Joffrey Baratheon
Crown prince and heir to the Iron Throne, a golden boy of twelve with a cruel streak his mother indulges and his father ignores.
A soul of House Lannister, born at King's Landing.
The fuller tale
Season One
At the Crossroads, Joffrey's cruelty leaves the butcher's boy dead, Nymeria banished, and Lady executed in her place. Ned confesses a lie to save his daughters. Joffrey wants a head anyway ÔÇö and Ice comes down at the Sept of Baelor. Joffrey shows Sansa her father's head on the walls.
Where they stand. Winterfell and King's Landing.
Season Two
Robb sends peace terms Joffrey will never take; Cersei orders Robert's bastards butchered in the city. Joffrey has Sansa beaten before the court until Tyrion stops it. Joffrey quits the walls; Tyrion leads the sortie himself ÔÇö "those are brave men knocking at our door."
Season Three
Sansa tells the Tyrells the truth about Joffrey: he is a monster. Littlefinger wins the Vale-sized game with Varys and ships Ros to Joffrey's crossbow. Sansa Stark weds Tyrion Lannister; Joffrey removes the groom's stool; the bedding does not happen. Melisandre leeches king's blood from Gendry over three names: Robb Stark. Balon Greyjoy. Joffrey Baratheon.
Joffrey crows about serving Robb's head at his wedding; Tywin sends him to bed without supper.
Season Four
Joffrey drinks, chokes, and dies purple in his mother's arms. Tywin begins schooling Tommen on what makes a good king ÔÇö beside Joffrey's corpse.
Season Seven
Olenna Tyrell drinks Jaime's painless poison and confesses to Joffrey with her last breath.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Poisoned at his wedding (S4┬ÀE2)
The boy king was poisoned with the Strangler at his own wedding feast, purpling and clawing in his mother's arms. The Queen of Thorns and Littlefinger had arranged it between them; Tyrion was handed the blame and Sansa the escape.
On the page. The Strangler in his wedding wine (ASOS, ch. 61)
At his own wedding feast the boy king choked purple on poisoned wine ÔÇö the Strangler, worked into a hair-net's black amethysts by the Queen of Thorns while everyone watched the dwarf. Tyrion got the blame; Littlefinger got Sansa.
He dies at his own wedding feast, in front of everyone, and both tellings agree on nearly every detail. The poison is the Strangler, a rare crystal that closes the throat; it reaches his wine in the chaos of the feast, and the boy king goes from mockery to clawing, purpling asphyxiation in the space of a song, dying in Cersei's arms while she screams for help that cannot come. His last act in both versions is to point at Tyrion, who had handled his cup ÔÇö and Cersei's grief becomes an arrest warrant on the spot. The plotters, revealed to viewers and readers only afterward, are Olenna Tyrell, who would not let her granddaughter marry that, and Petyr Baelish, who supplied the poison in a hair-net of black amethysts and needed the chaos: the murder is a joint venture between the realm's two best players, and the realm's worst king never sees either hand. In the books the mechanism is identical, with the added cruelty that Tyrion later cannot stop turning it over ÔÇö the pie, the cup, the moment ÔÇö while dying convicted of it. Joffrey's death purchases nothing good for anyone: it sends Sansa into Littlefinger's keeping, Tyrion to a show trial, and the crown onto the head of a little brother who never wanted it.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 6 chapters that name them
Eddard I
Robert comes to Winterfell; in the crypts before Lyanna's statue he asks Ned to be his Hand and offers Joffrey for Sansa.
Sansa I
By the Trident, Joffrey's cruelty and Arya's temper collide; Nymeria bites the prince and is driven off with stones, and the lie begins.
Sansa IV
Summoned before the queen, Sansa writes the letters they dictate and pleads for her father's life on her knees before Joffrey's court.
Sansa V
Joffrey's first court: Barristan Selmy is stripped of his cloak, Janos Slynt is raised, and Sansa is promised mercy for her father ÔÇö if he confesses.
Arya V
On Baelor's steps Ned Stark confesses to treason to save his daughters; Joffrey wants a head anyway. Yoren grabs Arya in the crowd: ÔÇ£boy.ÔÇØ
Sansa VI
Joffrey shows Sansa her father's head on the walls and promises her Robb's next; the Hound's rough counsel keeps her alive on the battlements.A Clash of Kings 3 chapters that name them
A Storm of Swords 5 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
Book and show Joffrey are the same boy at different volumes. The novels age him down ÔÇö twelve at his accession, dead at thirteen ÔÇö and keep more of Robert's shadow on him: the story of Joffrey cutting open a pregnant cat to see the kittens, and Robert striking him for it, does the books' explaining, while the show trusts Gleeson's face. Television also gives him inventions the page never staged, most notoriously the crossbow murder of Ros and the on-screen beatings of Sansa, where the books keep his cruelty largely delegated ÔÇö he has the Kingsguard do it, which the novels present as its own kind of cowardice. One book detail the show dropped entirely: it is heavily implied Joffrey, not any adult schemer, sent the catspaw with the Valyrian dagger to finish Bran Stark, having overheard Robert say the boy would be better off dead ÔÇö meaning the entire War of the Five Kings traces back to Joffrey twice.
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.