Areo Hotah
Captain of Prince Doran's guard, a Norvoshi bought as a boy and bound by his longaxe and an oath to serve, protect, and obey. He watches, and misses nothing.
A soul of House Martell, born at Norvos.
The fuller tale
Season Five
Jaime and the Sand Snakes reach Myrcella at the same moment; Areo Hotah's axe ends the scuffle.
Where they stand. Sunspear.
Season Six
In Dorne, Ellaria and the Sand Snakes murder Prince Doran, Areo Hotah, and Trystane: Dorne goes to war.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Fell at Sunspear (show); watches on in the books (S6┬ÀE1)
Prince Doran's captain, who missed nothing for decades, was taken from behind with a dagger in the back by Tyene Sand in the very moment his prince was murdered ÔÇö too quick even to lower his longaxe.
In the show he dies in the same breath as his prince, which is at least thematically exact. As Ellaria Sand drives her dagger into Doran in the Water Gardens, Tyene Sand ÔÇö smiling, close, family ÔÇö slips her blade into Hotah's back before the longaxe can so much as turn: the man whose whole life was watching, taken from the one angle a lifetime of service had taught him not to guard. He falls beside the chair he defended, the coup complete around him. In the published books Areo Hotah is alive and entirely unambushed ÔÇö riding out from Sunspear on his prince's orders, axe across his saddle, with the books' Dorne still turning around the things he has seen and kept to himself.
Their chapters, book by book
A Feast for Crows 1 chapter of their own, and 1 more that name them
A Dance with Dragons 1 chapter of their own
Where the page and the screen part
The gulf between the tellings is nearly total. Book Hotah is a narrator ÔÇö three books of Dornish politics arrive through his watchful, wintry voice ÔÇö and a survivor: alive in the published pages, dispatched with Obara Sand to hunt the rogue knight Darkstar, his competence never once caught napping. The show reduced him to a bodyguard with two scenes and a fatal case of standing in the wrong spot, his vigilance ÔÇö the books' defining trait, the man who watches everyone ÔÇö overturned in a single edit for the coup's convenience. Even his weapon shrank in translation. Book readers regard his show death less as an adaptation than as a clerical error.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.