Dickon Tarly
Samwell's younger brother, everything their father wanted in a son: strong, martial, and heir to Horn Hill in Sam's place.
A soul born at Horn Hill, sworn to House Tarly.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Fell after the Reach campaign (S7┬ÀE5)
The dutiful heir of Horn Hill stepped forward to share his father's sentence, to Randyll's pride and Sam's grief. Dracarys took the future of House Tarly along with its past.
Show-only, and chosen with open eyes. After the Goldroad rout, Daenerys offers the captured survivors their lives for fealty; Randyll refuses and is sentenced to burn. Dickon announces that his father does not stand alone ÔÇö over Randyll's single, startled attempt to order him back into the ranks of the living ÔÇö and refuses the knee in his turn. Tyrion pleads the house's future; Daenerys declines to make exceptions; Drogon executes them together, and House Tarly's past and future go up in one column of flame while its true heir, a continent away, shelves books at the Citadel. In the published novels Dickon is alive at Horn Hill ÔÇö a boy with a Valyrian sword in his future and no dragons anywhere near him.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
In the books Dickon is years younger and entirely offstage ÔÇö a name in Sam's chapters, a betrothal in House Tarly's ledgers, the heir-presumptive of a house whose lord is alive and scheming in King's Landing. The Goldroad field, the choice, and the fire are all show; the books have burned no Tarlys. The show also flattered him upward in age and agency to make the sacrifice legible ÔÇö book Dickon is a child who has never seen a battlefield, which would have made the same scene an atrocity rather than a choice.
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.