I am Palestinian and there is absolutely no characteristic of Palestinian culture in Dorne or the Martells. Their stans only use racial stereotypes about us & orientalist characterization to justify it and prove that the Dornish are âPOCâ in order to make them seem oppressed, and are pushing even more racism and orientalism towards MENA populations.
According to them, the Dornish are simultaneously Arab, Desi, Amazigh, Iranians, Turkish, and sometimes, Latinos. North African, West Asian, and South Asian countries are lump together as one monolithic âbrown peopleâ entity. 30+ countries with multiple, unique, and diverse cultures and religions, very distinct from each other. The Martells simultaneously celebrate Diwali and goes to Hajj. Why would the Dornish follow Hinduism or Islam ?? They largely follow the Faith of the Seven, the Westerosi Catholic Church.
For their edits, they use pictures of the Alcazar of Seville or the Alhambra, castles located in SPAIN, and fancast drop-dead gorgeous INDIANS actresses like Deepika Padukone, Freida Pinto, Aishwarya Rai as Elia (âa kitchen drabâ....) or adult Rhaenys. Or Dev Patel as Young Griff. They keep using the screenshot of GRRM listing Palestine as one of his inspiration for Dorne to justify their headcanons, so why do they keep insisting on using Bollywood movies, Indian actors, Indian monuments, saris, etc ?? The only common points between the Alcazar of Seville/Alhambra and the Taj Mahal are the Islamic architecture and the engraving of Quranic verses.
Disclaimer: EDITED, Long, and Repetitive bc of attempt at clarity and Reminding Readers
Maybe coming from this post (I've gone back and edited it with corrections)?
I think it's because people really want to see PoC representation in their high fantasy literature, which is completely valid. However, yeah, the Dornish aren't Palestinian-coded nor Arab/SouthAsian/etc.-coded...I mean, they mainly worship the Seven, too, the Westerosi polytheistic version of Catholicism. So they can't necessarily be 1-1 like Palestine in terms of culture & ethnicity, even though the ME does have Judaism & Christian peoples. Again, Dorne--as far as was told & shown--mainly worship the Seven. (look to section "B", point #1)
The Point: A singular major, past, centuries-old event of intermarriage before the Targs arrived is not a continuous event. The Dornish are nor and have never been subjected to become a state under the Westerosi crown for there to even be a commencement of racialization as by the would-be conquerors of said situation.
The Rhoynar marrying pre-Rhoynar Dornish peoples happened in a few isolated incidents. Afterward, the people became what they now are and after many decades & centuries,
they do not have that "two people" identity anymore. They are just "Dornish".
Their ancestry is always brought up mainly because of their custom of noblewomen being equally as able and seen as worthy to rule as their men, esp the Martells. To compare them to Westerosi farther up.
Doylistically, on the one hand, people could claim that the Dornish could claim PoC-ness or be easily adapted into being played by PoC actors in the real modern sense by who they are descended from -> an Essosi people who had darker skin. Yet the Valyrians and Andals--who themselves come from Essos originally!--are "white" by the 1st being "proto-English with a Catholic religious analog and the 2nd being an ancient Rome-analog"?!
The Dornish are not Rhoynish either just because they are descended from the Rhoynar who--a very long time ago (centuries, before the conquest)--intermarried with Andal-descended lords and presumably smallfolk. Ethnically, they are something else entirely (maybe Andal-Rhoynar but that seems insufficient) their own thing from their unique history.
So, we have "Moor" descendants marrying "white" Christian Spaniards. So, like Spaniards and Italians, they seem the "lesser whites" which still makes N.Euro descent and N.Euro look at Italians, Spaniards, or those in Central EU as "lesser whites". Meaning that they have both Andal and Rhoynish roots with the Rhoynish equal primogeniture and opener-sexuality and little-to-no bastard stigma really defining its difference from those Westerosi further north. Dorne is a state with various skin-colored but seemingly non-racialized people (internally, not how the Andal-FM nor Daeron I characterize Dorne) and the Dornish people are a unique ethnic group.
And because race has always been about power and not culture. And the Dornish have always maintained their independence before Daeron II when they voluntarily--for the most part--finally became a vassal state under the feudal royal crown of Westeros.
Before I get into it, "olive" skin is supposed to mean:
moderate or lighter tan or brownish skin, and it is often described as having tan, brown, cream, greenish, yellowish, or golden undertones
Therefore, anyone of any race can have an "olive" tone to their skin:
I was one of those who watched the show before I read the book, and I thought the Martells were PoC and I did some research. Apparently, Oberyn looks like this to one semi-canon source:
đ¨ Credit: Magali Villeneuve
has the features of a salty Dornishman [more below in section C, but: "These Dornishmen are lithe and dark, with smooth olive skin and long black hair, having been most strongly influenced by the Rhoynar"]. He is a tall, slender, graceful, and fit man, and has a lined and saturnine face with thin eyebrows, black "viper" eyes and a sharp nose. His hair is lustrous and black, with only a few silver streaks, and recedes from his brow in a widow's peak.
Arianne looks something like this in one source:
Darker than "olive" Her description:
is buxom and beautiful, with olive skin, large dark eyes and long, thick black hair that falls in ringlets to the middle of her back. She has full lips, a husky voice, and round ripe breasts with huge dark nipples. Favoring her mother Mellario, Arianne is short, standing at five foot two.
Mellario was from the Essosi "Free City" city of Norvos but their skin color is not really described.
Oberyn's daughters all have different complexions and mothers of different origins, Westerosi and Essosi (all descriptions from the official wiki):
Obara -- "big-boned woman near to thirty, long-legged, with close-set eyes and with the same rat-brown hair of her mother which she sometimes ties in a knot. She strides quickly and angrily. Obara has callused hands and can have a mannish look." -- mother: unnamed Oldtown prostitute
Nymeria -- "slim and slender as a willow, with straight black hair worn in a long braid which pulls back from a widow's peak. She has dark eyes which are large and lustrous. Her full lips are wine red and curve in a silken smile, and she has high cheekbones. Areo Hotah describes Nym as having pale white skin in A Feast for Crows but mentions her olive skin in A Dance with Dragons." -- unnamed noble Volantene, specifically of the "Old Blood" - Volantis, another Free City in Essos
Tyene -- "is fair, with golden hair and deep blue eyes. Dimples bloom in her cheeks, and she has a gentle, sweet voice" -- mother: a septa from the Reach
Sarella -- "light brown skin" -- mother: the Summer Islander captain of The Feathered Kissed ship
Elia -- black hair/"her black braid flying behind her" (The Winds of Winter, Arianne I) -- mother: Ellaria Sand
Obella, Dorea, and Loreza -- no description as of Nov 5, 2023 -- mother: Ellaria Sand
Ellaria Sand is supposed to look like this:
Although not accounted as a beautiful woman, Ellaria is regarded as attractive and eye-catching, with an exotic, sensuous flair. She has black hair.
"black-haired paramour" & Â "She is not truly beautiful, she [Sansa] thought, but something about her draws the eye."
(A Storm of Swords; Sansa IV)
And Doran Martell (currently reigning as the Prince of Dorne) has no canonical physical description aside from "His body is soft and shapeless, and the gout has swollen and reddened the joints of his knees, toes, and hands." However, since he is Oberyn's brother we can assume that he most likely has similar "salty Dornish" coloring.
The anon of the first linked post all the way up above: "GRRM himself has said that the closest equivalent of Dorne to the real world is the Moorish influences of Spain, and mentions PALESTINE and Wales as being two other influences. Literally his own words. Even in Game of Thrones, they filmed the Water Garden scenes in the Alcazar of Seville, a beautiful Moorish castle in Spain. That castle was literally built by Muslims and incorporates verses from the Quran and countless traditional Arabic and Islamic architectural elements".
You: "there is absolutely no characteristic of Palestinian culture in Dorne or the Martells. Their stans only use racial stereotypes about us & orientalist characterization to justify it and prove that the Dornish are âPOCâ in order to make them seem oppressed, and are pushing even more racism and orientalism towards MENA populations" AND "North African, West Asian, and South Asian countries are lump together as one monolithic âbrown peopleâ entity." AND "They keep using the screenshot of GRRM listing Palestine as one of his inspiration for Dorne to justify their headcanons, so why do they keep insisting on using Bollywood movies, Indian actors, Indian monuments, saris, etc ?? The only common points between the Alcazar of Seville/Alhambra and the Taj Mahal are the Islamic architecture and the engraving of Quranic verses."
If we are talking about race vs ethnicity & the rise of racism from religious or ethnic differences and a desire for colonial domination...
Dornish people mainly live in their own principality or a kind of state controlled by a "prince" or "princess" that is actually unlike the Rhoynar cities because there were multiple "city-states" under several Rhoynar princes and princesses who, while sharing a language, also likely had different laws and sub-styles of the dress and think of themselves as culturally/ethnically different from each other.
Thus in terms of Dornish people being oppressed or experiencing racial oppression alone (bc with race comes the oppression you cannot separate these twon phenomena since race as a constuct was specifically created for several human right violations and power hierarchies), we cannot compare Dornish people nor the Dornish state to Palestinian refugees and Palestinians living under an apartheid. They are not the same, they are not living under the same conditions of racial or ethnic terror. And yes, a lot of Palestinian people out of this region of the Middle East draw a large part of their Palestinian identity from their memories and terms with the Nakba and the effects of said event that exist today and have been for more than 50 years. What I'd say is similar is that many Dornish may also draw some of their identity from their continued resistance to conquest...but the Dornish are not resisting ethnic cleansing, genocide, or racial extinction. The first Targaryen attempts at conquest were decidedly non-ethnic-cleansing so much as just your average kind of "conquest" that Andal, nonDornish Westerosi have performed against each other before the Daenys and her father ever settled at Dragonstone. Yes, Westerosi can be xenophobic towards Dornishmen but that includes the "stone", fair-skinned Dornishmen as we see from the continuous marcher vs Dornish conflicts over land & grudges/vendettas over past conflicts/deaths.
What are some traits of Palestinians or Palestinian culture that another anon was trying to say the Dornish currently have?
"Game of Thrones"--"filmed the Water Garden scenes in the Alcazar of Seville, a beautiful Moorish"
"the Quran and countless traditional Arabic and Islamic architectural elements"
"Moorish", as Medieval and early-mod period EUs used, referred to Muslim Arab-speakers. Aside from North Africans, Arabs, and Amazigh did include Muslim Europeans, because Islam itself was the defining basis for their difference from those Christian Europeans and the regions where people who adopted Islam or Islamic states dominated where those N.Africans, Arabs, and Amazigh lived. In a medieval context, DOUBLY SO.
Once again, Dorne does not worship any Rhoynish god & their official religion is decidedly of the Faith of the Seven (aside from those of the Greenblood, but these are not a large part, a dominant, nor very influential part of the Dornish population).
Nowhere did GRRM say that the Welsh inspiration only applied to the stony Dornish. Why do people think this? Perhaps because these are the ones closest to the Marches and thus fighting often with Reach/Stormland marchers, they'd be the most Welsh/Irish-like. The Welsh/Irish/Scottish inspiration, however, is the fight for separation from a conquering centralizing entity--societal/governmental separation from the rest of Westeros--& having a separate identity from that almost like Northmen seeing themselves as different culturally and ethnically from "southorn" Andal people and vice versa bc of their different customs regarding the allowed genders to rule that come from Rhoynar customs.
While there will be Rhoynish elements to fashion, architecture, metalworking, and inflection of the Common Tongue (accent)...it does not stop the Dornish from, again:
recognizing that their state language is the Common Tongue [the Red Princes & some of their descendants of the Martells tried to eradicate the use of the Rhoynish language from the Red Princes] even though many of the Dornish's accents are very influenced by the Rhoynar to the current day
worshipping the Seven and not Rhoynish gods
having some elements of Andal fashion and architecture along with Andal ones, even if the "stony" Dornish have more Andal influence in dress, etc. [think of Spain and its Arab or Islamic architecture...Spain is a European country]
having a class system similar to Andal-FM Westeros: aristocracy, or the "ruling class" vs everyone else [less about the culture here, more about hierarchy structure which is not the same as a culture]
No matter how far down south or into the desert we go. Of course, dress will change in different Dornish regions' climates but also by class and/or wealth.
And this is said screenshot of GRRM talking about the influences that made Dorne what it is ("So Spake Martin", 2000):
"flavor given the culture [previous Andal Dorne preNymeria] by the great Rhoynar influx"
"South of the wall a hot, dry country more like Spain or Palestine [not just Palestine, and this was referring to climate in the first place, not culture]"
"Moorish influence [not dominant power or overlord] in parts of Spain [not an African, Asian, etc. region, again, emphasis on it being like Spain with an "outsider" "influence"]"
"Dorne is Wales mixed with Spain and Palestine with some entirely imaginary influences mixed in" [emphasis on Dorne being claimed as an amalgamation with just one PoC real-world state with PoC populations]
People need to see GRRM's "mixing and matching", and no "non-for-one transplants" regarding PoC influences. Westeros, though obviously an England/Anglo-Saxon "transplant", is still not exactly historically like England in that Dorne is similar but not equal to Wales or Spain or Turkey/Palestine yet not itself equal to a Caliphate due to religion and language.
However, aside from the Dornish not really even being a part of a racialized state under a dominant power racialized as superior, this is what GRRM says about the Dornish and Martells (his blog, 2013):
This is about what GRRM said in terms of JUST physical appearance -> "As for the Dornishmen, well, though by and large I reject one to one analogies, I've always pictured the "salty Dornish" as being more Mediterranean than African in appearance; Greek, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, etc. Dark hair and eyes, olive skin. Pedro Pascal is Chilean. (Check out Amok's version of the Red Viper, that's how I saw him. Or Magali Villenueve's beautiful and sexy portrait of Princess Arianne)."
And this was one of the responses:
Most relevant piece bc it mirrors the anon's definitions of race: "If Alessandro de'Medici was the Duke of Florence, why not a brown man as the Prince of Dorne? Even now, with your description of Dorne as "Mediterranean," I immediately think of the vastness of the region, which saw so much North African and Middle Eastern influence."
This entire exchange on GRRM's website reveals that originally the Martells/most Dornish were inspired by EU Mediterranean people, like the Portuguese or Spaniards, Greeks and Italians.
While it's certainly possible bc of the proximity of geographical locations within the Mediterranean regions and the population makeup of various Italian states including "Moor" and darker-skinned folks, we don't know for absolutely certain if Alessandro de Medici truly had a slave-servant mother or otherwise an Arab/African mother--he was one man whom many in those upper circles wanted gone for their own rise to power.
Unfortunately, while there shouldn't be anything wrong with being of a woman with a different ethnicity or religion, claiming that he was from a "Moor" mother would be a way for other people to try to diminish his reputation and likeness-peerage with those in court as Alicent and the greens trying to claim Rhaenyra was unfaithful to Laenor and that her kids with him are actually bastards to ruin her reputation. It wouldn't be about the "truth" so much as swaying public opinion with certain details of appearance. A political strategy.
At the same time, who knows, perhaps they used the fact of him looking darker than a lot of EUs around them...but the EUs themselves have married N.Africans and also came in several "shades"...so yeah.
If we are only talking Watsoniansly/in-world/in-text vs modern ethnic (not racial) identities, your mother being a "Moor" or Muslim did not make you yourself a Muslim, Moor, or racially "Black" or Arab, and "biracial"/"mixed race"--as a racial term or category of Blackness or whiteness--wasn't a thing for these Italians.
One man/a few people in higher circles or in power doesn't make the entire family or state PoC when most of them appear pale, speak a specific Italian dialect, AND live under European customs forever after and before.
His presence did not recreate the entire Medici or anyone descended from them into Africans/Arabs ethnically nor racially. "Racially", he would have been seen as "more" "noble Italian Christian" than anything, even with some using his skin to liken him to the socially suspected, racialized "Moors". And just because there were absolutely NA. and M.E. influences in many non-EU and EU music, literature, architecture, etc., doesn't make every Mediterranean person PoC. (We find out that the idea of courtly love partially was influenced by an Islamic mystical conception of love itself as being "a delightful disease, as demanding of faithful service" [coming from Crusade contact]. It doesn't suddenly mean that "Italy" [one of the first regions to pass down such things through Petrarch] became/was/is a PoC region. Still doesn't make Italians PoC.)
RACE - Mediterranean/Italian/Spaniard/Portuguese/Southern Europeans have BOTH been racialized as "lesser" whites in early modern period European AND have the closest proximity to the "best" whiteness that always becomes THE definition of "white" under pre-WWII phrenology and eugenic scientific racism. "Best" becomes "true", never leaving its own hierarchy but always able to retreat back into its own "absolute naturality" to justify that created hierarchy. These two things came hand in hand and justified each other because both sought to "prove" that "biological and behavioral characteristics were fixed and unchangeable, and placed individuals, populations and nations inside of that hierarchy" through skull measurements...which itself comes from that medieval idea of one's "nobility" or lack thereof being indicative in appearance.
As I said above, even today, some white people of Protestant-N.European backgrounds sometimes look at Italians/Italian-descent people through their stereotypes of being "hotblooded", and hypersexual "white" people. This is most definitely an element of racialization. These "other" whites are those descended from the NorthWestern regions of Europe (England, France, Germany, and Scandinavia/Nordic people).
c. HOWEVER!!!!! [now we're talking TV adaptations]
The user in the pics above who wished for more PoC representation in the TV and book series through the Martells makes a good point that "Mediterranean" doesn't have to be limited to the European Med regions and peoples. Because N.African, ME, etc. peoples (those not racially classified as "white") are also directly connected to the Mediterranean Sea: Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, Libya, Algeria, etc...it's weird how race makes us consider these people not Mediterranean, but that's race for you, it denies culture and ethnicity for the sake of "white" supremacy
GRRM does conflate the general Mediterranean with EU Med, and that's because the racial category "Mediterranean" defines "Mediterranean" as "white people from Spain, Italy, etc"
While there weren't "black", "PoC", "brown" racial categorizations in any Arthurian legends nor the societies that these came from, there were racializations (as in descriptions and sense of the person that made them different by look by some "degree" even if not toally by "kind") of characters that were told to be of different/non-EU origins.
they were expressing the racial problems with GRRM's original intent for the Martells and some Dornish to be imagined as those who'd be categorized as PoC or brown in the modern world, telling us that there is room for PoC in-world leaders and nobles as there were in Arthurian legends and other medieval romances
They were right to point out the overall, serious difference in how most PoC-confirmed or imagined or similar people were more "supporting characters" to specific "white" characters and that there was a transmedia need for more diversity where the PoC-acted/played characters in adaptations since the original works AND adaptations are made for racialized audiences of the modern world.
Like with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre--where Rochester's first, "mad" wife, Jamaica-born, Creole-heritage Bertha Mason, aka Bertha Antoinetta Rochester--we see a lot of debate over characters' racial identities between white and PoC readers in multiple EU pieces of literature. This is a thing descended from that academic conflict that is sociopolitically motivated.
The documented hot refusal from many white historians and "lay" white readers to even contemplate the possibilities of a PoC-featured-character (positively or not) under certain circumstances comes from the enduring acceptance and expectation that most mainstream media will have whiteness at the center and default of the story. That the media is created and will be created and should be created for white audiences. which is exactly what we should be breaking.
So, I believe that the reason we have people saying the Martells are PoCs is because they saw the definite potential of modern racialization from the precursors of true racial categories happening in ASoIaF that can become like those in real modern societies; they wanted to see themselves or their experiences in the fiction they engage with, just like that user above. Just like that commentator. So they use South East Asian clothes and other things to fan cast/re-cast/reimagine even after what GRRM has made bc before then they have already built that picture for years since they read the main series and before the show aired.
When English/NW Europeans and pre-1800s writers say things like "swarthy" or "tall, dark, and handsome", they were not usually saying this person was as dark as a Western African but they may sometimes use racial/color ideology to characterize a EU white person as "too passionate", "blustering", "angry", and "lacking enough proper restraint". GRRM is the same, as he tells us in the picture above from his blog!
And since we can't always detect a person's race or lineage just by looking at them, it also still means that they may have African or Middle Eastern ancestry. Then we got to ask ourselves when and where do some of our (mostly the U.S. I refer to, but other countries' racial categories are still very different) definitions of race need to overshadow the text/past racial categorizations and racializations? It's even stranger when you realize that even caring about something like this comes from a very specific history series of particular events of people performing racialization.
But even though the now-Dornish are a people who have been forever changed by pre-Rhoynar Dornish men's intermarriages with Rhoynar women, their kids (and not the nonDornish Westerosi) were the ones to determine what Dorne would look like.
Though they seem to match the definition of a "mixed race" and therefore are equal to persons racialized as "PoC" today, in many societies like the U.S. (one-drop and grandfather clause), that simply doesn't exist for Dorne because there was no nonDornish oppressive power that defined legal racial definitions that affected their infrastructure or made them second-class citizens for them to then develop their own ethnicity like Black people in the U.S, which is its own race-ethnicity developed from legal and economic atrocities and racialization.
Most of the oppression common-born Dornish face is from Dornish aristocracy! Class-based rather than race or religion-based.
Yeah, there's a possibility that some people felt a sort of having two different identities as the kids and even grandkids of Nymeria's women and the pre-Rhoynar Dornish men, but without that element of another group enforcing a new racialization to further divide the Dornish (as Daeron I foreshadows or clues us in?!) all there is that shared history and Martell overlordship, and the Martells are one of those with the most Rhoynish/not-Andal-FM influence. Of course, most of Dorne will follow suit. There are no laws in place to determine who is "PoC", "Coloured", or "white" or any ASoIaF-fantasy version. They have a past/centuries-old and successful intermarrying between (mainly male) Martells and Nymeria's (mostly female) people WHILE having the same language and religion as the rest of Westeros, as well as other customs.
With the way GRRM made them, they are both "white" and not "white" (according to NorthWestern Europeans of the 1800s onwards) because "whiteness" as an actual race is not a thing in Westeros. And for the sake of readers looking for people to claim to have PoCness, whiteness itself has undergone several definitions according to the immediate political needs of those holding the higher positions of power or influence in the state or groups within states seeking political privileges from being racialized by that dominant society's legal and social systems.
This means they can be as "dark" as GoT Oberyn and even have what some modern people see as Arabic physical features (which kinda makes little sense bc Arabs share a lot of features with some "Med" Europeans, especially Turkish ones and Palestinian Arabs themselves have a spectrum of color, face shape, etc.) but we also see how they can be quite diverse in the canon with paler "stony" (not a true ethnicity, this is a racial category that Dornsih people do not see to acknowledge and therefore is not an ethnicity) people and Oberyn's paler daughter Tyene.
Refrain: The Summer Islanders, though, ARE DEFINITELY the "Black" people of Westeros. As GRRM says in the pic I showed.
Again, "race" existed AND continues to exist to differentiate the "inferior" people from the "superior" "white" race of paler-skinned, loose/flat-haired, North-Western-then-South European peoples whose ancestors they could trace or identify with most were Christians. Whether in Brazil, all EU countries, the U.S., etc. Yes, European people/countires can be and continue to be extremely discriminatory and racist, esp against Africans and Romans. Individually and legally.
In the modern world, race is categorized differently across today's world, as evidenced by what "black" means in Brazil vs the U.S.; the South African Coloured group vs "black" vs "white" vs "Indian" (apartheid race categories, and "Coloured" still is relevant and a sort of racial category in S.Africa today); "mestizos" vs "peninsulares" vs "mulattos" of various colonizations-slavery era-to-today S.American, Mesoamerican, Caribbean countries. All because "race" is a socially constructed category, made by culturally-ethnically external persons of power over another group. Ethnicity, however, is and has always been a factually independent phenomenon.
"PoCs" as a term in itself a racial term that means "anyone who is not pale skinned AND of long, consistently 'uninterrupted'/'impure'/ European descent". It is not an ethnic term or a name for an ethnic group.
Ethnicities are social groupings purely based on shared cultural heritage, descent (from specific other ethnicities), culture, religion, and/or language.
In this way, there are 3 main ethnicities in the whole of "Westeros", which are those of FM, Andal, and Rhoynish descent and we could even argue that there may be more unknown smaller groups. And none of these are racial groups! Two of the three also share the exact same religion and language and most customs barring sexuality and primogeniture (except those of the Greenblood, who still speak Rhoynish): those of Andal and those of Rhoynish descent. First Men-descent peoples of the North worship the old gods of pre-human Westeros.
Intermarriages between certain ethnic groups were not systematically and socially outlawed or discouraged to maintain the visible and legal distinctions between racialized groups in either Dorne nor not-Dorne. No ethnic or religious groups are banned from taking certain jobs or entering guilds; no particular groups were banned from living in certain areas or even traveling and using certain items and ways of travel. (We're talking about the humans, not the TWStSotE or the giants, bc we are doing ethnic groups, not totally different species.)
How do groups get racialized and prepped for legalized racialization? Governments--monarchies and aristocracies, here--attempting to better organize their control over populations and consolidate power after past and very recent conflicts with "foreigner-conquerors" like the Muslim conquest of Hispania by the Umayyad Caliphate, to whom the anon before referred (Limpieza de sangre).
Why are they "foreign", besides coming from a literally other region and culture? Medieval people's primary identity marker besides class was religion, and Muslims were considered actual enemies of Christian societies in Europe. People saw religion as the means by which people were "inherently" different:
Especially in a period like the Middle Ages, when religion meant membership of a community much more than adherence to a set of principles or beliefs, there was a sense in which one was born a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew, just as one was born English or Persian.
("Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity"--Robert Bartlett)
This is also why in medieval literature, Jewish people were referred to as "black" and "dark-skinned" pseudo-metaphorically, as Christians had the "true" faith and therefore were spiritually "bright" or closer to God's "light". And humoral theory, with Jewish people being conceived of as a people with a more melancholic constitution (black bile = melancholy -> night, evil, malice, envy):
The Isagogue, an Arabic introduction to Galenic medicine translated into Latin in the eleventh century, similarly explains that dark skin identifies black bile as the body's ruling humor. (8) The linking of black or dark skin with melancholy continues in European texts of the twelfth and thirteenth century. Short poems delineating humoral types circulate widely in the period; the "Melancholicus" is described as "envious and sad, greedy and close-fisted / not without deceit, fearful, and of mud color [lutei].
("The Jewish body in black and white in medieval and early modern England"--M. Lindsay Kaplan)
Thus Jewish people were named "black" for their nonChristian-ness and thereby untrustworthy or "grasping" natures.
Then there is the separate history of the idea that "nobility" (as in "bravery", "virtue", and overall "good and attractive 'quality'") could be seen outwardly and obviously through physical features that curiously never actually get a consistent list or picture until the 1200s-1300s (it's always been at least grey eyes and/or blonde hair). We have to remember that the ancient Greeks and Romans were used as the medieval Europeans' inspirations for medicine, morality, philosophy, beauty standards, etc., and they themselves did not give highly detailed portraits of what makes a person "beautiful" or even in just describing women in other than vague, noncomparable terms or singular traits: Athena had "grey-eyes" and that's it...Aphrodite's hair was "long", Briseais was "tall", Chiseas was "not tall", and Hera had "nice arms". Their main concern was what men looked like and if their bodies looked "strong".
It wasn't until poets and bards of the 1200-1300s began to make lists of more features that made women attractive that we get more detailed portraits of "good-looking" people and men vs women attractiveness. (For women, the "best" became to have small and high breasts, grey eyes, blonde hair, pale skin, white teeth, a mouth like a rosebud in size and shape, wider hips, a plump butt, and finally a round and pudgy belly. Basically a "pear-shaped" body). And this turned into the literary device of the "blazon", which the medieval poets (Petrarch popularized it) and later early-modern period poets, dramatists, and other writers, as PoetryFoundation says:
A literary blazon (or blason)Â catalogues the physical attributes of a subject, usually female. The device was made popular by Petrarch and used extensively by Elizabethan poets.
describing and making the body as a list of individual parts instead of its own whole thing, so that parts of the body can be compared to other things and thus give a certain characterization to the subject that way. The subject themselves becomes less themselves and more the perspective and "dream" of the writer/audience.
And "racial and racist stereotypesâeven ostensibly positive ones (such as âAsians are good at mathâ)âby definition, conflate and confuse biology and culture" ("Were Medieval People Racist?").
Combined -> the setup(s) for early modern-to-current racializations.
We do see some of this sort of attempt or precursor of solid racial categorization from the nonDornish towards Dornish people regardless of class: "salty", "sandy", "stony", and less known, those people who still speak Rhoynish and live by the Greenblood:
The "salty" vs "sandy" vs "stony" things are all exonymic proto-racial categorizations (like the term "Moor") that still don't present different real racial consequences among those Dornish.
Exonymic? Meaning that they are not categorizations made by the native people--noble or not.
It's not like Daeron I would have out-of-the-blue been able to create these categories without there already existing a socialized link between Rhoynish culture and "negative", not-patriarchal-enough nobility. Rhoynish influence/culture directly defines these categories. (But he didn't impose nor did an entire other group of people impose infrastructural change to Dornish society for the sake of their own created racial supremacy...ever.)
There are/were several battles and skirmishes between Stormlanders, Dornish, people of the Dornish Marches, and Reachmen Dornish. AWoIaF relates, "hot-bloodedness and sexual licentiousness, and are still viewed with some mistrust and rivalry by the people of the neighboring Dornish Marches and the Reach". Dorne's equal primogeniture (i.e., far less intense and critical misogyny) and freer sexuality are those things that are made more definitive of the Dornish's political difference and separation from the non-Dornish aristocrats at least at the time of Daeron II's court and marriage [zaldrizer-sovesi] AND "race" as a concept does not track equal to what we consider "race" and those racial experiences PoCs have in modern societies despite these definitions WHILE still indicating ethnic discrimination.
It's funny, because rather than the Jewish "melancholia" described above, the Dornish, by their nonDornish association, would be considered a "sanguine-choleric" people for their "hotbloodeness" and "sexual licentiousness" that really comes from:
a long history of skirmishes with other Andal peoples, then the first 3 Targs and still surviving as their own state, then those eternal ones for revenge and small pieces of resources between houses along the borders of Dorne to the north...leading to the fierce Dornish independent identity
comparatively freer sexualities and fewer sexual restrictions on gender roles (men and women, as men having sex with other men is very taboo and emasculating in the ND, "100%" Andal-FM culture)
and not treating women leaders as an anathema (equal primogeniture)
Yes, there is no racial Dornish diaspora like there is a Jewish or Black diaspora ("the dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland" usually due to wars, violence, displacement, etc.). With Dorne and Dornish people being politically and culturally independent--both in idea and practically since before Daeron II's marriage to Myriah Martell--there were definitely Dornish people moving in and out of nonDornish Westeros and some would inevitably live in ND Westeros, these people are migrants-dual-subjects of a state that is still in all the ways it matters, independent. unlike Black people in the U.S. or Coloureds in S. Africa, whose governments historically and currently gave/enforced these categories developed from European-to-settler/colonist racialization. And unlike anti-Semitic/Islamophobic laws & anti-blackness and other real-world measures, there is no evidence of any oppressive laws or daily discrimination against Dornish communities (I'll say the Sylvenna Sand of Dance fame is an indication of Westerosi patriarchy looking at Dornish less-intense patriarchy as a lesser-"dangerous" identity maker).
Their "racial?" identities also do (yet, if it will go exactly like real life) not have the oppressive or racial context that enables people to argue that Rhaegar left Elia, didn't love her, or valued her and her position as his wife because he felt racially superior to her--esp with how we have no literary (symbols, metaphors, parallels in-text) nor direct evidence of Rhaegar seeing Elia through a racial bias as his father does with Rhaenys their daughter when she was presented (which is what this entire thing came from, as Elia/Martells stans claimed and what drives that argument in this post/reblog HERE).
It is that the Dornish will be considered the lesser "race" if there ever came a time when they were ever truly conquered and imperialized by ND peoples from Westeros. For now, it is far more accurate to say that there is ethnic bias against the Dornish or the Martells that could slide into racism.
GRRM created a world and fantasy series that is trying to simulate a medieval racialization of people WHILE also inevitably showing the roots of modern civilization, which are two different forms of racialization that are nevertheless connected. In other words, GRRM hasn't successfully made 1-1 analogs concerning race.
But does "origin"="being"? How and why?
Therefore, we do see a race or race existing in Westerosi ideologies, but it is BOTH not as prominent as how they regard how women should be treated AND comparatively more fluid to modern-day race and even changeable.
Refrain: The Summer Islanders, though, ARE DEFINITELY the "Black" people of Westeros. As GRRM says in the pic I showed. I have to repeat this because I can see people trying to take advantage of it.
A people of the first few "mixed" Rhoynar and "100%" Andal Dornish children from intermarriages that are no longer just "mixed" individuals. To claim that they are anything else is to begin the process of racialization, as such a phenomenon (intermarriages between previously separated ethnic groups to become a new distinct one) actually happens more often than not, and to make it unique to just the Dornish is to Other it for racial categorization, as NonDornish aristocrats probably would do. Fans refer to the state of "Westeros" as a "nation", it was not a nation but a territory of several states and smaller fiefs owned by nobles who collected taxes from local peasantry and probably gave a portion of that to the King/Monarch, keeping the "King's peace" (feudalism). The reason why there is a divide between "NonDornish" and Dornish people is the measure of how much Andal vs. Rhoynish culture makes the infrastructures and political practices in the respective regions, and there just so happens to be much more Andal-influenced regions and more people than Rhoynish-influenced without Andal culture becoming either true or "official" overlords over Dornish people in any unique or oppressive way different from how the Monarch is the "overlord" over a Stark, Karstark, Tarly, Hightower, Lannister, etc.
I think anon from that ask is saying that GRRM intended for the (arbitrary number) 80% of Dorne (therefore "Dorne") to be PoC and thereby make it a PoC state/people through choosing to mix several ME, SE, and N. African cultures's properties into a new fictional "Rhoynar" people. To them, this mix-match defines the Dornish as PoC because they see the Dornish people as being a "mixed-race" group of individuals like biracial children of modern interracial couples, and they continue to be biracial exactly as conceived until the current time of ASoIaF.
However, the modern "mixed-race" depends on the already existing races created by the world one lives in and only can be active and politically real races within a society with such definitions and dynamics of race built into its legal & education systems.
Still, though PoCs are historically and currently oppressed groups (aside from EU Jews, who were/are white and were continually oppressed) in places where European imperialism and colonialism reshaped previous societies, it's not correct nor wise to say that all or most PoCs draw their very being/humanity from discriminatory violence alone instead of the racialization oppressive groups performed because identity itself is not as simple or absolute and enduring as race and oppressive regimes try/tried to make. Or their ethnicity, like Black Americans. It's just that:
racial identity is political identity, not inherent or made "true" by those oppressive forces, that is exactly what those oppressors want (proving "might" = "right")
Elia would never have experienced anything equal to even what a richer PoC person does in the U.S. in terms of race
the Dornish are not PoCs!
Refrain: The Summer Islanders, though, ARE DEFINITELY the "Black" people of Westeros. As GRRM says in the pic I showed.
