Hola de nuevo!
2 years ago I started building a palace highly inspered by the Reales Alcázares de Sevilla in Minecraft. You may recognize it because it was the film location for the Water Gardens in the HBO series. This server and the amazing things that are being build made me want to try doing something big by myself. Even though it's vanilla I thought you may want to check it out, epecially since Sunspear and the Water Gardens haven't been started yet afaik. I'm very proud of it (feels wrong saying that!) and I hope you like!
Although HBO chose it as Dorne, I wouldn't say it's the best place to drawn inspo from, mainly because after Seville was conquered in the XIII century castillian kings kept using it as a royal residence (to this day it still is). Due to this it sufered many alterations up to the XIX century. Both the gardens and the yellow balcony where Doran Martell and Ellaria Sand chat are form the Renaissance onwards. Even the main body of the palace, known as Palacio del rey Don Pedro, is a christian construction, built by
mudéjares (muslims living in christian territory) and artisans from Seville, Toledo and Granada, among others.
That being said many people will expect to see recreations of the series locations, and the Water Gardens are very iconic to the show. So it could be considered, but not necessarily the main source. Other paces that could be used as inspo, and more accurate to the period, include Madinat Al-Zahra (royal city build outside of Córdoba built by the Caliphs during the X century), the Alhambra and Generalife (duh), and many other smaller and worse preserved palaces (the Aljafería of Zaragoza, Málaga's and Almería's Alcazabas, many taifa palaces...). Personally I think
munyas are a great type of building that adjust very well to what we know about the Water Gardens.
Muynas where states outside of the main cities that doted the landscape, specially from the Caliphate onwards. They where owned by the arab elite, and resemble roman villae, particularly the ones from the fist and second centuries of the empire (when they became leisure houses far form the cities, losing the production and industrial aspects). One of the biggest was al-Rummaniyya, north of Córdoba and propiety of the crown. Its very badly preserved, but we know its general layout, atop 3 terraces with pools and gardens. I would stay away from taking too much inspo form the caliphate though, at least in decorations and so, just because it has place during the X and XI centuries, and it style is heavily influenced by Rome and Byzantium. Older parts of Dorne could use this, but it would be odd having a high medieval kingdom while the other 6 are cleraly late medieval. Of course places outside of Iberia could be used too, specially around the Mediterranean.
I think I said way more than needed lol, anyways, I hope at least you fin this info interesting, keep the great work
!
