Karl Tanner
A cutthroat of King's Landing turned black brother, ringleader of the mutineers who seize Craster's Keep.
A soul born at Flea Bottom, King's Landing, sworn to The Night's Watch.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Killed at Craster's Keep (S4┬ÀE5)
The mutineers' 'fookin' legend of Gin Alley' ruled Craster's Keep on rum and cruelty until the Watch came back for its own. Jon Snow fought him hand to hand, and a daughter of Craster's put the final knife in his back.
He dies in the retaking of CrasterÔÇÖs Keep, in the best fight the showÔÇÖs Wall arc had staged to that point. When Jon Snow comes through the door, Karl meets him with Flea Bottom rules ÔÇö two knives, spat insults, dirty feints ÔÇö and is winning, cutting the swordsman apart at close quarters, when one of CrasterÔÇÖs wives buries a blade in his back for every night of his reign. He turns on her, and Jon finishes it: a sword driven through the back of Karl TannerÔÇÖs skull and out his mouth, ending the legend of Gin Alley mid-sneer. The keep is burned with his body in it. Having never existed in the books, he has no fate there to await.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
Karl Tanner as the screen knows him is a show creation ÔÇö the name, the Gin Alley legend, the skull goblet. The booksÔÇÖ mutiny has no single ringleader with his profile: Craster dies to the ranger DirkÔÇÖs knife in a spontaneous brawl over hidden food, the Old Bear to a tangle of hands, and the mutineers who squat at the keep afterward are a rabble ÔÇö Dirk, Ollo Lophand, Clubfoot Karl (the nameÔÇÖs book-cousin), Garth of Greenaway and the rest ÔÇö with no court and no philosophy. Nor does the Watch return to punish them: in the books that reckoning belongs to a stranger errand, as Coldhands hunts the mutineers through the haunted forest on Bran StarkÔÇÖs behalf and leaves what remains for the crows. The show consolidated the rabble into one memorable villain and gave the Watch the vengeance the books outsourced.