| Note: The title of this article is conjecture and may be subject to change. |
The shoulder-riding game is a water game played by at least four people, often children, but sometimes adults. The participants form at least two pairs of people, where each pair has one person riding the shoulders of the other in a body of water.[1][2][3] The teams may mock-joust each other, playacting a horse and rider. The object of the game is to knock down or separate an opposing team through team effort, making them fall into the water.[1][2]
Culture
The game is often played by children in the pools of the Water Gardens of Dorne.[1][3]
History
Doran Martell and his brother Oberyn played the game in the Water Gardens when they were children. Doran was ten years older than Oberyn, so he had left the pools by the time his younger brother was old enough to play, but would watch him while visiting their mother. Oberyn fought fiercely and quickly, often toppling boys much bigger than himself.[1]
When Arianne Martell was a child in the Water Gardens, she used to play the game with her friends. She sometimes rode the shoulders of Jeyne or Jennelyn Fowler, or her friend Frynne. Her favorite steed was Garin, since if she rode him, nobody could defeat them, not even Nymeria Sand and the Archon's green-haired daughter.[3]
Recent events
A Feast for Crows
At the Water Gardens, Obara Sand meets with Doran Martell, Prince of Dorne, demanding vengeance for her father, Oberyn Martell, who was slain by Ser Gregor Clegane in King's Landing. Doran makes Obara look at the children playing the shoulder-riding game in the pools, and while they watch, a nut-brown girl yanks a towheaded boy off his brother's shoulders, making him fall headfirst into the pool. Doran tells Obara that her father often used to defeat boys much larger than himself when he played in the pools as a child. Doran adds that before Oberyn left for King's Landing, he promised Doran he would do it again, without which Doran would not have let him go. The story does not comfort Obara.[1]
Outside of Riverrun, Ser Jaime Lannister notices two washerwomen playing with Raff and another man-at-arms in the river's shallows, with the women riding the men's shoulders and mock jousting. The girls are half-drunk and half-naked, laughing and snapping rolled-up cloaks at one another, while a dozen other men encourage them. Jaime bets a copper star on the blonde girl riding Raff, but loses it when Raff and the girl fall down in the reeds.[2]
Prince Doran Martell tells his daughter Arianne that Ellaria Sand and her daughters are safe at the Water Gardens, where Elia and Obella Sand have become "the terror of the pools". Doran says that it is not that long since Arianne played in the pools, and reminisces about how she would ride the shoulders of an older blonde girl. When Arianne mentions she used to play with a green-haired Tyroshi girl, Doran says that she was the Archon's daughter, and that Arianne was supposed to have been sent to Tyrosh in her place, to secretly meet with her betrothed.[3]
Quotes
A score or more had gathered in the big pool, to watch the battles as smaller children rode through the waist-deep shallows on the shoulders of the larger and tried to shove each other into the water. Every time a pair went down, the splash was followed by a roar of laughter.[1]
—thoughts of Areo Hotah
They splashed in the pools and fountains of the Water Gardens, and rode into battle perched on one another's naked backs.[3]
—thoughts of Arianne Martell
When I rode Garin no one could defeat us, not even Nym and that green-haired Tyroshi girl.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 A Feast for Crows, Chapter 2, The Captain Of Guards.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 A Feast for Crows, Chapter 33, Jaime V.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 A Feast for Crows, Chapter 40, Princess In The Tower.