Qotho
A bloodrider of Khal Drogo, bound to his khal by blood and oath, distrustful of the khaleesi and her foreign ways.
A soul born at The Dothraki Sea, sworn to The Dothraki.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Fell at Drogo's tent (S1┬ÀE10)
Drogo's bloodrider raged against the maegi's sorcery and drew on Ser Jorah outside the khal's tent. The knight's steel settled it; the bloodrider died before his khal did.
On the page. Slain at the khal's tent (AGOT, ch. 69)
Drogo's bloodrider tried to stop the maegi's bloodmagic at the khal's tent, and Ser Jorah met him steel to arakh. The knight took a hip wound; Qotho took the point through him.
Qotho died outside DrogoÔÇÖs tent, in the hour the khalasar came apart. With the maegiÔÇÖs death-song rising inside and shapes dancing in the tentÔÇÖs shadow, he came to kill the sorcery at its source ÔÇö the khaleesi and the ritual buying her husbandÔÇÖs life ÔÇö and Ser Jorah Mormont stood in his way in full plate. The duel is brief and ugly in both tellings: the bloodriderÔÇÖs arakh against the exileÔÇÖs longsword, a wound bought on each side in the books, and Qotho dead in the dust before his khal ÔÇö technically upholding, by mere hours, the bloodriderÔÇÖs law that he not outlive Drogo. The taleÔÇÖs dry footnote is that everything he feared came true anyway: the magic was an abomination, the price was the khal and the stallion both, and the khalasar he died defending scattered to new khals by morning.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
Both tellings give Qotho the same arc ÔÇö the suspicion, the confrontation, the death on JorahÔÇÖs steel outside the tent ÔÇö and differ only in texture. The books make the fight properly costly: QothoÔÇÖs arakh shears through JorahÔÇÖs hip before the longsword ends him, and the wound is why the knight cannot ride for days after. The novels also set the bloodrider brotherhood out in full ÔÇö Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo, each dying in the khalasarÔÇÖs dissolution as custom demands ÔÇö where the show, thinning the trio, lets Qotho stand for all three. His name survives among book readers mostly in DaenerysÔÇÖs memory of the lesson: the old world does not argue with the new one; it draws.
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.