own

Quentyn I Three Dornishmen bury a friend and take ship in Volantis under false names; Quentyn Martell carries a secret pact east toward a queen with dragons. Quentyn II Quentyn serves as a sellsword in the Windblown, crossing the desert toward a war against the very queen he has come to marry; desertion, when it comes, must be earned. Quentyn III The spurned suitor will not go home empty-handed: Quentyn Martell buys the Windblown's renegades and a madman's plan ÔÇö steal a dragon from under a pyramid. Quentyn IV The dragontamer opens the pit beneath the Great Pyramid: Viserion and Rhaegal come out ÔÇö and the prince of Dorne learns that a whip is not blood. He burns three days in dying.

Where the page and the screen part

The show cut Quentyn without residue: no character inherits the mission, the pact, or the theme, and Dorne's connection to Daenerys arrives by Ellaria's diplomacy instead of a prince's corpse. What is lost is one of the books' most deliberate structures ÔÇö a whole point-of-view arc built to interrogate the story's own romances: the secret prince, the quest, the destined marriage, each trope led out and shot in order. His absence also unmoors pieces of the books' Meereen endgame, where the consequences of his choices ÔÇö for the dragons, the siege, and the Tattered Prince's bargain over Pentos ÔÇö are still detonating when the published pages run out.

Their journey

ADWD 2 VolantisADWD 26 Meereen