Daario Naharis

Where the page and the screen part

The screen and the page disagree about Daario from the skin inward. Book Daario is a deliberate grotesque ÔÇö beard dyed blue and forked in three, a gold tooth, a mustachio waxed to points, arms ringed in gaudy metal ÔÇö and readers meet him as Daenerys does, half repelled and wholly fascinated; the show, after one season of a fairly flamboyant version, recast him into a conventionally handsome soldier and never looked back, a change so total that the two Daarios function as different men telling the same role. Structurally the books split what the show merges: Daario there captains the Stormcrows, a separate company from MeroÔÇÖs Second Sons, and his defection decides YunkaiÔÇÖs field rather than following it.

The books also trust him far less. Their Daario is plausibly a liar about his own past, is loathed on principle by Barristan Selmy, and ends A Dance with Dragons as a hostage ÔÇö handed to the Yunkish as surety for the peace, his fate hanging on a war about to resume. Whether he is merely a sellsword or something more corrosive to the queenÔÇÖs judgment is a live question on the page; the show settled it kindly, and left him ÔÇö as the books leave him, by different roads ÔÇö alive, in Essos, out of the storyÔÇÖs ending.