Tyene Sand

Tyene Sand
Personal information
Culture	Dornishmen
World of Westeros
Season(s)	5
Portrayed by	Rosabell Laurenti Sellers

Tyene Sand is a major character in the fifth season, who had already been alluded to in the fourth season. She will be played by Rosabell Laurenti Sellers.

Biography

Background

Tyene Sand is the third of the eight bastard daughters of Prince Oberyn Martell.

Season 4

Oberyn mentions his eight bastard daughters to Queen Cersei Lannister.

Family Tree

Template:House Martell family tree

In the books

In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Tyene is Oberyn's daughter whom he fathered on a septa. She is regarded as treacherous, while maintaining a sweet and pious persona. She is fair, with golden hair, blue eyes and an almost otherworldly innocence about her. She has soft pale hands but they are as deadly as her sister Obara's callused ones, if not more so. She shares her father's knowledge of poisons and it is her chosen weapon.

When Tyene was in the cradle her mother read to her from the Seven-Pointed Star. Her cousin Princess Arianne Martell once crossed the Mander River with three of the Sand Snakes to visit Tyene's mother - vaguely implying that her mother is from the Reach.  

Tyene and Arianne once fled Sunspear to try to marry Arianne to Willas Tyrell at Highgarden, but they were caught by Tyene's father, Oberyn Martell, at Vaith.

Tyene in the TV series is a condensation of several aspects of the different Sand Snakes. In the books she was the daughter of a septa from elsewhere in Westeros, and thus the only one of the Sand Snakes who doesn't have classic "salty Dornishman" dark features like the rest of House Martell. The SDCC 2014 press release described Tyene as the daughter of Oberyn and Ellaria - Elio and Linda of Westeros.org (who co-wrote The World of Ice and Fire (2014) with George R.R. Martin) pointed out that this was confusing, because Sellers is ethnically Italian and looks paler than the actors playing Oberyn and Ellaria. Essentially, it is as if the TV series cast Tyene based on her physical description and biography in the books (she doesn't look Dornish because her mother wasn't from Dorne), then changed her parentage with no thought to that it no longer matched her casting, or vice versa. Then again, there were several other oddly worded points in the press release, such as the description of Trystane Martell. Elio went so far as to reach out to his contacts at HBO to determine if these were simply mistakes by someone in the HBO PR department, and if HBO could confirm the specific details in the press release. He did recieve a response, but it consisted entirely of a terse "no comment".

Game of Thrones Wiki therefore officially considers the brief character descriptions of both Tyene and Trystane given in the SDCC 2014 press release to be suspect, and not to be taken as confirmation of character changes from the novels. The TV version of Tyene is not Ellaria's daughter, until the instant that HBO makes any further statement clarifying the issue (i.e. a preview video detailing the new characters in Season 5).

Also, the casting report says that Tyene makes deadly use of daggers, while book-Tyene never uses combat weapons - instead preferring to surreptitiously poison her enemies. Then again, the use of poison will also be part of Tyene's character in the show, as her leaked audition tape indicated, so it seems Tyene will simply have a more ample arsenal in the show.

See also

• Tyene Sand on A Wiki of Ice and Fire (MAJOR spoilers from the books)

References

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