When the warrior queen Nymeria brought the last of the Rhoynar across the narrow sea, she landed her ten thousand ships upon the sands of Dorne and there burned them upon the shore, that her people might understand there could be no going back. She wed Lord Mors Martell, whose house was then but one among many, and joined her strength to his. In those days Dorne was divided among a score of squabbling kings and lords, each jealous of his neighbor, and Nymeria set herself to make them one.
The wars that followed lasted the better part of a generation. Nymeria was thrice widowed and never once defeated in the field, and one by one the proud kings of Dorne, the Yronwoods and the Fowlers and the Wyls chief among them, were beaten down or brought to terms. Six of the defeated kings she did not slay but sent in chains to the Wall to take the black, that their followers might have no martyr to rally about. When the work was done she ruled all Dorne from sea to mountains, and though it was her husband's house that gave the land its royal name, it was Nymeria who was remembered as its maker. From that day the Princes of Dorne have followed the Rhoynish custom of passing the rule to the eldest child whatever the sex, and the blood and laws of the Rhoyne live on in the sands where Valyria could never reach them.