Balon Swann
A capable and honorable young knight of the Kingsguard from the stormlands, well-regarded by nearly everyone at court.
A soul born at Stonehelm, sworn to The Kingsguard.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
The chronicle records no death for this soul ÔÇö they are living when the tale leaves them, or their ending is a page the maesters have yet to turn.
Their chapters, book by book
A Dance with Dragons 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The show casts him young in the early seasons ÔÇö a tourney fighter, a face at court ÔÇö and then quietly loses him, his functions dissolved into the general anonymity of background Kingsguard as the order's screen roster shrank to its villains. The books keep him working: the Dorne mission, with the skull and the princess and the Sand Snakes circling, is among the novels' running subplots, and as of the published books he is alive in Sunspear's orbit, walking into a Dornish intrigue ÔÇö Princess Myrcella's guardianship amid the aftermath of Arianne's failed queenmaking ÔÇö whose next move readers have awaited for decades. If the novels' Kingsguard is a study in decline, Swann is the control specimen: the knight the order was designed to produce, still on duty, surrounded by everything it became.
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.