Individual articles[]
Elia is the only one who has been mentioned by name, but it's been established that all eight of the Sand Snakes exist in the TV continuity. Should we create articles for the other seven and put the conjecture template on each one? Greater Good 09:51, May 7, 2014 (UTC)
Is the show making Ellaria the mother of all 8, as is drawn up here? Before she was just the mother of the 4 youngest.
- She's not the mother of all eight, no, but she is the mother of Tyene, which wasn't the case in the book. Family tree templates are complex and difficult to write coding for, so we've simplified the Martell one for now. Each Sand Snake will eventually get their own icon, along with their mothers.--
19:01, July 28, 2014 (UTC)
- We honestly have no idea how the TV continuity is handling House Martell or specifically the Sand Snakes. Thank you for your concerns (it means people actually read this wiki!) - Basically I adopted a "wait and see" attitude for the family tree, because the TV series is apparently going to radically condense or alter some of the character relationships. For that matter....for a time, we thought they might make Ellaria the mother of all of them. Now, the Obara and Nymeria descriptions at least establish that she won't be the mother of ALL of them....but at the same time, several who weren't Ellaria's daughters might get moved around to now be her daughters, specifically Tyene.
- I'm away from home at a wedding and won't be able to update this for a few days. Nonetheless you are right; we should probably do what we did with Robert Baratheon: one link on the right to his "steady partner" Ellaria, and another one to the left saying "various women". It needs updating. But people who have had MORE than two relationships can be difficult (such as Margaery's three marriages). I'll figure this out when I am back on my own computer.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 20:55, July 28, 2014 (UTC)
Accents[]
As with all new Dornish characters, I wonder if the accents used by the Sand Snakes in Season 5 will attempt to match the standard that Pedro Pascal set with Oberyn Martell, that they have Hispanic accents (which Pascal based on his father's own Chilean-Spanish accent, they were bilingual but spoke Spanish at home, Spanish was his first language, etc.) Indira Varma's neutral speaking voice isn't like Ellaria's on-screen accent either, but she matched Oberyn pretty well. As did the "Lord Blackmont" guy in the Season 4 premiere (given a limited role).
Alexander HELLYES Siddig is a great and versatile actor and has done many great accents in roles in the past (if he just redid what he used in Kingdom of Heaven I think it would be passable, but he'd put more thought into that). Areo Hotah has been changed a bit, so whatever accent they come up with will be justifiably unique (he isn't from Westeros).
So far, of the three Sand Snakes confirmed in Season 5, they've changed it so that Obara is daughter of a Dornish peasant, not an Oldtown whore....fine, as long as they mention she has a chip on her shoulder from being lowborn while the others were highborn...and I kind of saw Obara as having a Dornish accent instead of a Reach accent anyway. Tyene is...still white but now Ellaria's daughter? (WTF?) but that's a whole other set of issues.
I actually think it was an interesting idea to change Nymeria's mother being a "princess from the east" from meaning "From Volantis in the Free Cities" to WAAAY out in the Far East, from Yi Ti. We've already got other Volantis characters. And it fits well enough in the story because Oberyn was well-traveled (or, more plausibly as Elyo said, maybe he just romanced a Yi Ti noblewoman who was living in Volantis or another Free City, as a trade ambassador or something).
At any rate the question grew in my mind: if they're making Nymeria half-Yi Ti, will she speak with a Dornish (Hispanic) accent? Or will they attempt to give her some sort of hybrid, vaguely Chinese accent? (but very proper because she's a noblewoman and thus well educated).--The Dragon Demands (talk) 03:03, August 13, 2014 (UTC)
Confirmation[]
An interview with India's The Telegraph finally confirmed some things:
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150329/jsp/t2/story_11347.jsp#.VR6xovnF9Cj
TV-Tyene is indeed Ellaria's daughter. She actually seems like basically a combination/condensation of specifically Tyene Sand and Elia Sand, instead of just a mishmash of generic Sand Snake features (she's not "purely invented" but a condensation).
The good news is that, thank god, the interview confirmed that Tyene's signature weapon is poison, not just daggers. Well, we were worried that all we heard about TV-Tyene is "she uses daggers", while book-Tyene wasn't a fighter, but a subtle poisoner. Apparently TV-Tyene has two signature weapons, daggers and poison. Probably her daggers are coated in poisons?
Well, fine, that brings it closer to the book counterpart.
Actress also noted that early casting rumors for Tyene all thought she'd be blonde haired and blue eyed, because that's what the book version is like.
After reading the interview I'm not really as upset about this as I was before: it's really more of a condensation with Elia Sand than just making stuff up.
Elia Sand only really first appears in the sample chapter for The Winds of Winter, but she's the youngest Sand Snake they've sent out to do anything, JUST old enough to be sent out, so she's overenthusiastic and rushing into things, champing at the bit to prove herself, overconfident, etc. I mean for a long time "The Sand Snakes" was really thought of as the eldest four, and now here she is.
In this brief chapter we also see Elia Sand interacting with her mother Ellaria - and if you think about it, Ellaria never really got the chance to be shown as a mother interacting with her daughters in the narrative.
So, putting all this together, I think the TV writers basically felt "we may never get the chance to include Elia Sand into the TV show, so we should combine her with Tyene Sand in order to give Ellaria at least one maternal relationship, otherwise we may never have screentime to show one at all".
So that's not that bad, actually. I thought Tyene was just a pastiche of "Dornishmen", but she's actually more based on two specific characters combined together.
Minor changes we knew already were that (according to early reports anyway) it seems Obara is the "daughter of a peasant woman from Dorne" instead of "daughter of an Oldtown whore" -- but that's not really a big change. The major point stands; unlike the others her mother was lowborn, so she has a chip on her shoulder about it (also omits the need to explain "well her mother was from the Reach but she just takes after Oberyn in appearance more and thus looks Dornish). Nymeria Sans is East Asian because they took "daughter of an eastern noblewoman" and changed it from meaning "from Volantis" to "from the further east, like Yi Ti" -- which again, I think is a great idea, helps show the world is bigger (also I'm Volantis-ed out after Talisa).
They also explained the basic character dynamic between them:
- Obara is the stolid no-nonsense warrior type who attacks every threat head-on, confident in her fighting abilities. Emphasized by how she uses a basic spear as her primary weapon, for direct attack.
- Nymeria is more calculating and cunning, stepping back from the situation to try to analyze what they should do next. Emphasized by her use of a whip in the TV version - a calculating weapon in which you need to carefully think about how to disarm your opponent with it - though in the hands of a well-trained strategist like Nymeria this makes a whip a very deadly and unconventional weapon, based on strategy.
- I think this pretty much matches Obara and Nymeria from the novels. Obara was more the big tough straightforward fighter, Nymeria the cunning one. Shades of Robert versus Stannis - big bruiser sibling who charges in head-first, versus the more calculating patient one who thinks out what moves to make.
- Tyene is the young impetuous one who charge in fast without really thinking, as she is the youngest (difference being that Obara is experienced and knows how to handle herself in a direct assault, but there's a difference between a head-on assault and a rushed assault). Emphasized by that she uses daggers, which are a quick weapon, which she can draw fast without being stopped (as Oberyn demonstrated last season) and move around quickly with. Again, kind of like Elia Sand in the novels.
So the writing of the TV-Sand Snakes seems okay now, as long as Tyene uses poison in some way and they said she does.
Apparently they cast Tyene with an Italian actress to make her look closer to Ellaria, officially abandoning the course of making her blonde because that would make no sense now. Okay.
Even so....why not cast like, a hispanic actress? Well, Dorne is multiethnic so maybe she just takes after one of Ellaria's parents who was a Stony Dornishman or something. I just wish they'd explain their reasoning behind that.
--The Dragon Demands (talk) 17:28, April 3, 2015 (UTC)
Tyene is not the daughter of Ellaria... she is the daughter of some unknown septa. So why did they change this in the show? According to another wiki she is the only changed daughter.