Ellaria I Martell

**Princess Ellaria I Martell** was the sixteenth Princess of the Principality of Dorne and ruled from 272AA to 290AA. She was a ruthless warrior with a cold personality, slaying her many enemies, including many pirates of the Stepstones. She earned the name *Lady Death* after she waged continuous bloody campaigns against the pirates, criminals, and lowlifes that plagued the Stepstones. Despite this, she loved her husband dearly and mourned greatly when he perished. She did take many lovers and paramours to bed after his death although she neither procured any child or married again out of respect for her dead husband.

She conceived a lone child with Ser Tregar: a son named Maror Martell. After letting him suckle at her breast for six moons, she attacked 'The Vulture of The Veil' with her husband and a hundred men. He was a notorious pirate who based himself on the Veiled Isle where he used its treacherous terrain to protect himself. After weaving through the treacherous waters, Ser Tregar became the first man to scale the cliffs. When the rest of the forces caught up to him, he was found surrounded by twenty bodies with an arrowhead lodged into his lung as he laid on his back. Ellaria flew into a fury slaughtering every man on the island and razed it in an act of revenge.

Much to everyone's surprise, Ser Tregar was able to survive his wounds. The arrowhead had easily dislodged from his chest and his wound thoroughly wrapped. But as soon as the blood stopped flowing, he became high with fever. Princess Ellaria nursed him for seven days and seven nights never leaving his side but still, he perished on the eight. It is said her tears flowed for a fortnight before she allowed his body to rest. She spent much of her remaining days taking revenge against the pirates who had taken her husband away.

When her father Maron II Martell perished from old age, she remained in Sunspear to oversee his funeral and then her coronation. Even though her heart was calloused to most matters, she still broke out into tears when she saw the corpse of her late father.

The next year, she brought her son to his first raid forcing him to take the lives of the captives they had brought back. After two years of letting her son follow her to battle, she allowed him the use of the Crimson Cock to command as his own.

In the year 277 AA, she would get her son married to Cedra Santigar. Ellaria sought her out for both her wit and beauty. She believed her to be a good match for the ever distant heir to Dorne. When she gave her three healthy grandchildren, Ellaria was pleased even though she did turn a blind eye to the affair of their marriage. Ellaria did agree with Maester Beldon when he told her son that a fourth pregnancy was dangerous for Cedra.

When Maror scoffed at the death of his wife Cedra and their infant child, Ellaria entered his study with Venom in tow. Although no one knows what had happened in that room, Ellaria's brother Mors reported that she spoke of how ‘[she had] made a Martell into a monster.’

She cared for her grandchildren more than she had cared for her own son. She sheltered them away from the wrath of their father. She believed it her act of repentance for the crimes of her spawn. It is said the day Cedra perished is the day she stopped being called Lady Death, and she started being called grandmother.

In the year 290 AA, when Maror returned from the Stepstones, Ellaria had become high with fever a couple days before the thirty-third anniversary of the passing of her late husband. Although her son detested watching the once valorous warrior struggle to fight against a cold, he remained at Sunspear to be by his mother’s side until her final breath. It is unclear whether he did so out of duty or out of love. Maror buried Ellaria in the same tomb as Ser Tregar as per her dying wishes after he crowned himself Prince of Dorne.