Robert Baratheon
The king who won his throne with a warhammer and has spent the years since eating, drinking, and whoring away the crown's gold — still mourning a Stark girl he never wed.
A soul of House Baratheon, born at Storm's End.
The fuller tale
Season One
King for seventeen years and visibly tired of it, happiest with a wine cup in his hand and a war story on his tongue. He rides north to make Ned his Hand after Jon Arryn dies suddenly, mostly because he trusts no one else in the capital, and the two of them spend a feast trading memories of a rebellion neither of them has stopped fighting in his head. He is a poor fit for peacetime — bored by councils, unfaithful to Cersei, generous with a kingdom he has mostly stopped paying attention to — and when he hears Daenerys Targaryen is pregnant he orders her killed, over Ned's objections, on the strength of an old grudge. A boar guts him on a hunt after too much wine, poured by a squire doing the queen's bidding, and he dies naming Ned protector of the realm in a will Cersei burns before anyone can read it aloud.
Season Two
Robb sends peace terms Joffrey will never take; Cersei orders Robert's bastards butchered in the city.
Season Four
Ser Barristan hands Jorah a royal pardon signed by Robert Baratheon: the spying is out; Dany exiles him.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Gored by a boar (S1·E7)
The king hunted boar in the kingswood, sodden with wine his squire kept pouring, and the boar won. He died in the Red Keep naming Ned Stark Protector of the Realm — a testament altered and betrayed before the body cooled.
On the page. Gored on a hunt (AGOT, ch. 50)
Wine, a boar, and a squire named Lancel who kept the king's cup full — the hunt in the kingswood opened him from navel to nipple. He died in the Red Keep amending his will at Ned's gentle dishonesty, easier in his mind than he'd been in years.
The king died as he lived — hunting, drunk, and surrounded by people who profited from him being both. In the kingswood, chasing a boar with a skin of strongwine his squire Lancel Lannister dutifully kept full, Robert took the tusks low across the belly. He was days dying in the Red Keep, long enough to make his last mistakes generous ones: he named Ned Stark Protector of the Realm, dictated a will for his 'son Joffrey,' and never saw Ned quietly amend the words to 'my rightful heir' — a mercy and a hedge in four words. He asked pardon for the Targaryen girl, too late for the order already sailing. Both tellings agree on the essentials and on the epitaph Robert would have chosen himself: killed by a pig, undone by wine, and betrayed by nearly everyone at the bedside — though the wine, as Varys observes, was the assassin that mattered, and Cersei never even had to raise her voice.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 9 chapters that name them
Catelyn I
In the godswood Catelyn brings Ned hard news: Jon Arryn is dead of a sudden fever, and King Robert rides north with his court.
Eddard I
Robert comes to Winterfell; in the crypts before Lyanna's statue he asks Ned to be his Hand and offers Joffrey for Sansa.
Eddard II
On the kingsroad south, Robert shows Ned a report of Daenerys' wedding and wants her dead; they argue about old wars and older ghosts.
Eddard VI
Ned follows the late Hand's footsteps to Tobho Mott's forge and meets Gendry — a black-haired apprentice with King Robert's jaw.
Eddard IX
Ned traces Robert's bastards through the city; outside a brothel Jaime Lannister's spears close in — Jory dies, and Ned's leg is shattered.
Eddard X
Milk of the poppy dreams: the tower of joy, three white cloaks, and “promise me, Ned”; he wakes to Robert restoring the badge and riding to hunt.
Eddard XI
Ned sits the Iron Throne in Robert's place, hears the ruin Gregor Clegane has made of the riverlands, and sends Beric Dondarrion for his head.
Eddard XIII
A boar has opened the king: Robert dictates his will and Ned, writing, changes one word — heir. Renly offers a hundred swords; Ned refuses them.
Eddard XIV
Robert dies; in the throne room Ned plays his honest hand against Cersei's queen — and Littlefinger's dagger settles it at his throat.Where the page and the screen part
Show and book Robert are unusually close — Mark Addy's performance lifts whole scenes from the page, including the crypt scene at Winterfell and the terrible marital post-mortem with Cersei (a show invention, but one that book readers tend to adopt as canon on the spot). The books deepen the edges: Ned's memories give us the young Robert of the Vale in loving detail, the bastards multiply (Mya in the Vale and Edric at Storm's End matter to later plots the show never runs), and his brothers' resentments are given more room — Stannis nursing the grudge of Storm's End, Renly noting acidly how little of the old Robert was left. The show also lets Cersei claim their marriage held one good night; the books' version of the ledger is grimmer on both sides.
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.