A lot of people read A Feast for Crows and are perplexed. There's hardly any Jon; there's no White Walkers; there's no Dany;
there's no dragons; there's no Tyrion; there's no Stannis the Mannis; there's no ice and there's no fire.
Instead we get a story about some acolytes at the Citadel We follow Sam on a boat trip; we follow around Brienne,
wandering; we follow Jamie, wandering - sad about his hand; we watch Cersei descend into madness;
And we follow around Arianne Martell on a seemingly pointless quest to put Myrcella on the throne. Now that quest was only stopped
so the Quentin quest could go forward, but that one fails as well. So what's the deal? Was that whole book pointless?
No. It's all part of the Dornish master plan. So the patriarch of the Martell family is Doran Martell
and he's supposedly a master planner. Tywin Lannister says he's a man who weighs every word and every action.
Doran absolutely hates Tywin Lannister for ordering the death of his sister and her children.
He says he wants to strip Tywin of all he holds most dear before killing him. And so Doran has been carefully planning for
17 years to bring down Tywin Lannister. This plan better be awesome. Well, according to Doran,
this is the plan. Step one: marry Arianne to Viserys. Step two:
there... there is no step two. His entire plan was to rely on a friendless orphan to somehow raise an army and come and conquer
Westeros. And the replacement plan after Viserys died
was for Quentin to go across the sea and ask Dany to marry him so she can conquer Westeros for them.
First of, both of those plans are horrible.
Second, they certainly don't take 17 years of careful planning. And so I'm forced to say that Doran is a big fat fucking liar.
So what's the real Dornish master plan? Well, the Martells have a lot of enemies.
But let's start by talking about their plan to take down the Lannisters. So clearly the Martells want to take down
Tywin for ordering the death of Elia and her children.
They'd also like to take out Amory Lorch for actually being the hand that stabbed Elia's daughter.
And they'd like to take out the Mountain, Gregor Clegane, for raping Elia murdering her and then killing her son.
But if we're being serious about destroying all the Tywin holds dear -
or, at least, how an outsider would see it - this must include the removal of Jaime from the Kingsguard.
And, of course, the removal of Cersei as Queen Regent and the removal of Tommen as King.
Now that's a pretty tall order.
So let's look at what resources Doran has. Doran's biggest resource is his brother Oberyn.
Oberyn traveled the free cities learning about
poison and dark magic. He also studied at the Citadel, earning six links of a maester's chain. And he is experienced in battle and even
formed his own sellword company.
Oberyn is also
fascinated with religion and fathered a child with a septa. He even raised that daughter with intense knowledge about the Faith of the Seven.
Speaking of Oberyn's daughters, one of his other daughters, Sarella, is studying at the Citadel If you didn't catch that, Alleras is
Sarella.
This means Oberyn's daughter has been spending time with Maester Marwyn, a maester that studies dark magic and who has access to a glass candle -
Something that can see across the world and enter people's dreams.
Now I'd really like to stress the importance of religion to Doran's plan. When Arianne was trapped in her tower,
she was given four books to read. Their subjects were history, Dornish law, dragons and septons.
So we should expect to see all of these in the Dornish master plan.
But getting back to Oberyn's background. Oberyn's background seems rather unique
but there's actually a sellsword company with the exact same background; and that company is the Brave Companions.
Jaime describes the Brave Companions of being both foreign and
Dornish. They also have Qyburn who also has connections in Dorne;
who also studied at the Citadel; who also studied dark magic; who also studied poison; and who also studied with Marwyn.
And after the Brave Companions disbanded many of them headed towards Oldtown where the Citadel is. But the most striking
similarity between Oberyn and the Brave Companions is the mutual
fascination with the Faith of the Seven. We have Septon Utt, we have Urswyck the Faithful,
Timeon the Dornishman (yells out for the mother before dying) and we have Qyburn, who is
absolutely obsessed with the Faith of the Seven. Now I understand that this is a bold proposition, the connection between the Martells and the Brave Companions.
But it actually makes a lot of sense once you see the plan unfold. Now the Brave Companions were first hired by Lannisters
but then inexplicably
changed sides to join the Boltons. So they went from the richer party to the poorer party; in other words, the exact
opposite of what a sellsword company is supposed to do. First thing they did was kill Amory Lorch.
That's weird. Aren't sell sword companies supposed to take people hostage and sell them for money?
Amory Lorch's family's rich. His house shield even has frigging gold coins on it. And they
executed Lorch by feeding him to a bear. That means there's no body and no deterrent for your enemies. That's the whole point.
That's why people put heads on spikes; and leave hanged men up and flay men
and put them in front of their castle. The Brave Companions' actions seem insane -
unless you work for House Martell. The killing plays into Oberyn's hands perfectly later.
Tywin later tries to make Amory Lorch the patsy for Elia's murder
but because there's no body and the story is ridiculous Oberyn can quite publicly scoff at it.
Now a little bit later Brienne and Jaime end up running into the Brave Companions. The Brave Companions are ecstatic about the run-in.
They imediately take Jaime to Vargo Hoat, who orders Jamie's hand be cut off.
Wait a minute, Vargo, didn't you just lose money by chopping up Jaime's hand? If you love hand shopping so much
why is Brienne ordered to be left unharmed? Keep in mind, Roose Bolton is furious about this hand chopping.
So what's the deal? It seems insane.
Unless you're working for House Martell.
Now Qyburn is conveniently at Harrenhal to heal Jaime, and it's the healing of Jaime thatt first causes Cersei to trust Qyburn.
We'll get back to Qyburn in a second;
but I wanted to touch on what the Brave Companions were doing when Brienne and Jaime ran into them. Roose Bolton had ordered them to
root out Lannisters in the area, but, instead,
they're wasting the day sacking a sept. And this wasn't an isolated incident. Arya and the Brotherhood Without Banners also find the Brave Companions
sacking a different sept. And this sacrilege seems to be widespread. In A Feast for Crows, Brienne runs into the future High Sparrow.
He's traveling with a cart filled with dead septons, that Brienne surmises is from the Brave Companions. The Brave companions
seem to have created the Sparrow movement; a religious backlash to the Brave Companions'
sacrilege. And it's Qyburn who later can't shut up about the Sparrow movement when no one else seems to care.
Now back to Oberyn. Oberyn heads the King's Landing knowing
he's going to fight the Mountain. Now Oberyn loses;
but he would have won had he not done two things:
first, was casting a spell on his poison. The spell slowed the effects of the poison,
allowing the Mountain to kill Oberyn. The second was demanding a confession. Oberyn had the Mountain at various points during the fight
but kept wanting the Mountain to confess. So this poison and this confession were important.
They were worth dying over. Nonetheless, the poison seems to have taken the Mountain out. And where did the Mountain end up? In
Qyburn's hands. Now, you may find it weird that Oberyn planned to fight the Mountain before he left for King's Landing.
How did he know Joffrey would be poisoned? And how did he know Tyrion would be accused of the poisoning? The answer is he didn't.
Oberyn came to King's Landing and poisoned Tywin and was expecting to go on trial for Tywin's murder.
That's right; when Tyrion killed his own father, he actually killed a dying man.
How do we know this? Well, when Pycelle is describing his poisons during the trial, he mentions Widow's blood, which causes death by
constipation. Tyrion later remarks that his father looks like he's been poisoned; and when Tyrion confronts him during his escape,
Tywin is on the toilet. He's been there a while, as Shae, the prostitute, is asleep.
It's only after Tywin dies that his poo comes out. For some unknown reason his body reeks afterwards.
And you know who ends up with his body?
Qyburn.
And this is the point where the plans come together in a very cool way.
So the Brave Companions
essentially framed House Lannister for
sacrilege and this caused the rise of the High Sparrow, who is itching to put Cersei on trial for anything. Qyburn's
manipulation has pushed Cersei into even more crimes.
Now normally Cersei would be untouchable because she has the best fighter in the world.
But the Brave Companions took away his hand. And so Qyburn has created Cersei a new champion out of the body of Gregor -
Ser Robert Strong. And the creation of this Frankenstein's Monster was aided by Oberyn's poison,
that seemingly wouldn't let Gregor die.
But Oberyn's confession made Tywin and Cersei promise that Gregor would die.
So Cersei orders Qyburn to send the Dornish the head of Gregor. Qyburn sends them a head -
but the head lacks any flesh on it. The Dornish worry that the head is actually the Mountain's.
And then Oberyn's daughter, Nymeria, seems to explain
Oberyn's plan. She says: If Gregor Clegane is alive soon, or late the truth will come out.
The man was eight feet tall, there is not another like him in all of Westeros. If any such appears again,
Cersei Lannister will be exposed as a liar before all the Seven Kingdoms.
So simply by using Robert Strong Cersei is about to expose herself as a liar.
And that's as far as we are at the story.
But the Martell plan goes even bigger than the Lannisters; and we'll talk about that in Part Two.