Qyburn
A disgraced former maester stripped of his chain for experiments best not described, now a useful and unsettling servant to those who ask no questions.
A soul born at The Reach.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Died in the Red Keep (S8┬ÀE5)
The unchained maester who built the Mountain was struck dead by his own creation ÔÇö Gregor swatted his master aside on the collapsing stair when Qyburn ordered him back to the queen's side. The scorpions, the little birds, all of it ended on the stones.
The show kills him with the only instrument he ever loved. As Daenerys dismantles the Red Keep, Qyburn descends the crumbling stairs at Cersei's side, urging the Mountain to guard his queen ÔÇö and when the dead Sandor Clegane appears on the stair below, the creature stops answering. Ordered to stand fast, the Mountain shrugs off his helm, and Qyburn seizes his creation's arm to repeat the command; the thing he built swats its maker aside without breaking stride, dashing him against the rubble, where he dies among the falling stones of the regime he engineered ÔÇö the necromancer discarded by his own resurrection, an ending so neatly ironic it reads as the show's verdict on his whole method. In the published books Qyburn is alive and untouched, his little birds fed, his champion armored, his cellars busy.
Their chapters, book by book
A Storm of Swords 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The books scatter Qyburn's show duties among several players. On the page he enters at Harrenhal among the Brave Companions ÔÇö the sellsword company whose butchery gave him his subjects ÔÇö and his portfolio in King's Landing is narrower: necromancer-in-residence and whisperer, while the scorpions, the council theatrics and the chancellor role the show builds for him are television's consolidation, part of its general folding of the court's schemers into fewer, more visible hands. Book Qyburn's experiments are also darker for being glimpsed sideways ÔÇö the cells beneath the keep, the requisitioned prisoners, the puppeteer's daughters no one mentions twice ÔÇö and Ser Robert Strong is a closed helm the novels have pointedly never opened. In the published books he is alive, at the height of his influence, with his creation about to champion Cersei's trial by combat.
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.