What was in Prince Nymor’s Letter to Aegon I?
Background
Aegon the Conqueror managed to forge the Seven Kingdoms into one with his dragons, but there was one exception: Dorne. The First Dornish War marked the only war where a kingdom managed to avoid subjugation by the Iron Throne.
The Dornish avoided open battle as well as holing in fortresses. Rhaenys found all the castles in Dorne empty as she flew on Meraxes as the Dornish forces melted away.
Meria: I will not fight you, nor will I kneel to you. Dorne has no king. Tell your brother that. Rhaenys: I shall, but we will come again, Princess, and next time we shall come with fire and blood. Meria: Your words, Ours are Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. You may burn us, my lady, but you will not bend us, break us, or make us bow. This is Dorne. You are not wanted here. Return at your peril.
Princess Meria waited for her in Sunspear just to tell her off. Aegon placed his men to control castles, and declared victory only for the Dornish forces to return. Meria threw Lord Rosby from a window herself.
Also, apparently the Dornish didn’t play nice. Entire garrisons were put to the sword. Knights were tortured, and Lord Wyl cut off the hands of captured prisoners-of-war, including Aegon’s Hand, Orys Baratheon. These actions violated the codes of chivalry, and had Aegon and his bannermen howling for vengeance, which led to a bloody cycle of retaliation and reappraisals.
Aegon’s retaliation was swift as he and his sisters took to their dragons and burned Dornish castles. The Dornish responded by burning half the rainwood and sacking half a dozen towns and villages. The Targaryens then responded by burning more Dornish castles in dragonflame. The Dornish response to that was Lord Fowler capturing Nightfall and taking its occupants hostage and razing the nearby villages and towns. The Targaryens, then predictably, responded with their dragons again, but this time, miraculously, the Dornish managed to take down a dragon. A scorpion bolt in a one in a million shot, hit Meraxes in the eye, killing the dragon and ostensibly, the rider, Rhaenys.
The death of Aegon’s favorite sister-wife was of course a huge personal blow, and it marked the start of the next two years of the war appropriately named the Dragon’s Wroth, the nadir of the war. Aegon and Visenya's initial response was to burn every castle in Dorne, except Sunspear. Some castles were even burned more than once with Hellholt, the site of Meraxes’s death, being burned three times. Aegon and Visneya also placed bounties on the heads of Dornish lords to which the Dornish responded by placing bounties on their heads as well as those of their allies. Half a dozen Dornish lords were assassinated while Aegon and Visneya survived several assassination attempts, and Lord Fell was murdered in a brothel.
Finally, Meria Martell died, and was succeeded by her son, Nymor. Nymor took a different approach compared to his mother, and sent his daughter and heir, Deria, to King’s Landing with Meraxes’s skull and a letter. While Aegon’s queen and advisors pushed for Aegon to harm Deria, Aegon refused and heard out Deria.
Dorne wanted peace, according to Deria—but the peace of two kingdoms no longer at war, not the peace between a vassal and a lord. Many urged His Grace against this, and the phrase "no peace without submission" was often heard in the halls of the Aegonfort. It was claimed that the king would look weak should he agree to such a demand and that the lords of the Reach and stormlands who had suffered so much for his cause would be angered.
Swayed by such considerations, it is said, King Aegon was determined to refuse the offer until Princess Deria placed in his hands a private letter from her father, Prince Nymor. Aegon read it upon the Iron Throne, and men say that when he rose, his hand was bleeding, so hard had he clenched it. He burned the letter and departed immediately on Balerion's back for Dragonstone. When he returned the next morning, he agreed to the peace and signed a treaty to that effect.
Aegon read Nymor’s letter, burned it, and left for Dragonstone on Balerion that day, only to return the following morning and to his court’s surprise, agree to Nymor’s terms of ending the First Dornish War with the Iron Throne recognizing Dorne’s independence.
No one knows the contents of that letter, but there are theories as to what was in that letter that led Aegon to forgo his aim to conquer Dorne and agree to Nymor’s peace. Let’s look at the possibilities offered.
1. Did he threaten to take all the wealth of Dorne to hire the Faceless Men to kill Aegon's young son and heir, Aenys?
The problem with this one is Aegon "flew to Sunspear on Balerion on the tenth anniversary of the peace accords to celebrate ‘a feast of freindship’ with Deria Martell” with Aenys accompanying him. I doubt Aegon would willingly celebrate such a treaty with Princess Deria, and do so, by bringing along the son they threatened to kill if he didn’t sign. That would just make things awkward.
Also, the whole point of hiring an assassin, especially a Faceless Man, is to get someone killed without you being implicated. If you say that “if person A dies, it's definitely because of me,” that would be a clear invitation to retaliation from the victim’s family and allies.
The man whom this threat was made to burned every castle in Dorne in retaliation for Rhaenys’s death. It doesn’t take much speculation to imagine how he would have responded to the death of his son borne by that same woman. A threat like that likely wouldn’t have intimidated Aegon into signing the treaty, but more likely angered him and provoked threats of retaliation.
One must also note that by the time of the meeting (13 AC) Maegor had just been born the year before (12 AC). Even with Aenys dead, Aegon would still have had a son to continue the Targaryen line, and it wouldn’t have been a permanent end to the Targaryen threat.
2. Did Nymor reveal that Rhaenys lived still, broken and mutilated, and that he would end her suffering if Aegon ended hostilities?
It doesn’t take a genius to see the problems with this one. For Aegon, the idea of Rhaenys having been left broken after being tortured and mutilated for two years undoubtedly would have enraged him in such a manner that would have befit his sobriquet “the Dragon”, and had him threatening swift and brutal retaliation. He would have demanded Rhaenys back, no matter what condition she was in. I also seriously doubt Aegon would take Rhaenys’s son, Aenys, to celebrate the peace with Deria that was signed on the condition of killing his tortured mother.
Nymor would also have demonstrated himself to be an idiot by needlessly endangering his daughter, Deria. By sending her, he would have handed Aegon a potentially valuable hostage on a silver platter that Aegon could use to counter any threats against Rhaenys. It also undermined the message of goodwill by bringing the skull of Meraxes.
There is also the question of if they had Rhaenys alive this whole time, why the hell didn’t they use her before, the moment they had captured her? The Dornish would have to be complete fools to not see how valuable a hostage Aegon’s favorite sister-wife could be. They at the very least could have used her to negotiate a ceasefire, and given themselves some respite.
3. Was the letter ensorceled?
Short answer: no. I don’t think we’ve seen magic capable of influencing someone’s consciousness with the most being tales of love potions.
4. Some claim it was a simple plea, from one father to another, heartfelt words that touched King Aegon’s heart.
This seems a little too romantic. I mean even if the words did touch Aegon’s heart, there were still political realities to consider, and I don’t see how relating as a father would move Aegon enough to forget about Rhaenys, the woman who first made him a father to begin with.
5. Others insist it was a list of all those lords and noble knights who lost their lives during the war.
I admit while showing a king the human costs of his war isn’t unappealing to me, one must note that “the Reach, the stormlands and the marches had suffered grievously during the fighting, and would never forgive and forget.” The relatives of those same lords and knights who died in the Dornish War largely wanted the war to continue to avenge their relatives, and would potentially have seen a Dornish peace without submission seemingly make those deaths in vain.
It also wouldn’t be the first time Aegon suffered a personal loss in his conquest. He lost his distant cousin and one of his family’s closest friends, Daemon Velaryon, in the first Targaryen assault on the Vale. Yet, he continued his conquest regardless.
What actually was in the letter?
Think back to Robert’s Rebellion with Dornish anger over the horrific deaths of Elia and her children as well as the death of Lewyn at the Battle of the Trident. Jon Arryn managed to avoid rebellion by the Dornish by returning Lewyn’s bones to Dorne, and negotiating with Prince Doran.
Returning the remains of a fallen relative is an act of respect. It is mentioned that Rhaenys’s bones were never returned. Neither were the bones Elia and her children, but that was because they were given the Targaryen custom of cremation.
I think Rhaenys’s body was likely given the same treatment. What Nymor may have mentioned in the letter is that he was returning Rhaenys’s ashes from her funeral pyre to Dragonstone. That is why Aegon left for Dragonstone that day on Balerion, he wanted to meet up with the ship carrying her urn.
That leaves the question of why Aegon burned the letter. The reason is probably the same as why Aegon had no close friends except Orys: he was a very private person, and this was a very personal matter to him.
Throughout the war, both sides did a lot of awful stuff with the Targaryens burning everything in Dorne in dragonflame, and the Dornish responding by engaging in torture, mutilation and assassination (which the Targaryens did first). All those actions did was escalate the war, and result in more brutal retaliation from the Targaryens with each side upping the violence, brutality and destruction. However, by performing this one honorable gesture, Nymor managed to succeed where his mother failed in ending Aegon’s attempts to subdue Dorne.
