Favorite Characters: Oberyn Martell (Game of Thrones)

I liked Oberyn well enough when he first showed up on Game of Thrones last year, but he really stood out to me on my pre-season-5 rewatch.  He’s a little bit Inigo Montoya, a little bit Captain Jack Harkness, and pretty much all awesome.  While his role isn’t huge, his impact is.

Oberyn is our first look at Dorne, the southernmost of the Seven Kingdoms.  It’s distinct from the rest of Westeros in many ways – it largely governs itself, having its own royal family, and its climate, customs, and culture are all different.  In general, it keeps to itself, and Oberyn’s arrival in King’s Landing aptly demonstrates why:  he doesn’t care for other Westerosi any more than they care for Dornishmen.

Not that Oberyn takes any offense to heart.  The second son of House Martell, and a prince, Oberyn approaches most things with a shrewd, sardonic eye.  He has a cheeky rejoinder for everything, he has no patience for the pomp and ceremony of King’s Landing, and he makes no apologies for anything he does.  He knows that he’s regarded rather as a joke of a prince, more concerned with good wine and good company than any matters of state, but he doesn’t care.

It’s true that he places a premium on good wine and good company.  When he first comes to King’s Landing, he skips the official welcome and heads straight for the local brothel, where he and his paramour Ellaria have their pick of the prostitutes.  Both of them are very bi and very disinterested in monogamy, but not in an unfaithful way.  Rather, they cherry-pick a handful of paid companions, male and female, at each visit to join them in a big ol’ love pile.  The way they do it, it doesn’t lessen their love and attraction for one another.  Oberyn in particular is inclusively sexual, proclaiming that he doesn’t “choose sides” when it comes to love.  The combo of bisexuality and non-monogamy is a bit typical Hollywood – of course the bi couple are into five-ways – but I like the way Oberyn presents his orientation as a complete non-issue.

Smart-mouth remarks and copious lovemaking aren’t all we get from Oberyn, however.  He does nothing by degrees, throwing himself just as ardently into more serious matters.  Westerosi vs. Dornish ethnocentric jeers aside, there’s a much larger reason Dorne doesn’t get along well with the rest of the Seven Kingdoms – when the last dynasty was overthrown, Oberyn’s sister, the queen by marriage, was brutally murdered, along with her children.  Much of Oberyn’s life has been preoccupied with a desire for vengeance, to hurt anyone who had a hand in hurting his family, and he doesn’t keep mum about his ambitions.  In service of this goal, he’s become an incredible warrior, and he fights with a self-assured fearlessness spurred on by his loss.

At the same time, while he’s greatly concerned with vengeance, he’s not indiscriminate about it.  He never lets Cersei forget that her only daughter is currently living in Dorne as part of a politically-motivated betrothal, but his hunger for Lannister blood doesn’t extend to the child.  His words to Cersei, “We don’t hurt little girls in Dorne,” aren’t a threat but an accusation, a condemnation of the atrocity committed against his sister’s children.  He won’t harm the innocent, and even with his strong hatred of the Lannisters, he grows to regard Tyrion more fairly, according to his merits.  Really, I think Oberyn is just all heart, not in an empathetic way but a passionate one.  He approaches the bedroom, the battlefield, and his private missions with everything he is – not always rationally, but always unreservedly.