The Dornish Rebellion was an insurrection of several Dornish, Reach and Marcher lords against the rule of Loras I Baratheon in 356AC.
Timeline[]
The Purge of the Small Council[]
His Grace, Loras Baratheon, the First of His Name, King on the Iron Throne, was never a popular king. After the many achievements of his father and predecessor, King Renly, King Loras was viewed as many as underwhelming, a king who enjoyed the throne and knew how to wield a sword but had no skill in ruling, and he made little effort to curry further favor with his men or councillors. By many accounts this lack of popularity hit a man who had never quite managed to escape his father’s shadow particularly hard, and he grew to resent the councilors who had been running the kingdom in his stead. As well, lords who had been promised rewards and favor for supporting King Renly in his wars, in particular houses of the Reach and Marches, began to mislike Loras for forgetting their loyalty to his father.
The final blow came in 356AC, when His Grace chose to remove three of his councilors: Lord Mors Qorgyle, Master of Laws; Lord Maron Manwoody, Master of Whisperers; and most critically, Lord Cletus Wyl, Master of Coin.
The reason for this purge varies by the teller. Some say the king was overcome by jealousy when his councilors received the credit for running the kingdom and left him with naught but scorn. Other accounts point to a falling out with the Lord Wyl over an accused affair with a Wyl sister that had reportedly left the girl pregnant. Some claim that Dowager Queen Margaery Tyrell had grown anxious about the heavy Dornish influence in her son’s court and urged they be removed. But it was the accusation of Lord Wyl that rang the loudest in the din.
Lord Wyl, according to the claim of Lord Commander Lon Lonmouth, spat in King Loras’s face when he was removed from his seat.
“Have you now graduated from inaction to tyranny? We’re the men holding this kingdom together, you spoiled brat, and this is the thanks we get?”
He claimed that the king had gone mad and become a tyrant, and in alliance with the other dismissed councilors, raised banners in open rebellion. Lord Edric Dondarrion rode south himself to try and calm the rebellious lords, as His Grace refused to humble himself before them, but the presence of the one of the only councilors to have retained his seat only piled fuel on the ever-growing fire, and Lord Dondarrion was forced to flee.
Other houses in Dorne or its vicinity who had felt scorned by the Iron Throne followed suit: House Ball and the Red Apple Fossoways in the Reach, Houses Gargalen and Toland, Dayne and Uller, and the Marcher Houses. Only House Dondarrion remained loyal, bound to the king with the Hand’s pin.
The Siege of Yronwood[]
The first act of true hostility of the rebellions was the Siege of Yronwood. Due to Yronwood’s positioning between Wyl and Kingsgrave, it was immediately surrounded by men of both rebel houses. Lord Aron Yronwood sent a personal plea to House Martell for aid, but the centuries of bad blood between the two houses, as well as their own lack of love for King Loras, stayed Princess Martell’s hand from immediate action.
Instead, she directed her attentions to House Gargalen, a threat much nearer to home. The Martell and Dalt forces met those of Gargalen in a petty skirmish at Salt Shore, but soon retreated.
Lord Yronwood read this inaction from his liege, likely correctly, as an infuriating lack of care for the fates of he and his family, and resolved to take matters into his own hands. He sent his squire to smuggle his wife and children out of the palace and to the safety of Skyreach, as his wife was a Fowler, sister to the Lord of Skyreach. Lord Aron remained behind to withstand the siege alone.
He and Lord Wyl met at the gates of Yronwood as his family was being snuck to safety, where Lord Wyl demanded the surrender of the castle.
It’s said that Lord Yronwood laughed in his face, then turned to walk back into his besieged castle without another word.
The Fall of the Marcher Houses[]
King Loras gathered his allies to him to take action against the rebels, writing to Lord Matthos Tyrell and commanding him to raise his strength and march down the Prince’s Pass. Meanwhile, the King himself marched south, Lord Dondarrion and his men at his side. Lord Hightower, Master of Ships, raised the royal fleet, sailing for the Brimstone to take Hellholt by sea, creating a three-pronged attack.
The first battle was fought on the fields surrounding Haystack Hall, as Loras and his army were unexpectedly set upon by Selmy men. The battle was a hard and bloody affair for a king who had not commanded an army since the First War of Reclamation, but the royal forces managed to emerge victorious. They seized Harvest Hall, taking Lord Beric Selmy as a hostage. Many of his family, including Lady Selmy, were killed in the sacking of the castle.
The next battle fought was against the men of House Caron at Nightsong, a house with close family ties to House Selmy. When the royal army arrived, Lord Selmy, cousin and good friend to Lord Caron, was dragged out before the front lines in chains and offered as a bargaining chip: the castle for the man.
“I am told the two of you squired together in your youth, my lord. Surrender bloodlessly and save both his life and your own.”
It’s said that Lord Dondarrion, once a close friend of both lords, forced himself to look away from the scene.
An arrow flew from the battlements, piercing Lord Selmy through the throat. Whose bow it flew from remains a matter of debate: whether it was the Lord Caron himself, a man acting on his orders, or someone seeking to prevent him from accepting the deal at any cost. In any case, Lord Selmy slumped to the ground, choking to death on his own blood.
With that, the battle commenced. Again the royal forces emerged victorious, and continued their march south, drawing ever closer to Dorne.
The Flight of the Fossoways[]
House Tyrell, meanwhile, raised their own armies against their rebel bannermen. Lord Matthos quickly dispatched his son and heir to the Ball's Keep, The Pouch, with a fast-moving host of light foot and cavalry. Young Mace Tyrell led a lightning attack upon the rebels whilst they were still mustering, personally striking down Lord Arthur Ball, and routed House Ball's forces - its male line dying to almost nothing in the ensuing chaos.
But House Ball had written to their fellow Reachman rebels, the Red Apple Fossoways, for assistance, but though House Fossoway answered the call, they arrived too late to prevent the extermination of House Ball and were forced to flee down the Prince’s Pass when the vengeful eye of Lord Tyrell turned to them.
Despite Tyrell’s narrow pursuit, the Fossoways made it safely to Blackmont, seat of House Blackmont, which had thus far remained neutral but harbored rebellious sympathies. Tales of the ruthless destruction of House Ball won Blackmont’s support, and they declared rebellion and gave the Fossoways shelter.
In Dorne, the loyal Houses Santagar and Jordayne attacked Ghost Hill, castle of the rebellious House Toland, and placed it under siege. However, word soon reached them that House Gargalen had launched an attack on an unprepared Sunspear directly, forcing House Jordayne to break from the siege and ride to aid their liege lords. This left Santagar to hold the siege of Toland alone.
Tyrell attempted to march down the Prince’s Pass, but was ambushed by the combined forces of Fossoway, Blackmont and Dayne, and forced to retreat for the time being.
The March of Bones[]
With the Tyrells charging down the Prince’s Pass, King Loras and Lord Dondarrion’s army began the long march down the Boneway towards Wyl. House Wyl had fortified the pass, and the approach was brutal. The army was forced to fight for every step, arrows raining down from above and blood churning the gravelly sand to mud beneath their feet.
The king himself nearly died, when a poisoned arrow, aimed at his eye, took him in the ear and the ensuing infection nearly felled him. Were it not for a soldier taking the ear off with a heated knife to cauterize it and prevent the poison from spreading, the reign of King Loras would have ended there.
It became known as the March of Bones for the sheer number of soldiers felled over the days of marching, and it is now rumored that the bones of the men felled in that devastating week of travel can be seen, picked clean by vultures, shining white in the sand of the Boneway.
Fire on the Brimstone[]
The third attacking force came by sea, the fleet commanded by Lord Hightower. He sailed up the Brimstone to Hellholt, the full sea force of the Iron Throne behind him. His forces blockaded the harbor at Hellholt, besieging them from the sea. They arrived under cover of night, and set the ships in the harbor aflame. It’s said the firelight from the bonfire in the harbor was bright enough to light the sky and wake the Ullers in their beds.
The Ullers, furious, rained an arrow volley upon the besieging fleet, and the lengthy battle that would later be known as the Battle on the Brimstone began. The two sides exchanged arrow fire for hours as the Uller ships burned to nothing and their scorched husks sank into the murky water of the Brimstone.
The arrow fire from the Hellholt forces ceased briefly when the sky began to lighten, only to be replaced by something far more deadly to the Hightower fleet, all still aboard their ships: flaming arrows. The fleet barely had time to realize what had happened before their sails began to go up in flames. Lord Hightower was struck, a flaming arrow striking him in the chest where he stood at the head of his flagship and sending him up in flames.
However, that did not mean the end of the attack. Lord Andrey Estermont, Lord Hightower’s second in command, lifted Vigilance from his commander’s charred corpse and took command of the army. He led a charge off of the boats and to the castle, meeting House Uller’s forces on the fields. The ensuing battle was by all accounts sheer chaos, fought in the hazy early hours of the morning, when one could barely tell friend from foe. Finally, the Ullers, defeated, surrendered to Lord Estermont, who captured their castle and locked them in their own dungeons.
Lord Estermont turned his gaze north, to the still-besieged Yronwood, and marched to their aid.
To Crush an Adder Underfoot[]
Finally, bloodied, battered, and scarred by the misery of the March of Bones, the king’s host reached Wyl and stormed the castle, driven by righteous fury. The fighting was vicious. The king’s men were vengeful for the comrades they had lost, and the rebels were conscious that if they failed then both their houses and their rebellion would die with them.
Lord Dondarrion, who had remained at the king’s right hand all through the war, was struck down in the fighting by Lord Wyl. King Loras, grief-stricken, charged forward to duel the rebel lord himself, and the two battled back and forth over Lord Dondarrion’s corpse, steel crashing against steel. Lord Wyl’s sword struck King Loras in the shoulder, dealing a grievous wound, but King Loras rallied and, with the last of his strength, struck Wyl’s head from his shoulders.
The Turning of the Tides[]
Other victories were won elsewhere in Dorne: the Tyrell army, having regathered its strength, charged the Prince’s Pass once more. This time they successfully crashed through the defenses that Blackmont and Fossoway had placed against them and reached the walls of Blackmont to place them under siege. Blackmont, holding the forces of House Fossoway within its walls, didn’t have the resources to feed them all through a long siege, and Lords Blackmont and Dayne soon began to fear the possibility of starvation.
Meanwhile, the Lord Fowler, who had received his sister and nephews in Skyreach when they fled from the siege, brought his own forces south to liberate his goodbrother. Lord Aron still sat, untouched, trapped behind Yronwood’s walls, having refused all further attempts at parlay after the first.
Lord Fowler met with Lord Estermont, and together, both forces launched a devastating coordinated ambush against the Wyl forces besieging Yronwood, shattering the prolonged siege.
To the east, the Jordayne forces combined with those of House Allyrion to break Gargalen’s assault on Sunspear, capturing the Lady Gargalen and holding her as a hostage, at last freeing Princess Martell to join the fray. Lord Toland, suddenly fearful of being assaulted by the full might of House Martell, surrendered to Lord Santagar.
Within the walls of Blackmont, now the last bastion of rebellion in Dorne, news of these defeats arrived one after the other. Lord Ulrick Dayne, fearful for the future of his house, pleaded with his friend of Blackmont to surrender to the Tyrell force.
“The rebellion is lost, my old friend. Wyl has fallen, Ghost Hill and Salt Shore surrendered, and Hellholt’s ships razed to the waterline. Enough blood has been shed here.”
Blackmont conceded, and the next morning, just as the assembled forces of King Loras, Estermont and Fowler appeared over the horizon, surrendered to Lord Tyrell.
As the Dust Settles[]
After the surrender of Blackmont, the king gathered the commanders who had taken part, as well as their noble hostages, in Sunspear to dispense gratitude and justice as each was deserved.
Lord Estermont, still bearing Vigilance with the intention of delivering it to the Hightower once the war as done, reported that the heir to Wyl had perished on the battlefield of Yronwood, rendering the house extinct in the male line. The only survivor was Lord Wyl’s daughter, Doreah, who was married to Lord Yronwood’s youngest brother, Nymor, at the time.
Lord Toland, Lord Caron, and Lord Uller were sent to the Wall. Lady Gargalen was pardoned, as women couldn’t take the black, but her house incurred a heavy debt to balance.
The fates of Lord Ball and Lord Fossoway were left to Lord Tyrell to decide. The Balls had lost the majority of their male line, reducing House Ball to only the lord’s infant son, and Lord Matthos declined to extinguish the noble house. Instead much of Ball’s lands were given to House Varner, who had proven valiant and reliable in the war, and House Ball reduced to a minor bannerman sworn to Varner. He sentenced Lord Fossoway to execution as compensation for the many Reachmen killed in Prince’s Pass, and swung the sword himself.
Houses Selmy, Blackmont, and Fossoway all forfeited their lands and titles to the crown. Lord Dayne was in danger of the same fate, but Lord Blackmont knelt before the king and asked mercy for his friend, stating that Dayne was the one who had convinced him to see sense and surrender. The king granted his plea, and House Dayne, along with Houses Toland and Gargalen, were merely made to give up wards to the crown instead of land or title penalties.
Not all of the results of the war were so happy. The wound to King Loras’s shoulder, despite the best efforts of the maesters, festered, and infection soon spread into his blood with such speed that the maesters wondered if Wyl’s blade might have been poisoned. He passed away of his wounds only two moons later, passing the throne to his son, King Steffon Baratheon, First of His Name.