Myrcella Baratheon
The princess of the realm, sweet-natured and biddable, the middle of Cersei's three children.
A soul of House Lannister, born at King's Landing.
The fuller tale
Season Five
Jaime and the Sand Snakes reach Myrcella at the same moment; Areo Hotah's axe ends the scuffle.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Poisoned in Dorne (S5┬ÀE10)
Ellaria Sand kissed the princess farewell at Sunspear's docks with poison on her lips. Myrcella died at sea in her father's arms ÔÇö moments after telling Jaime she knew, and was glad.
In the show she dies of a kiss. Ellaria Sand, unappeased by peace with the Lannisters, bids the princess farewell at Sunspear's docks with poison on her lips ÔÇö the long farewell, an antidote taken by the poisoner alone ÔÇö and Myrcella sails for home apparently well. The venom works on the water: moments after telling Jaime she knows he is her father and is glad of it, she bleeds from the nose and dies in his arms, the second golden shroud of Maggy's prophecy delivered mid-embrace. Ellaria's price is paid later, when Cersei returns the exact kiss to her daughter Tyene in the black cells. In the published books Myrcella is alive ÔÇö scarred by Darkstar's blade during the collapse of Arianne's plot, short an ear, but breathing, and on her way back into the story's center as Dorne weighs its next move.
Their chapters, book by book
A Clash of Kings 2 chapters that name them
A Feast for Crows 2 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The books send her to Dorne on the same logic and into a much more tangled story. There she becomes the centerpiece of Arianne Martell's queenmaking plot ÔÇö a Dornish scheme to crown Myrcella under Dornish law, which recognizes the eldest child regardless of sex ÔÇö and when the plot unravels, the knight called Darkstar turns his blade on the child herself; book Myrcella survives him, but maimed, losing an ear and carrying the scar across her cheek. None of it ÔÇö Arianne, the queenmaking, Darkstar ÔÇö reaches the show, whose slimmed-down Dorne plot substitutes the Sand Snakes' vengeance for the books' constitutional crisis. She also gets a different confidence: the books have not given her the paternity scene with Jaime, which is the show's own invention and arguably its best addition to her.
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.