Princess Elia Martell Of Dorne And Her Historical Un-Parallel/Un-Equivalent
I've always been fascinated with historical female figures who suffered in the way Elia Martell did.
I made a post previously about Elia Martell being in many uncanny ways the literary parallel to Andromache of Troy.
This post today is about Princess Elia of Dorne and the real-life Roman Empress Milonia.
Milonia Caesonia was Roman empress as the fourth and last wife of the Roman emperor Caligula from their marriage in AD 39 until they were both assassinated in 41.
Princess Elia Nymeros Martell was a princess of Dorne. She was married to the crown prince of Westeros, Rhaegar Targaryen, in a lavish ceremony at the Great Sept Of Baelor, and by him birthed Rhaenys and Aegon. Elia was raped and murdered by Gregor Clegane in the Sack of King's Landing during Robert's Rebellion.
Milonia was seven years older than her husband, while Elia was only two years older than hers.
Milonia, due to not being considered particularly attractive, and from a Roman family of little prominence, as well as her age, was seen as a very unconventional choice for an Emperor's wife, but by all reports Caligula loved her passionately and faithfully till the end.
Elia is mentioned, both in the books and outside of them by the author, as being an incredibly beautiful young woman, born a princess in her own right, yet the event which ultimately led to her gruesome death was her husband publicly cheating on and shaming her.
Milonia was perceived by some contemporaries as having a "malevolent" character, yet she remained loyal to Caligula until their deaths.
Jealous people who desired Elia's station and husband for themselves, thought her unworthy of her disloyal husband, and yet the only fault of hers they can name is her ill health (despite which she gave Rhaegar two children in two years) and her chest size (as if small breasts in any way equal ugliness).
Milonia's husband grew up under the paranoid Emperor Tiberius, a dark, reclusive and sombre ruler famously called "the gloomiest of men", who murdered his family, fostering deep insecurity.
Elia's husband grew up in the Targaryen court under an inexperienced father, who had come into kinghood, much like Emperor Tiberius, at an unexpected time due to many sudden tragic deaths in the ruling family.
Aerys ii, unlike Tiberius, had not started out in sadness.
Instead, at the start of his reign, Aerys had been generous, ambitious, and lively. He liked music, dancing, masked balls, and young women, but he was not known for his diligence or intelligence.
Aerys grew obsessive and fearful due to only having fathered one surviving child for many years. His worst characteristics quickly devolved into madness following the Defiance of Duskendale.
Caligula’s traumatic upbringing, potential mental illness induced by a 37 A.D. fever, and an adversarial relationship with the Senate, led to tyrannical behavior.
Considering Aerys ii had once been a handsome man with undeniable charm, only to end up with the moniker 'The Mad King', it is easy to see that after beautiful Rhaegar's baffling crowning of his cousin's betrothed in front of his own wife and all of the realm, then disappearing with her for near a year while war raged, his land bled, his people were defiled, and his wife and children held hostage by a raging madman with absolute authority over them, in this light, it makes sense that the average smallfolk during the rebellion probably thought Rhaegar was going down the same dark path of Targaryen madness his father had.
But unlike Caligula, Rhaegar never came into his power as a monstrous ruler, for he died as a disappointment of a prince and warrior in the only battle of his life, which he had been made to participate in by his father, the king.
Rumors of incest with his own sisters, particularly with Drusilla and Agrippina, shadowed the reign of Milonia's husband.
The only surviving sister of Elia's husband was born after his death, and told by Rhaegar's younger brother that had she been born earlier, Rhaegar would have married her, not Princess Elia, in the incestuous custom of House Targaryen.
Both couples, Milonia and Caligula, and Rhaegar and Elia, were married for only a few years, before the erratic, insensible actions of the husbands brought the world crashing down on their wives' heads.
Milonia's fate was sealed the moment her loving husband died, just as Elia's fate was sealed the moment her unloving husband died.
Caligula's assassins, fearing continued support for his family and allies, sought out and murdered Caligula's wife, Milonia, and their young daughter, Julia Drusilla, but were unable to reach Caligula's uncle, Claudius.
Everyone knew that as long as the trueborn heirs of Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaenys lived, loyalists would rally behind them to oppose the usurper, Robert Baratheon.
Thus, having decided to throw his lot in with the man who smashed Rhaegar's chest in, Tywin Lannister slaughtered Rhaegar's children and wife, but was unable to reach Rhaegar's pregnant mother and younger brother.
The sexual torture of Elia Martell was unprecedented and completely unnecessary. It serves only to further show what an ego and emotion-driven sexual sadist Tywin Lannister is, and not the calculating villain most of the show fans and many book readers falsely, and without proof, make him out to be.
The manner of their deaths.
Hours after Caligula's death, his wife and daughter were killed in the same coup.
When her husband's assassins came upon her, Milonia is said to have faced her death with courage, despite grieving for her husband.
Milonia Caesonia was stabbed to death by a tribune of the Praetorian Guard named Lupus, acting on the orders of Cassius Chaerea, who had led the plot against Caligula.
Her daughter Julia Drusilla was murdered by "having her brains knocked out against a wall."
After her disloyal husband and brave, loving uncle, and 10,000 of her countrymen besides, fell at the Battle of the Trident, Elia Martell and her two children were murdered during the Sack of king's Landing.
Some rumors spoke that Clegane had r*ped Elia and then put her to the sword.
Gregor Clegane years later confessed to having dashed the head of Elia's screaming infant to pieces against the wall, and then r*ped Elia with her baby son's blood and brains on his body, and then smashed her head in through her eye sockets.
Elia's three year old daughter, Princess Rhaenys, had run away to hide under her father's bed, hoping futilely that he would come rescue her, and was dragged out kicking and screaming by Amory Lorch, who proceeded to stab her to death half a hundred times.
After their murders, the bodies of Empress Milonia and her daughter were disposed of, and while they may have been initially buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus, no specific, lasting tomb for them has survived, for they were subjected to damnatio memoriae (destruction of memory), with all their statues and portraits destroyed, resulting in a complete erasure of their likenesses.
After their murders, the mutilated and desecrated Princess Elia and her babies were presented wrapped in Lannister cloaks to the new king Robert Baratheon by Lord Tywin, a gift meant to pledge his fealty to the new order.
The red cloth, while said to have "graciously" hidden the color of their blood a little, so it did not show too badly, could not hide that the Princess Rhaenys was only a butchered toddler, barefoot and still dressed in her bed gown, while baby Prince Aegon's skull was an unrecognizable ruin of gore.
And Elia's dead body, though it was among them, was not seen as worth any thought, compared to "Rhaegar's heirs".
She was their mother, the only parent who did not abandon them, and tried to protect them till the cruel end, but the world only values those babies as "Rhaegar's heirs", not the little humans that Elia birthed and nursed and raised alone with her own lifeblood.
It is plain to see that Empress Milonia's death was the inspiration behind Princess Rhaenys being stabbed to death, and her baby daughter's death was the inspiration behind the death of Prince Aegon.
But what was the need to put "half a hundred thrusts" of the sword, in writing about the murder of a female toddler?
Why did GRRM not simply say that Rhaenys was stabbed once and bled out?
Why write her end in such psychosexual manner?
Creepy George R R Martin is creepy.
He is even creepier in the sexual, physical and psychological torture he subjected the only woman of color from the rebellion era to.
Rhaegar somehow manages to get a proper Targaryen funeral from the rebels, depite their leader and new king Robert Baratheon hating his guts more than anything. (GRRM confirmed this in an interview years ago.)
But his infant and toddler are too "dragonspawn" for Robert to give them a proper cremation per Targaryen custom?
Lyanna Stark dies painfully in childbirth, but she lets go of her hold on life only after her elder brother promises to protect and lovingly raises her only child, and then her dead body is treated with care under Lord Eddard's watchful eye, and he gives her an honored place in the crypts of their ancestors beneath their family keep, right beside her loving father and eldest brother.
Somehow, even Brandon Stark and Rickard Stark's bones made it safely and un-defiled back to Winterfell, despite them dying brutally in the custody of the Mad King, and Ned Stark only reaching the last place they were alive in a year after the fact.
Even Ice, the ancestral sword of House Stark, which should have been on Lord Rickard's person when Aerys murdered him, somehow was not lost.
But it is Elia's bones, and those of her children, that are never returned to her family.
They are not even told what happened to them.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if GRRM revealed tomorrow that Tywin Lannister pissed on their mangled remains and then threw them to the pigs.
Elia Martell's mother was a ruling princess of Dorne, the only female ruler in her own right from among the lord paramounts of that era.
Yet, among her contemporaries and peers, she, the sole ruling woman, is the only one who remains nameless. When we have whole personalities, hobbies, and family trees for the men.
When a fan even asked GRRM about it point blank, he jokingly said that they'd clearly given it more thought than he had. Or would.
"Say her name" are empty words.
They are wind that does not matter.
The murderer of Elia's daughter never acknowledged his crime, never got any punishment for it, not even a slap on the wrist, and died a completely unrelated death.
The man who r*ped and murdered Elia, and murdered her son, only confessed his crime nearly two decades later while he was killing Elia's brother in the same manner.
GRRM would never dream of doing this to his precious Starks.
When it comes to House Martell, it is a pattern.
It is an ugly pattern by the author, as well as by the audience, who have, since the introduction of House Martell in the books, been hoping their desire for justice will blow up in their face, unlike precious (highborn) Northerners, who have a birthright to vengeance, though they have not suffered, and never will suffer, half of what House Martell went through in the Rebellion alone.
And it paints a disgraceful picture of racism and misogyny.
Their is literally not a single real-world equivalent to the r*pe and murder of Elia Martell.
Toddler princesses of fallen dynasties were married to the usurpers or their heir, to strengthen the new regime's claim to the throne, not treated as pincushions.
Noblewomen were to be hostages and ransomed for huge sums, not r*ped and forever denied justice.
