Bran Stark
The second Stark son, a fearless climber who dreams of being a knight of the Kingsguard. His direwolf is Summer.
A soul of House Stark, born at Winterfell, sworn to The Children & the Others.
The fuller tale
Season One
A boy who climbs better than anyone in the North, and climbs to the wrong window. He wakes crippled with no memory of the fall, a knife-man sent to finish him, a direwolf that will not leave the door, and dreams of a three-eyed raven that nobody wants to hear about.
Season Two
Lord of Winterfell at ten while his brother is at war, holding court from a chair he cannot get out of ÔÇö until Theon Greyjoy takes the castle with twenty men. He hides in the crypts under his own hall, watches it burn from the treeline, and goes north with Osha and Hodor and his little brother.
Season Three
North through a broken country with the Reeds, who know more about what is happening to him than he does. He is inside Hodor's head before he understands he is doing it, and inside Summer's whenever he sleeps. At Queenscrown he is close enough to his brother Jon to hear his voice, and stays hidden.
Season Four
The cave under the weirwood, the last of the children of the forest, and an old man rooted into the tree who has been waiting for him. Jojen Reed dies in the snow at the door, having known all year that he would.
Season Six
The visions come in earnest and they are not gentle. He sees a tower in Dorne and his father climbing the steps of it; he watches an entire life fold backwards into a single word in a stable yard; and he touches the Night King in a dream and is marked, which pulls the whole thing down on top of them. He comes out of the north the way everyone does, with fewer people than he went in with.
Season Seven
He comes home to Winterfell as something that is not quite Bran any more, and says so, to a sister who cannot bear to hear it. He is also the only person alive who can see the one thing everybody has been arguing around all along: whose son Jon Snow is.
Season Eight
He waits in the godswood as bait, with an army of the dead walking towards him, because he is the memory of the world and the memory of the world is what they came to erase. Afterwards the lords of Westeros, asked to invent a way of choosing a king, choose the boy who fell out of a window and has every story there has ever been.
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 Game of Thrones 7 chapters of their own, and 2 more that name them
Bran I
Ned Stark beheads the deserter Gared with Ice while his sons watch; on the ride home they find direwolf pups in the snow ÔÇö one for each Stark child, and an albino for the bastard.
Bran II
Bran climbs the broken tower and finds the queen and her twin entwined; Jaime pushes him from the window ÔÇö ÔÇ£the things I do for love.ÔÇØ
Jon II
Farewells at Winterfell: Jon gives Arya a sword called Needle and says goodbye to a Bran who cannot hear him.
Catelyn III
Fire in the library tower ÔÇö and a catspaw with a Valyrian steel dagger at Bran's throat; Catelyn's bare hands and Summer's teeth end him.
Bran III
In his long sleep Bran falls through darkness while a three-eyed crow shows him the whole realm ÔÇö and the heart of winter; he wakes, broken but alive.
Bran IV
Tyrion stops at Winterfell on his way south and gives Bran the gift of riding again ÔÇö a saddle design ÔÇö and gets frost from Robb for his kindness.
Bran V
Bran rides Dancer into the wolfswood at last ÔÇö into wildlings and deserters with knives; Robb and Theon save him, and Osha is taken captive.
Bran VI
Robb calls the banners and Winterfell fills with lords; the Greatjon draws steel at supper and Grey Wind takes two of his fingers for it.
Bran VII
Bran and Rickon share a dream of their father in the crypts; when they go down with Maester Luwin, the raven's letter is already flying north.A Clash of Kings 7 chapters of their own, and 2 more that name them
A Storm of Swords 4 chapters of their own
A Dance with Dragons 3 chapters of their own
Where the page and the screen part
In the books Bran is still under the hill. His published story ends deep in his training with the last greenseer ÔÇö who has a name and a history there: Brynden Rivers, Bloodraven, a Targaryen bastard, spymaster and Lord Commander of the Night's Watch a century gone ÔÇö and the darkest hints in his chapters (the weirwood paste, old sacrifices before the heart tree, whispering to Theon through a tree in Winterfell's godswood) suggest a stranger and more troubling power than the show's serene oracle. The 'three-eyed crow' of the books became the show's 'three-eyed raven'; readers met a person, viewers met a function.
The road north differs too: the books escort him with Coldhands, an undead ranger on a great elk whom the show reduced to a single merged appearance, and Summer still lives on the page. Nothing in the published books points explicitly at a crown ÔÇö the show's ending is, for Bran more than anyone, a destination announced before the books have laid the track, reportedly from the author's own map. Whether the page can make the journey feel inevitable is the adaptation's biggest outstanding IOU.
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.