Mance Rayder
The King-Beyond-the-Wall: once a crow of the Night's Watch, now the man who has done the impossible and united a hundred quarreling wildling peoples under one banner.
A soul born at Beyond the Wall, sworn to The Free Folk.
The fuller tale
Season Three
Jon is brought before Mance Rayder and lies his way into the free folk.
Season Four
Mance's hundred thousand hit the Wall from both sides in one night. Dawn: the Watch stands, barely. Jon walks north alone to kill Mance Rayder. Stannis's cavalry breaks the wildling camp; Mance yields; the debt to the realm is paid at the Wall.
Where they stand. Castle Black.
Season Five
Stannis offers Mance Rayder his life for a knee; Mance chooses the fire, and Jon's arrow ends it early.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Burned before the Wall (S5┬ÀE1)
The King-Beyond-the-Wall refused the knee to Stannis and was bound to a pyre before the whole watching Wall. Jon Snow's arrow found his heart before the fire could claim its due ÔÇö the last kindness between enemies.
On the page. Burned before the Wall ÔÇö or so it seemed (ADWD, ch. 11)
Before the whole Wall the King-Beyond-the-Wall burned in a cage of ice and wood ÔÇö or so every watcher swore. The red woman's glamour burned Rattleshirt in his skin; the man himself went to Winterfell with six spearwives and a harp. So it seemed, and seeming is her trade.
In the show he dies for a word. Stannis offers the captive King-Beyond-the-Wall his life for a bent knee and the free folkÔÇÖs spears for a kneelerÔÇÖs pledge, and Mance ÔÇö courteous, regretful, entirely immovable ÔÇö explains that the moment he kneels, everything he built is unbuilt. Melisandre gives him to her god before the whole watching Wall: bound to the pyre, he holds his composure until the flames climb, and it is Jon SnowÔÇÖs arrow, loosed across the yard against every order, that reaches his heart before the fire can finish its work. The wildlings remember the mercy; Stannis, pointedly, remembers the disobedience.
In the books the pyre is a magic trick. The man who burns screaming in ManceÔÇÖs face and ManceÔÇÖs chains is Rattleshirt, wrapped in MelisandreÔÇÖs glamour; the true Mance survives as her hidden asset and is spent on the Winterfell infiltration, last reported ÔÇö by Ramsay Bolton, hardly a disinterested witness ÔÇö as a prisoner in a cage. Alive in the published books, his final fate unwritten: of all the divergences between page and screen, ManceÔÇÖs is the widest still open.
Their chapters, book by book
A Clash of Kings 2 chapters that name them
A Storm of Swords 2 chapters that name them
A Dance with Dragons 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The tellings part company at the pyre, and the divergence is total. The show burns Mance in its fifth seasonÔÇÖs first hour and means it; the books burn a glamoured Rattleshirt in his place, MelisandreÔÇÖs ruby-magic dressing the Lord of Bones in the kingÔÇÖs features while the real Mance ÔÇö hidden under the bone-lordÔÇÖs rattling shirt ÔÇö is quietly kept in service. Book-Mance then rides to Winterfell posing as the bard Abel, six spearwives at his back, to steal Ramsay BoltonÔÇÖs bride out of the heart of the Bolton stronghold ÔÇö one of the fifth bookÔÇÖs great covert operations, and it ends with the Pink Letter claiming he sits in a cage wearing a cloak of spearwivesÔÇÖ skins. Whether that letter tells the truth is one of the sagaÔÇÖs liveliest open questions; what is certain is that Mance Rayder is alive in the published books, and the showÔÇÖs clean, honorable ending is an invention.
The characters differ in flavor as well as fate. Book-Mance is a performer to the bone ÔÇö he once climbed the Wall in a rebuilt cloak to walk WinterfellÔÇÖs feast hall as a minstrel and look Robert Baratheon in the eye, purely because he could. The show pares away the theatricality and the harp and gives the essentials to a quieter, grimmer man whose greatness is all in his stillness ÔÇö the version who tells Jon Snow the freedom to make his own mistakes was all he ever wanted.
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.