Elia Martell

Elia Martell is the first born child of Prince Trystane and Princess-Consort Margaery. A person with little use for niceties, she has dedicated her life to the study of life and death. Constant exposure to the frailty of life and how easily one’s life can end has made her emotionally distant, refusing shows of affection and familial closeness towards people she can see as little more than sacks of flesh and blood. Wizened by her many years, she looks for a Martell to continue her and her mentor’s legacy.

## Appearance and Character

Princess Elia was once a young and pretty maiden, but the many years of life has ravaged her body with the affects of old age. Her skin is wrinkled, and her hair has long gone gray. The Princess requires a walking stick to move around, hunching her back due to her frailty. Her body itself is little more than skin and bones, little fat to be found anywhere but a slight paunch in her stomach. Caring little for the ostentatious display of wealth, she wears little in the way of jewelry, the only exception being a necklace with a pendant in the shape of the Martell Sun behind the Tyrell Rose she inherited from her mother. Her dresses continue this preference for minimalism, silks with little embroidery taking up most of her wardrobe. These vary from red, orange, and yellow in color, and tend to be in the lighter styles the Dornish favor. A few dresses in styles in favor north of the passes can be found in her wardrobe as well, a remnant of her time in the various courts north of the passes.

Princess Elia had always been a less than emotive child, and her exposure to so much war and death only intensified those tendencies. She feels little closeness to those around her, most of those she knew now being dead for years if not decades. As the last remnant of a dying generation, knowing the parents and grandparents of many of the current lords better than she does the lords themselves. This leads her to be detached from all but her family, and even then she is still known to be a rather harsh and cold woman. Everyday life can feel little better than waiting for death for a woman driven so cynical by age, and the only thing to make her feel truly alive is her lab and research. This drive for knowledge consumes her every waking moment, and the experiments this drive fuels only further estranges her from the people around her. Knowing that everyone around her is little more than sacks of blood and flesh animated by whatever force powers life has given her the view that people are little more than machines, driven to continue their own existence by impulses and bodily functions she desires above all to understand.

Yet despite the Princess’s estrangement from the living, her position of power still requires her to take part in their affairs. When faced with the complexities of ruling, the Princess favors a ruthless and quiet approach when possible. Too many problems have risen in her lifetime and an apparent inability to meet the challenge has been a small frustration for decades now. Relying on her son’s own network of informants, she will often attempt to kill or destroy a problem before it becomes too big to deal with quietly so she can return to her research as quickly as possible. This has led to her increasingly relying on her son to keep her reign stable, a fact that leaves her often unaware of all her family does to keep her in power. Elia may not enjoy the company of most people, but she has slowly become a more active participant when her family gathers together, secretly searching for the next Martell who could continue her esoteric research. She fears dying all too soon, and the idea of her research being lost to time upon her end is a tragedy she will do anything to prevent.

## History

Princess Elia Martell, first child of Prince Trystane and Lady Margaery Martell nee Tyrell, was born in 305 AC, only a few scarce years from the civil war that led to Queen Myrcella Baratheon’s ascension to the throne. This newfound peace throughout the lands seemed to reflect the countenance of this newborn Princess, her caretakers and Septas noting the Princess seemed to make barely any noise at all, leading many to presume the good natured child would be an easy girl to take care of while her parents ruled Dorne. Born in the aftermath of one of the most destructive civil wars since the Dance of The Dragons, her parents would be distracted by her father’s recent inheritance of Sunspear and supporting Queen Myrcella’s own ascension to the throne. Her mother on the other hand, did make the effort to visit her when she was in residence at Sunspear, yet if not with child, much of Margaery’s time was spent on diplomatic journeys to her relatives in Highgarden and King’s Landing. It would be Tyene Sand, her father’s bastard cousin and a septa, was the family member most present for her younger years. She would become an older sister in 308 AC, her brother Doran being quite the opposite of his older sister, constantly crying in the months after his birth. Reports from her various caretakers noted how little the new baby seemed to interest the young Princess, instead continuing to surprise her maesters by learning to read at the tender age of four. She took particularly well to the fields of science and mathematics, being a constant thorn in the maester’s side during their duties asking them questions about what they do. The cries of her baby brother may have broken the peace in Sunspear, but it would be two Targaryen’s that would break the peace in the realm.

While the rest of Westeros was engulfed in dragonfire, the Martells of Dorne would face a more familiar foe. The Yronwood rebellion would take Prince Trystane away from his daughter, leaving Princess Consort Margaery in charge of Sunspear. This would further leave her in the hands of her Septas and instructors, and it would be during this period that Elia would be first noticed by Sarella Sand. The bastard daughter of her great uncle, Sarella had spent the past few years researching a secret special project for Prince Doran, which Prince Trystane reluctantly allowed to continue upon his succession. Elia immediately attached herself to this odd relative, finding the woman’s knowledge and wit to be more fascinating than even the maesters that claimed to be such authorities. By the time the War of the Two Dragons ended, and the Yronwood rebellion subdued, the Princess had started to truly dive into her academic pursuits. Between the maesters and Sarella Sand, she would become known as a voracious seeker of knowledge, becoming all but an apprentice to the maester in his medical duties. Her tutors' success in interesting her in her education was contrasted by her seeming inability to make friends with those her age. With the war over and her now old enough, she was sent to the Water Gardens for periods of time as has become tradition. Yet Elia often refused to join her peers in the pools, instead choosing to read fantastical stories mixed with some of the texts her maesters allowed her to take from the library of Sunspear. Her brother would soon join her in the gardens, where he was somewhat able to convince her to act her age, but even then she would still be reserved, refusing to take part in the play fights so ubiquitous among the children in the pools. Only the birth of her last two brothers would see her return to Sunspear, if for a short time. Her mother, now no longer as hampered with supporting her family in the early years of Myrcella’s reign, now made more time for her children, starting with her eldest.

Yet Elia was already almost ten, and so a certain distance remained that she seemed to keep with everyone regardless of familial closeness. Her father, worried about her lack of social graces, decided to offer her as a ward to Petyr Baelish, her uncle by marriage. By the time she was eleven she would be in Harrenhal, and for the first time met the aunt that if not for the great council would have been Princess of Dorne instead of her father. This led to an initial awkwardness, but her aunt quickly realized both the distance between father and daughter and a secret desperation for approval that Elia had only previously gotten from teachers and from her mother on rare occasions. Her education while in residence at Harrenhal would be atypical, less focused on her academic pursuits and more focused on teaching the future ruling Princess the importance of social ties in maintaining power. She would have excellent teachers in her aunt and uncle, both impressing upon her the need to make connections of her own as the heir to Sunspear. She would take intermittent trips from Harrenhal to Sunspear, King’s Landing, and Highgarden in an effort to keep her connected to her Martell and Tyrell roots. It would be on these trips that a more socially adept Elia would emerge, making acquaintance with her relatives in a way her mother had wished her to do for years prior to her warding. Despite taking more interest in her responsibilities and duties as the heir to sunspear, her true passion remained in her academic pursuits. Her unofficial apprenticeship continued with the maesters of Harrenhal, some proclaiming her knowledge of the healing arts only a short couple years away of being worthy of a link on a maester’s chain. Lord Baelish supplemented these pursuits with his own knowledge gained as a customs officer of Gulltown and Master of Coin. While no true passion, her uncle taught her the importance of understanding her finances, lest those she did trust with them siphon it for their own gains.

Her wardship would end in 322 AC, and she would return to Sunspear a much changed woman. Her father quickly arranged a betrothal upon her return, offering her hand to Bors Qorgyle in an effort to placate the Dornish lords inability to marry into House Martell the previous two generations. Her reaction to this was typical to her reaction to all things, muted and private. She had shown no interest in romantic pursuits during her childhood, and was only ever polite when suitors made her acquaintance. The Princess had met Bors Qorgyle on a few occasions, both when he visited Sunspear with his Lord Qorgyle and stayed at the Water Garden for a time. It was arranged for Bors to take residence in Sunspear, reacquainting the pair after Elia’s years away from her homeland. Her father had been busy in their time apart, having consolidated his position as Prince of Dorne and now looked to preparing his heir for the duties that he would one day pass onto her. While still a distant father to the Princess, she would now travel with him on his diplomatic visits to the Houses of Dorne, reintroducing herself to vassals that had not seen the heir for a decade. While Prince Trystane took increased interest in his heir, it would be Sarella Sand that would influence her the most out of her family. She had already noted the Princess’s interest in the healing arts and the working of the body, and would be the best to continue her work after she was gone. It would be 325 AC, shortly after her marriage to Bors Qorgyle, that she would finally be let in on the special project the sand snake had been working on since the time of her grandfather. She was led to a lab deep beneath Sunspear, an area of the castle long thought abandoned and off limits. What she was shown would forever change her, and create a lifelong obsession she would dedicate her life to. Beakers of blood and cuts of flesh were spread around the tables, some twitching and spasming as if the life refused to leave them even after being separated from a body. Fully working dismembered limbs groped around a table, grabbing each other and ripping flesh off of each other. In the center of the lab, like a twisted centerpiece to this macabre lab, was a huge body, larger than any she had ever seen. The flesh was rotting off the bone, gashes around the body still bleeding even as the body should be dead. The Princess would recall the urge to throw up as she looked into the creature’s eyes, the burning hatred and pain clear for the restrained corpse. This would be the start of her interest in not just learning to work and heal the living, but the dead as well.

The next decade of her life would be dedicated to learning as much as she could from her mentor, diving into the study of life and death with great enthusiasm. While not fully withdrawn from the decisions of the court, she would spend every moment not monopolized by her father’s lessons in rulership in the labs of Sarella Sand, ignoring family and husband alike in her pursuit of esoteric knowledge. It would take the rise of a new threat to Dorne to force Elia out of her studies, and it would be a rude awakening for the Princess who only wished to be an academic. The Bastard of the Tides became a major threat to the coastal house, Sunspear, the Shadowcity, and Plankeytown all being at risk of raid from the sea during his reign of terror. It would only take two years for her father to try to take action against the threat, sending her inept brother Mace to resolve the piracy threat through force. This would prove to be a mistake, as her brother would lead the Dornish naval force into a devastating ambush, losing many ships and his own life in the attempted invasion of the Stepstones in 335 AC. This tragedy would have only the smallest of silver linings, the tragedy accompanied by news the next year that Elia was finally pregnant after years of attempts. Her firstborn child would be named Lewyn, quickly followed by another brother a year later, and this new Prince would rise through the succession much more quickly than his mother would expect. A second invasion of the Stepstones, this time in cooperation with the Baratheons, was attempted in 340 AC. While not as disastrous of a failure as the first attempt, her father’s decision to lead it personally would result in his death in an ambush. These twin tragedies would be the events that result in her succession to the throne of Sunspear, and her young son replacing her as heir. The newly raised Princess would be left to solve the crisis with a weakened Martell military, bandits taking advantage of the Princess’s distraction by threats from the sea to ravage the countryside. It would take the individual efforts of vassals and the victory of the Baratheon’s over the pirates to deal with the worst of the crisis, the Princess only able to quell the banditry in the east after the fall of the Bastard of the Tides. While a disaster militarily, the unrest would prove an excellent source of research material, bandits and pirates alike disappearing from their jail cell with none to notice their lack of presence. If she could not end the bandit threat, she would at the very least not waste the flesh and blood freely offered by her enemies to use in her research.  It would be during these events that the Princess would make the mistake of the flesh. Stressed out from her ascension to Sunspear and the constant threat of pirates and banditry, she succumbed to the comforts of the flesh, to the disappointment of her aging mentor. Attracted to a Braavosi merchant after decades of no interest in the opposite sex, she would dive into a brief affair with the man. It would cause what she considered unnecessary strain on her marriage with Bors, the resulting bastard greatly angering a man that had fallen in love with the Princess even as she only held a fondness for him. While not regretful of the liaison, she would find it necessary to separate the bastard from her husband’s presence when possible, even using an orphan of the greenblood to keep him away from Sunspear during the worst of her husband’s rages. She would have two more children with Bors, more to placate him then any real desire to have more. Margaery Martell would live to see the last of her grandchildren by Elia born before she passed away, leaving the Princess truly ruling alone for the first time.

Soon after the threat of pirates and bandits ended, a new threat would rise from the Stormlands. Initial reports were scarce, but it quickly became clear that a major outbreak of Greyscale had occurred with reports of infection in the major ports of Dorne. Elia, having felt next to useless in the previous crises, was much more comfortable in the realm of disease and healing. Implementing quarantines in port towns and major settlements, her efforts to limit its spread were met with much success. Yet it would require more than a simple quarantine to deal with the outbreak, so an agreement was reached with Storm’s End to use the penal colony of Ghaston Grey as a Greyscale colony. Coordinating the creation of makeshift ships to carry the infected, they were quickly runaground by naval escorts, firing flaming arrows at the shipwrecks until they were alight. While minor outbreaks still occurred, this major effort between the two regions most affected by the plague signaled the end of the pandemic. Her first decade of ruling being defined by crises following crises, the peace of the next almost decade would be a great relief to the stressed out and overworked Princess. She would use the opportunity to dive back into her research, only a civil war forcing her to return to the affairs of the realm. Yet even as she took over the reins from Prince Lewyn, who she had largely allowed to make the day to day decisions of rulership in her stead the past few years, it would still be her family members largely in control of the war effort. Prince Lewyn would gather intelligence on their vassals and enemies in the Reach alike, where he made contacts which would eventually turn into the more infamous children of the spear, and her brother Quentyn would lead the army itself. The war would bring the first Dornish military success since the War of the Two Dragons, but the Martells would not reap the glory of it, the King compromising with what the Dornish believed to be a spent force. Princess Elia chose to respect her King’s call for peace, greatly angering those Dornish lords out for blood and loot in the Reach.

The ending of hostilities outside of Dorne would prove fortuitous, when the Red God refugees from Essos increasingly proved themselves to be violent in their fanaticism. Even the House of Martell was not safe, her bastard son almost burned alive by the zealots making the conflict extremely personal to her family even as she continued to focus on her lab. Yet again Dorne was faced with the scourge of banditry, but the spy networks of Prince Lewyn quickly went to work finding and ending these bands of zealots as they popped up. The Princess would again allow her vassals to handle a problem House Martell seemingly couldn’t, with the figurehead of the Red God revolt dying by the hands of Lords Vaith and Allyrion.

Princess Elia may have been an absentee ruler for most of her time as Princess, but even she could sense the growing unrest in the desserts of Dorne. There had been little peace since her father’s death, and Dorne suffered from decades of strife with little to show for it. Drawing upon skills learned from her long deceased uncle Petyr Baelish, she would do much to stabilize the finances of House Martell and use her son’s networks to nip in the bud threats to trade. While recognizing the threat from Yronwood, she would leave it to her son to combat their efforts. When not dealing with Dorne’s economic realities, she would throw herself into her esoteric research, often spending days at a time in her underground lab. As she has grown used to over the years, her research would once again be disrupted by the ravages of war. This war however, would represent an existential threat to her and her house. It started with the ravens and maester in the rookery turning up dead in the middle of the night. Her son immediately suspected their Yronwood rivals, but this notion would be disabused by the arrival of a massive fleet bearing the sigil of House Targaryen. Panic quickly set in, and a mad rush to evacuate Sunspear was made. Princess Elia, refusing to allow her life’s work to fall into anyone’s hands, fled with her family and research. The lab was burned down, becoming little more than a charred room by the end of the blaze. Only her youngest son Oberyn would stay behind to lead the defense, a valiant but doomed effort by the garrison.

The Princess and her family would find themselves in hiding for the rest of the War of the Last Dragon. From their base in the Red Mountain, Prince Lewyn would lead an insurgency against their occupiers, keeping Daena’s army from fully consolidating control of Dorne. Yet it would take the defeat of her armies outside of Dorne to allow the Dornish to overthrow their oppressors. The defeat of their Queen left the essosi mercenaries of Dorne confused and disorganized, and Prince Lewyn’s children of the spear would take full advantage of this chaos. In an event known as the Day of The Rising Sun, these paramilitary groups would seize control of many of the key castles and keep they were using as bases of operations. Prince Lewyn’s insurgency proved to be a stunning success, but their return to Sunspear was met with little fanfare, their failure to hold it still fresh in the minds of the Dornish lords. The mercenaries captured in Sunspear would quickly disappear from their cells, their bodies needed to restart the lab they forced her to destroy.

## Recent History

The years following the war would be relatively quiet, their vassals still licking their wounds and unable to push the grievances they hold against the Princess. Even the rise of a new queen could not bring Princess Elia away from the quiet of her realm, instead sending Prince Lewyn and other members of House Martell to represent her as the realm gathers in King’s Landing.

## Family Tree

https://www.familyecho.com/?p=MVUBT&c=wvyo8460e6&f=332656270597375056

## Stats

\*\*Character Name:\*\* Elia, Martell

\*\*Starting Title(s):\*\* Princess

\*\*Age:\*\* 78

\*\*Physical Description:\*\* A woman with many years under her belt, her typical salty dornish complexion has become wrinkled and her hair turned gray. Her eyes are an intense dark brown, and her mouth a thin line that rarely gives away what the old crone is feeling. She dresses up in garb fitting a Princess, dresses of orange and red showing all which house she represents. Her body is not as strong as it used to be, so a finely carved staff with the head of a snake carved into the top.

\*\*Starting Location:\*\* Sunspear

\*\*Attribute:\*\* Gifted

\*\*Skill Points:\*\* 22

\*\*Skills:\*\* Alchemy, Necromancy, Finances, Medicine

\*\*Mastery:\*\* Medic

\*\*Username:\*\* u/Malacanthian

\*\*Discord Username:\*\* Malacanth

\*\*Other Characters:\*\* N/A