Loras Tyrell
The Knight of Flowers: Mace's son, the most dazzling young jouster in the Seven Kingdoms, devoted to Renly Baratheon.
A soul of House Tyrell, born at Highgarden.
The fuller tale
Season One
Loras Tyrell whispers a crown into Renly's ear.
Where they stand. King's Landing.
Season Three
The Tyrells plot Sansa's marriage to Loras; Littlefinger's ship for her waits anyway. Tywin arranges two weddings: Sansa for Tyrion, Loras for Cersei. No one at that table is happy.
Where they stand. King's Landing.
Season Five
The Faith Militant is reborn; Loras Tyrell is seized for his sins; Tommen bounces off the steps of the sept.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Died when the sept burned (S6┬ÀE10)
The Knight of Flowers confessed, was mutilated with the Faith's seven-pointed star, and renounced Highgarden itself ÔÇö minutes before the sept that broke him burned with him inside it. House Tyrell's future died the same morning.
The show ends him in the Great Sept, broken first and burned after. Imprisoned by the Faith for his sexuality, Loras is worn down past the point his family bargained for: at trial he confesses everything, renounces his name, his claim and Highgarden itself, and kneels to take the Faith's seven-pointed star carved into his forehead ÔÇö his sister's fury notwithstanding, the bargain his freedom required. He is given minutes to hold his new station. Cersei's wildfire beneath the sept detonates before the congregation can disperse, and the Knight of Flowers dies with his sister, his father, and the institution that unmade him, in the green fire of the woman who fed him to it. In the published books Loras is alive ÔÇö burned and bedridden after Dragonstone, but breathing, his renunciations unmade and his sword, for what it is worth, still his.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The tellings diverge on his rank and his ruin. Book Loras is the third of four Tyrell children ÔÇö Willas and Garlan stand between him and Highgarden, both cut from the show, which promoted Loras to heir and thereby invented the Faith's interest in his inheritance. His book endgame is entirely different: as a Kingsguard knight he demands command of the assault on Dragonstone's garrison, takes the castle in a reckless storming, and is carried back scalded by boiling oil and gravely wounded ÔÇö alive in the published books, but reported dying by increments, with readers left to wonder how much of the report is true and whose interests it serves. The show's imprisonment, confession and mutilation by the Faith have no book counterpart; the books' Loras never faces the Sparrows at all.
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.