Balon Greyjoy
Lord Reaper of Pyke, twice a would-be king, whose failed rebellion nine years past cost him his sons ÔÇö all but the youngest, given to the Starks as a hostage.
A soul of House Greyjoy, born at Pyke.
The fuller tale
Season Two
Balon Greyjoy chooses crowns over kin: the ironborn will reave the North, and Theon must pick a family.
Where they stand. Pyke.
Season Three
Melisandre leeches king's blood from Gendry over three names: Robb Stark. Balon Greyjoy. Joffrey Baratheon.
Season Six
Balon Greyjoy meets his brother Euron on a rope bridge in a storm ÔÇö and only one walks off.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Fell from a bridge (S6┬ÀE2)
The Lord Reaper of Pyke met his long-lost brother Euron on a rope bridge in a storm and told him to get off his islands. Euron threw him from the bridge into the sea he'd made his god.
On the page. Fell from a storm-swept bridge (AFFC, ch. 2)
The Lord Reaper of Pyke walked his rope bridges in a storm as he always had, and the sea took him at last ÔÇö the day before his brother Euron's Silence sailed into the harbor. The ironborn do not much believe in coincidence.
In the show, Balon meets a hooded figure on one of PykeÔÇÖs rope bridges in the middle of a storm and finds his brother Euron under the hood ÔÇö the brother he exiled, come home smiling. Balon tells him to get off his islands; Euron mocks the old manÔÇÖs failed rebellions, announces himself as the storm, and hurls him from the bridge into the sea their god lives in. The kingsmoot that follows crowns the killer.
In the books he simply falls ÔÇö a frayed rope bridge, a howling gale, a body washed up bloated and broken two days later ÔÇö and the timing does the accusing: the Silence, crewed by mutes and captained by his banished brother, appears the very next day. No one saw anything. On the Iron Islands, where the Drowned God takes whom he pleases, hardly anyone believes it was the god. Either way the throne of salt and rock is empty, and every terrible thing the Greyjoys do afterward pours through the gap he leaves.
Their chapters, book by book
A Storm of Swords 1 chapter that name them
A Feast for Crows 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The tellings agree on the man and differ on the murder. The show puts his death on screen and in the family: a confrontation on a rope bridge in a storm with the exiled brother he banished, ending with Balon thrown to the sea. The books stage the same fall with no witness at all ÔÇö the old king crossing his swaying bridges in a gale as he always did, found broken on the rocks days before EuronÔÇÖs Silence just happens to sail into Lordsport ÔÇö and let the ironborn do the math themselves. Aeron believes his brother arranged it; readers have gone further, noting how conveniently death travels ahead of the CrowÔÇÖs Eye. The show spends the ambiguity to buy a scene; the books keep it, and it curdles the whole kingsmoot.
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.