Khal Drogo
A great khal of the Dothraki, lord of forty thousand riders, who has never lost a fight and never cut his hair. Wed to Daenerys for the price of an army.
A soul of House Targaryen, born at The Dothraki Sea, sworn to The Dothraki.
The fuller tale
Season One
In Winter Is Coming ÔÇö A khal of forty thousand riders takes a silver-haired bride. In Pentos, Viserys weds his sister Daenerys to Khal Drogo for the promise of an army. In A Golden Crown ÔÇö "A crown for a king." Gold, molten, poured. In The Pointy End ÔÇö Vows to cross the black salt sea ÔÇö and takes a wound keeping his khaleesi's mercy.
In Fire and Blood  "When the sun rises in the west" A shell, given mercy, given fire.
Where they stand. Pentos, Vaes Dothrak and Village of the Lhazareen.
How it ends for them
On the screen. A wound gone bad, and a mercy (S1┬ÀE10)
A cut taken in a brawl of honor festered, and the maegi Mirri Maz Duur 'healed' him into a breathing husk ÔÇö only death pays for life, and the life was his. Daenerys pressed a cushion to his face as a mercy, and burned him on a great pyre in the grass.
On the page. A wound, sorcery, and mercy (AGOT, ch. 69)
A wound taken in courtesy festered into fire, and Mirri Maz Duur's 'healing' bought his life at the price of everything in it. Daenerys pressed a cushion to his face when she understood what remained. Only death pays for life.
DrogoÔÇÖs death is the same in both tellings and is really two deaths, a fortnight apart. The first is Mirri Maz DuurÔÇÖs: her healing of his festering wound was a curse dressed as a kindness, and the bloodmagic rite that followed ÔÇö only death pays for life ÔÇö took his son from the world and his self from his body, leaving a breathing husk that could not ride, speak, or see the wife who tended him. Daenerys, understanding at last that everything the maegi did was vengeance working as intended, gave him the second death herself: a cushion pressed to his face, a mercy performed dry-eyed, the first ruling she ever made as the person the rest of the tale would reveal.
She burned him on a pyre in the grass with his weapons and his treasures, as khals are burned ÔÇö and made the pyre the door of the story. Mirri Maz Duur was bound to it; three petrified eggs were laid on it; and Daenerys walked into the flames a widow and out of them the Mother of Dragons. The Dothraki believe a great khal rides eternally in the night lands, and the tale allows Drogo one return: in the House of the UndyingÔÇÖs visions, a tent, a wife, and the son who never was ÔÇö the life the bargain stole, shown once and taken away.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 1 chapter that name them
A Dance with Dragons 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The tellings agree on DrogoÔÇÖs arc almost beat for beat; the differences are in texture. The books give the wedding night a controversial tenderness the early show traded for brutality ÔÇö a choice much debated since ÔÇö and have DrogoÔÇÖs fatal wound come from battle against a rival khalÔÇÖs forces during the Lhazareen raid, where the show stages the more intimate duel with Mago, a character it invented for the purpose. Book Drogo speaks no Common Tongue at all, making the marriageÔÇÖs growth a purely Dothraki-language affair, and the ceremonial detail around him ÔÇö the stallion-heart ritual, the dosh khaleenÔÇÖs prophecy of the stallion who mounts the world ÔÇö is considerably richer on the page. Jason MomoaÔÇÖs screen presence, meanwhile, gave the showÔÇÖs Drogo a physical charisma the books ask readers to assemble from reputation.
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.