Trystane Martell
Doran's gentle youngest son, betrothed to Princess Myrcella.
A soul of House Martell, born at Sunspear.
The fuller tale
Season Six
In Dorne, Ellaria and the Sand Snakes murder Prince Doran, Areo Hotah, and Trystane: Dorne goes to war.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Slain aboard ship (alive in the books) (S6┬ÀE1)
Doran's gentle son was murdered aboard ship in Blackwater Bay by his own cousins, a spear through the back of the head while he painted funeral stones ÔÇö the Sand Snakes' coup made complete.
His death is show-only, and it completes the coup. Aboard ship in Blackwater Bay ÔÇö painting the funeral stones for Myrcella, the eyes that Westerosi custom lays on the dead ÔÇö Trystane is cornered by his cousins Obara and Nymeria, come from Sunspear with his father's blood already on the family's hands. He is offered a choice of killers and given no real chance against either; Obara's spear takes him through the back of the head mid-turn, a murder even the murderers seem faintly embarrassed by. With Doran and Trystane both gone, the show's Dorne passes entire to Ellaria and the Sand Snakes, the peace he embodied dying with him. In the published books Trystane Martell is alive at the Water Gardens, still losing gracefully at cyvasse, his betrothed maimed but breathing in the rooms nearby.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
Book Trystane is barely more than a warm detail ÔÇö the cyvasse games with Myrcella are his entire on-page career, and he remains at the Water Gardens, alive, a minor piece in his father's long game with his siblings carrying the plot's weight. The show, having cut Arianne and Quentyn, promoted Trystane to only child and gave him their combined narrative exposure with none of their protection: the romance, the council seat, and the voyage north are all invention, and so is everything the voyage costs. The books' Dorne guards its children better ÔÇö so far.
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.