Given your criticism about Viserys I’s two marriages and his decision to make his eldest daughter male heir. How is that he failed where Nymeria of Rhoynar succeeded, she also had multiple marriages with children from different husbands, and the succession still went to her eldest daughter from her first Martell husband?

goodqueenaly:

To be fair, we don’t know what happened with the Martell succession specifically, only that Nymeria’s eldest Martell daughter did succeed over her Dayne son. We don’t have details on what Nymeria did in her lifetime to ensure that her eldest princess would be seen as the heiress over her son, or whether any of the native Dornish Houses grumbled or made a fuss about this foreign succession mode (especially the Daynes, who had a horse in the race, and the Yronwoods, who would ever be eager to undermine their old Martell vassals if it meant they could get closer to restoring their kingdom).

That being said, I think it’s pretty evident that Princess Nymeria was far, far more competent of a monarch than Viserys I ever was, especially where dynastic politics were concerned. As the female, foreign-born founder not simply of a new dynasty, but a completely new state, Nymeria had to have realized that her position was anything but secure; all her personal forcefulness and cleverness would be meaningless at her death if she did not take action to ensure the new principality would continue (hell, look how the Targaryen dynasty might well have collapsed within a decade of Aegon the Conqueror’s death, if not for the personal courageousness of Alyssa Velaryon and Rhaena Targaryen). Even during her conquest, Nymeria demonstrated that she understood the value of building coalitions (allying with the Daynes, Fowlers, Tolands, and Ullers and marrying Lord Uller and Davos Dayne), showing herself as a Dornishwoman rather than merely a woman of the Rhoynar (marrying the native Lord Mors Martell and spectacularly burning her Rhoynish ships), and demonstrating that she was a rightful ruling princess (sending the six defeated Dornish kings to the Wall). Given that background, I cannot imagine Nymeria did not take steps to show that her eldest daughter was to be princess after her. Probably this involved an advantageous, Dornish marriage for the princess-presumptive (which would also be a helpful opportunity to demonstrate that a ruling princess’ children would still have the Nymeros Martell name), probably giving the princess-presumptive some sort of governmental responsibility, maybe also making progresses to the great Dornish seats a la Aegon the Conqueror. The specifics are less important (in the sense that we have far too little detail to guess what they are) than the fact that Nymeria surely did something to make her subjects believe her eldest daughter was her heiress.

Compare her to Viserys I, who had neither the circumstantial nor the personal motivations to be firm and active in his choice of heir. Even though he himself had become king as a result of a succession crisis and the vote of the Great Council of 101 AC, Viserys never seems to have realized that dynastic work does not stop after the dynasty is founded. Genial and good-natured, a prince in the era of prosperity under his grandfather, Viserys would have always associated royal life with ease and unquestioned authority – seeing the elegance of the swan, so to speak, without noticing the hard-paddling feet below the water. Viserys could have done more to make Rhaenyra his obvious heiress, and Aegon not, but he chose not to, and left the succession woefully ambiguous. As far as Viserys was concerned, he said Rhaenyra was his heiress, so that was the end of any discussion he needed to have.

Also, given that Nymeria allied with and then married into House Dayne but also sent “King” Vorian Dayne, the “greatest knight in all of Dorne,” to the Wall in golden chains, the adoption of equal primogeniture might have been cemented through the repression of a rebellion in the name of her oldest son.