Irri
A Dothraki handmaid to Daenerys, patient and loyal, teaching her khaleesi the ways and the tongue of the horse people.
A soul born at The Dothraki Sea, sworn to The Dothraki.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Killed in Qarth (alive in the books) (S2┬ÀE5)
Daenerys's gentle handmaid was strangled in Qarth when the dragons were stolen, killed in her khaleesi's chambers by a Dothraki who had sold himself to Xaro's coup.
The showÔÇÖs Irri dies in Qarth in the second season, inside the walls that were supposed to be sanctuary: when Xaro Xhoan Daxos and the warlocks moved against Daenerys, the dragons were carried off and the khalasarÔÇÖs remnant slaughtered in the palace, and Irri was strangled in her mistressÔÇÖs chambers ÔÇö by one of their own Dothraki, bought for the coup, in the showÔÇÖs bleak detail. Daenerys finds her among the dead and the storyline barely pauses; the quiet servant got a quiet death, which is arguably the point the show was accidentally making. In the published books Irri is alive in Meereen, still braiding her khaleesiÔÇÖs hair ÔÇö the Qarth coup, and everything about it, being an invention of the screen.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
Book Irri is alive: she and Jhiqui remain in DaenerysÔÇÖs service through the published novels, handmaids in the pyramid of Meereen, their small domestic scenes running right through A Dance with Dragons. The show killed her in Qarth ÔÇö strangled during the theft of the dragons, a casualty of a coup subplot the books do not contain ÔÇö and, characteristically, gave the death perhaps a minute of screen grief before the story moved on. The books also acknowledge, as the show does not, a physical intimacy between Irri and her khaleesi, presented with deliberate awkwardness as one of the unexamined privileges of being served by people one owns ÔÇö a thread of the novelsÔÇÖ slavery critique the adaptation left on the page.
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.