Sarne

Sarne

Essos west of the Bone Mountains and the location of the Sarne

The Sarne is a river in northern Essos located east of the Forest of Qohor and north of the Painted Mountains.

Geography

The Sarne's western tributaries begin in the hills south of Vaes Khadokh, while its eastern tributaries have their sources in the western Dothraki sea. The Sarne flows north into the Shivering Sea, with the cities of Saath and Morosh and the ruins of Vaes Graddakh located in the Sarne delta. A Valyrian road connecting Vaes Khadokh to Vaes Khewo crosses the Sarne.

History

The ancient Kingdom of Sarnor developed around the Sarne and its tributaries. Sarnath, the seat of the High King of the Sarnori, was located along the southwestern branch of the Sarne. However, the grassland kingdom and its cities were ruined by the Dothraki in the Century of Blood following the Doom of Valyria.

Behind the Scenes

According to co-writer Elio Garcia, the map given in The Lands of Ice and Fire for Sarnor is in error. In George R. R. Martin's original handwritten notes, the Sarne flows out of the Silver Sea, proceeding west past Sarnath before curving north to its delta near Saath and Sarys. Thus all cities of the Sarnori were built around one river system. Unfortunately, as Garcia gleaned from the handwritten maps, it appears that when Martin wrote "Kingdom of Sarnor" over the core of their territory he partially erased the line of the river between the Silver Sea and Sarnath. Jonathan Roberts, the illustrator for The Lands of Ice and Fire, may have assumed that the Silver Sea empties into the sea through a separate river system proceeding in the shortest path, to the north. This does not match the textual descriptions of the Sarnori cities, such as that Sathar is located at a branch of the Sarne. Garcia hopes that a subsequent edition of the official world map will be updated to correct this.

Martin has said that the world map is not objective but written as it is known to the maesters of the Citadel in Westeros, and it gets increasingly less accurate the farther east it goes. Therefore, in-universe, the first edition world map might be explained as Yandel working from an incorrect map with the original river line accidentally erased.

Moreover, the earlier map of the World Map that Martin provided for the HBO television series Game of Thrones during Season 2 matches his textual description of Sarnor's geography: the Sarne flows west, and the remnants of the Silver Sea are three lakes (not two as in the Lands map, which drain to the north). The earlier map Martin submitted must have predated the erasure.