Prince Marence’s return from his campaign in the Boneway—a debacle, many say, though the lives lost were few—was not greeted with any great fanfare in the streets of the shadow city, nor within the halls of Sunspear itself. The less said of what happened at Yronwood, where Lady Yronwood had outmanoeuvred him and forced the prince to a peace that many consider humiliating, the better—or so those who cling to the prince and support him would have it. Marence himself has been a brooding man… and a busy man, too, though he has kept his counsel close. Ser Mavros Uller has often been seen meeting with him; some say it is no more than how it was before Uller had departed as a royal envoy to Lady Yronwood, but others suggest that the collaboration between the two men now runs deeper. There are those in the highest circles of power at Sunspear who complain that the prince is keeping secrets, and sharing them only with Uller… and some of those look to their own offices, and worry that Marence may displace one of them.
Uller has particularly been tasked with carrying messages too and from the ravenry, sometimes with the maester travelling with him back and forth, and sometimes not. And the word runs through the castle that Marence sent a raven to King’s Landing once his humiliating peace with Yronwood was concluded… and now a bird has arrived from King’s Landing in return, and there are whispers about the prince’s purpose. Some even claim he means to offer the fealty of Dorne to the Iron Throne, to put himself under Baelor’s protection and so receive his aid against… what? Those who might whisper treason? Those who have wronged him?
And others say that’s nonsense. But what, then, is the prince doing?