Yronwood

Seat of the proudest house in Dorne after the Martells — 'The Bloodroyal', wardens of the Boneway.

The fuller tale

Yronwood commands the Boneway's Dornish mouth, and House Yronwood has never entirely forgiven history for the Martells. They were the greatest kings in Dorne before Nymeria's ships came — the Bloodroyal, a title their lords still carry, with lands and levies second only to Sunspear's even now — and the family's ten-thousand-year grudge is the load-bearing tension of Dornish politics: every rebellion Dorne ever brewed internally had an Yronwood in it somewhere, and every Martell prince learns young that the realm's second house must be honored, watched and never quite trusted, in that order.

The tale's era opens with the feud freshly bandaged. A young Oberyn Martell dueled the Lord Yronwood of his day over an indiscretion — first blood only, by the forms, except the lord's wounds festered and killed him, and Dorne has whispered about the Viper's blades ever since. The peace price was a Martell heir fostered at Yronwood, and the books make the arrangement genuinely warm: Quentyn Martell grows up more Yronwood than Martell, and when he rides east on his father's desperate dragon errand, it is Yronwood sons who go with him and pay the road's tolls in blood. The Bloodroyal's loyalty, the books quietly note, is once again collateral in a Martell gamble — and House Yronwood has a long memory for the arithmetic of who owes whom.

The fallen of this place — if any, they are named here. Spoilers.

No death the chronicle records has come to this ground — or none the maesters have set down.