I believe I read somewhere that Dorne has a sense of nationalism not seen anywhere else in the 7 Kingdoms (save perhaps the North/Iron islands). Could you discuss this in more detail?
So I’ve discussed it a little bit here, but here’s how I see it:
To me, the interesting thing about Dornish nationalism is that it was more of a deliberate project than in other places – the Starks, for example, were free to focus on political and military unification, because everyone in the North was of the First Men, followed the Old Gods, etc.
By contrast, Dornish identity was created as a fusion between the advanced urbanized culture of the Rhoynar and the Andals and First Men who had been living in Dorne before them – hence the mass intermarriages, the importation of Rhoynish technology and skill, but also the destruction of the Rhoynish ships, the banning of the Rhoynish language by three separate Princes, the importation of Rhoynish customs and law, etc.
And then all of that was intensified in three great conflicts: Nymeria’s Conquest, which saw central and western Dorne assimilated into the same realm (notably Nymeria would remarry to an Uller from central Dorne and a Dayne from western Dorne), the War Against the Dragons in which almost all of Dorne burned, and Daeron’s Conquest which was a war of total mobilization. So the Dornish have two hundred years of independence and resistance to Westerosi centralization as a common cultural tradition.
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