Harry Strickland
Homeless Harry, captain-general of the Golden Company, the largest and most storied of the free companies of Essos ÔÇö cautious where his forebears were bold (book).
A soul born at The Free Cities, sworn to Sellswords & Free Companies.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Ridden down before the walls of King's Landing (S8┬ÀE5)
The captain-general of the Golden Company drew his lines before the walls of King's Landing looking very fine. Drogon undid the company in one pass, and Grey Worm's thrown spear caught Harry mid-flight.
In the show, Harry Strickland dies with his company in the fall of KingÔÇÖs Landing, and the staging is deliberately merciless: the Golden Company forms up in gleaming ranks before the city gates, the picture of professional confidence ÔÇö and Drogon simply comes through the gate behind them, the wall and the vanguard erupting in the same breath. The company is annihilated in moments without landing a blow, and Strickland, unhorsed and fleeing across the field, is run down by Grey Worm, whose thrown spear takes the captain-general mid-stride ÔÇö the last commander of the exile legion dying in flight from the Targaryen restoration his order was founded to achieve, on the wrong side of the contract.
In the published books Strickland is alive and, by his lights, winning: the Golden Company holds StormÔÇÖs End and a spreading beachhead in the stormlands for AegonÔÇÖs cause, its captain-general soaking his feet and counselling delay while bolder men spend the companyÔÇÖs gold-good word. Whether MartinÔÇÖs version dies better than the showÔÇÖs ÔÇö or reveals, as some readers suspect, that Homeless Harry was never quite fighting for the boy at all ÔÇö waits on The Winds of Winter.
Their chapters, book by book
A Feast for Crows 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The screen and the page use the same name for nearly opposite men. Book Strickland is the reluctant, blister-footed brake on the Golden CompanyÔÇÖs invasion of the stormlands ÔÇö a landing made for Aegon and against CerseiÔÇÖs whole world, still unfolding, and still undefeated, when the published novels end; he is alive on the page, commanding from a comfortable rear. The show, having cut Aegon and Connington, rented the company to the other side entirely: its Strickland is CerseiÔÇÖs crisp mercenary general, and the invasion of Westeros the company was built for becomes a garrison contract in the city it was founded to take. Book readers regard the switch as one of the adaptationÔÇÖs stranger inversions ÔÇö the exilesÔÇÖ homecoming legion dying in Lannister service ÔÇö and the elephants, promised and undelivered, as the showÔÇÖs own wry acknowledgment that something had been lost in the hiring.
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.