The Sunny Serenade - Vengeful

Well, what a name to give a House ability, makes the Martells the last people you wanna cross. If you give this ability to pretty much anyone else, they'll probably just give a sigh and complain a lot about the utter fatalist nature of this ability; but, in the hands of the Martell, thanks to all their "I lose, so what?" event cards, this ability is actually pretty useful.

Picture the time you attacked a Martell and was hit by The Viper's Rage, you've just given the Martells the ultimate means to effectively cancel all your subsequent attacks (unless you have multiple icons) and all his Vengeful characters (pretty much all his Sand Snakes at some point, when Obella is around) will stand to prepare to welcome the next attacking player, or just to really really contest the Dominance phase. (and he probably blocked your attack, keeping below the 4 STR difference requirement to deny you the unopposed challenge in the first place, knowing that his Vengeful character will be up and ready after this)

Vengeful simply gives the Martell player lots of option when he is attacked (and impacts his own attacks as well), since he can safely have characters stand to either trigger effects or defend after losing a challenge - for the Martells, losing a challenge is rarely a problem.

Not exactly an ability you can win with, more defensive than actually independent. That is one problem Vengeful has - if no one attacks you, it does absolutely nothing by itself, and even so, it still means that the Martell needs to lose a challenge before it kicks in - in a way it serves to improve the defensive capability as well as conserve event cards, but the claims must still be fulfilled, which sometimes might lead to losing games.

It is a good supportive ability, especially if one uses the Banner to give to characters with abilities that required kneeling and is useful after Marshalling - for example, Influence generating character such as the Paramour or the soon to arrive Maester Kedry, STR modifying characters like the Bastard of Godsgrace and Myrcella or other abilities like the Healer and the Phalanx.

Well this is definitely better than Stalwart, but not in the range of more direct abilities like Ambush and Intimidate, but it is almost on par with Vigilant, and I'll argue that it is better than Infamy.

(o.o)