Dacey Mormont
Maege's eldest daughter, a tall, graceful warrior more at home with a mace than a spindle, who rides with the Young Wolf's host.
A soul born at Bear Island, sworn to House Mormont.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Slain at the Red Wedding (S3┬ÀE9)
On the page. Killed at the Red Wedding (ASOS, ch. 52)
The she-bear of Bear Island danced at the Red Wedding in a gown instead of mail. When the music turned to murder she broke a flagon across Ser Ryman's face and made for the doors ÔÇö an axe caught her belly before she reached them.
Dacey Mormont died at the Red Wedding, and the books make her death the massacre's bitterest image. Out of courtesy to her hosts she came to the feast dressed as a lady ÔÇö a gown instead of the mail she had worn through every battle of the war ÔÇö and when the music turned to murder she was unarmored and unarmed among the tables. She fought anyway: the books have her break a flagon of wine across the face of the first killer to reach her and dash for the doors, and an axe takes her in the belly before she gets there. The woman who survived the Whispering Wood in mail died in silk at a wedding ÔÇö the Freys' treachery measured exactly by what it made of courtesy. The show, having never introduced her, folds her into the slaughtered northern company at the Twins; the books make sure she has a name in it.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
Dacey belongs to the books; the show never casts her, and her place among Robb's guard is absorbed into the anonymous northern retinue that shares her fate. Readers lose more than a name in the trade: her presence ÔÇö a woman in the king's own guard, unremarked because the North simply produces such women ÔÇö is part of the books' texture for Mormont culture that the show later rebuilt around her little sister Lyanna instead. The books also use her to sharpen the war's costs at Bear Island specifically: with Dacey gone south and Jeor at the Wall, the island's succession thins toward the child the show made famous.