Three Kingdoms

The Three Kingdoms Period was a historiographic term used by some Dornish scholars and nobles during the second century of the Coming of the Andals to describe the political, cultural and religious situation in the Peninsula. Following the Era of the Six Kingdoms and High Kings, its beginning is judged to be either the fall of Yronwood to the Andals, the unification of the Red Mountains, or the conclusion of the Brimstoner Civil War. The most popular dating among the southern Desert Andals and Sun Dornish is the latest, placing the start of the Period at the Year of the False Spring in 143 A.I.

Background

For centuries - if not millennia - following the arrival of the First Men, Dorne had been divided between the Six Kingdoms of the Blackmont, Torrentine, Stone & Sky, Bloodroyal, Greenblood and Brimstone. Warfare had been no rare thing in the Desert and along the Greenblood, and had been truly endemic among the Kingdoms of the Red Mountains, but the great monarchies and polities had remained largely stable, even as smaller Clans, warlords, and tribes rose and fell.

End of the Six Kingdoms

The change to this balance of power began around the Coming of the Andals. Unlike in so many other regions of the Western Continent, their arrival was not its impetus. Rather, it was the rivalry between the Yronwoods and Green Kings that began the shifting of borders and fall of Kingdoms. Both monarchs, one chosen by right and blood and the other by acclamation of his peers, had long claimed the title of High King of Dorne (though for how long was and remains a matter of debate between court bards and wise men), and by the first century of the Andal Invasion, these competing claims had led to several bloody, disastrous wars.

However, whilst these conflicts - and the Yronwood victories that usually followed - shook Dorne's balance of power, it would indeed be the Andals who set off the chain of events which led to the end of the Six Kingdoms. Conran Qorgyle's campaigns in the Desert inspired a fit of expansion from his main rival and enemy, the Daynes, who by the time of Tywald Qorgyle had expanded their Kingdom threefold, conquering the Western Desert from the Scorpion Lords and installing a loyal puppet in Blackmont. Thus were the Vulture Kings the first to fall.

The next Kingdom to collapse would be that of Stone & Sky, whose King, fearful of Dayne and Andal neighbors, set aside his ancient rivalry with the Bloodroyal, as well as his own crown, for the protection of sworn service to Yronwood. They would eventually revolt and reclaim their throne, but their renewed independence would be shortlived. Turning their attention east, the Yronwoods waged yet more successful wars against the Greenblood, before the Andal Santagars, allied to a host of new arrivals, successfully conquered that ancient Kingdom, defeating both the Greenblooders and Daynes.

The end to the old era would come a decade hence, though, when the men of the nascent Kingdom of Godsgrace, aided by a revolt of Yronwood's Andal allies, successfully marched upon the ancient Kingdom of the Bloodroyal, captured the Last Yronwood and did away with what had once been the greatest Kingdom in Dorne. The Red Mountains - including the Fowlers - united under the Daynes shortly thereafter, but henceforth there were Three Kingdoms, and no High Kings.

The Torrentine

The last First Man Kingdom in Dorne, the Torrentine, despite it's name, stretched across the entirety of the Red Mountains proper, lacking only Yronwood and its environs.

The Desert

Officially the Kingdom of the Desert and Brimstone, and too known simply as the Kingdom of the Brimstone or the Kingdom of the Desert, the Desert is either the second Andal Kingdom or the first and only half-Andal. Established in ancient days by the House Dryland of Brimstone, its acceptance of Andal mercenaries and bannermen led to a gradual acculturation which culminated politically in, first, the elevation of the Knight-King Tamsyn and, finally, in the establishment of an official Diarchy between the King of the Brimstone and the King in Cliffsides, of the originally-Andal House Qorgyle.

Culture

While the other two Kingdoms were either somewhat homogenous culturally (the Torrentine) or sharply divided between rulers and ruled (Godsgrace), the Desert presented a unique melting pot and contact zone between a number of cultures and tribes.

The Sun Dornish

Much of the Desert was dominated politically and culturally by the half-Andal "Sun Dornish." In the Western Desert, where they made up the majority of the population, they refered to themselves as the Scorpion Clan.

Despite the moniker, the Sun Dornish were more a spectrum of tribes, families and individuals between the aboriginal Desert Clansmen and the newcomer Andals than a single tribe. On one end - that of the people of Anchoran, of some of the small Border-Lords, and of the House Maltrevar - were men and women largely indistinguishable from their Southern Andalosi forebears, save for darker skin, strange accents, and a cuisine and wardrobe adapted over generations to their new homes. On the other were the deep-desert Scorpionmen, the Drylands and the court of Hellgate Hall, who spoke Andalic and wroshipped the Seven, but in dress, look and cultural mores were more reminiscent of the ancient Clansmen.

However, a few things can be said of all the Sun Dornish. Firstly, that they identify strongly and proudly with their mixed heritage, secondly, that they are an agrarian and settled people by and large, living by the oases, coasts and River Brimstone where their Clansmen cousins wander the Desert proper, thirdly that they eschew and downplay associations to the former Clans and clan-system of the Desert, fourthly that they are proud and adept workers of steel, and finally that they belong to the Faith of the Seven. How that Faith manifests can differ quite widely between different tribes, villages and families, but belief in the Seven-who-are-One was nigh (though not totally) universal among the half-Andals, even if the One would occasionally manifest as Sal the Father, the Scorpion-Man or Maiden Mune.

The Desert Clansmen

After the Sun Dornish, the next most numerous and populous of the peoples of the Desert are certainly the Clansmen. The original human inhabitants of the Desert, many of the Desertfolk's smaller Clans melded with the Sun Dornish, but that was not the case for all. The Eastern and Northern Clans hewed close to tradition, continuing to practice nomadic pastoralism, worship the Sun-God and honor their shamans, interacting with the tax-men and magistrates of the Kingdom only when needed. In the Brimstone Valley, the Shanins, Cooks and Seeps continued to be powerful nobles and traditionalist Clansmen both. In the West several Clans - the Arnights, Spiny and to a lesser extent Madsands - accepted the Faith but retained their language and customs largely unchanged, though many became ruling minorities in their own traditional lands.

Unlike the cosmopolitan Sun Dornish, the Clansmen were infamously withdrawn and suspicious of outsiders. Of the surviving Clans during the Second Century, this was even more true than of their ancestors. Isolation was, perhaps rightly, seen by many as the only way for old Clans, names and customs to persist against the tide. For a time, it served, though the Clansmen have, as a result, gained a reputation for poverty and stubborn provincialism even greater than in centuries past during the Three Kingdoms Period.

Other Cultures

The Desert also possessed colonies, families and outposts of Andals, Red Marchers and, even, the descendants of the Reachers who marched with Tywald Qorgyle during the First Century. As time passed, many of these communities dwindled or became integrated into the Sun Dornish, but throughout the course of the Three Kingdoms Period they remained discrete peoples considered subject to the Desert Kings. Brickmounds, a city near the border of the Torrentine, was especially famed for its diversity, and the villages between it and Cliffsides - settled by veterans of the First and Second Scorpion Hosts - were well known for the quality and number of soldiers they provided to the Qorgyles, including the famous Marcher-descended Longbowmen.

Godsgrace

The first Andal Kingdom in Dorne, as well as the first Faithful one, Godsgrace was founded by the House Santagar, some of the first Andals to arrive in Dorne and eventual conquerors of the Greenblood.