Kevan Lannister
Tywin's steadfast younger brother and right hand, a competent, unambitious soldier who has spent his life in his brother's shadow and never resented it.
A soul of House Lannister, born at Casterly Rock.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Died when the sept burned (S6┬ÀE10)
Tywin's steady brother, Hand to a boy king in a burning city, was in the Great Sept when the caches beneath it caught. All of Cersei's rivals in one building ÔÇö her uncle counted among the acceptable losses.
On the page. A crossbow in the night (ADWD, ch. 73)
The steadiest Lannister was lured to Pycelle's chambers by a child's note and took a crossbow bolt between the ribs. Varys himself finished it with knives and an apology: Kevan was mending the realm too well, and the eunuch's dragon needed it broken.
The two tellings kill him for opposite reasons, which says everything about him. In the show he dies in the Great Sept of Baelor with the High Sparrow, the Tyrells and half the court, incinerated by the wildfire Cersei ignites to escape her trial ÔÇö an acceptable loss in his niece's arithmetic, one more rival removed. In the books he is murdered precisely because he was succeeding: lured to Pycelle's chambers by a forged note, he takes a crossbow bolt between the ribs, and Varys himself steps from the shadows to finish it ÔÇö apologizing as he works. The eunuch explains, courteously, that Kevan was knitting the realm back together, reconciling Faith and throne and Tyrell and Lannister, and a mended Westeros has no need of the Targaryen restoration Varys has spent decades preparing; the little birds close in with their little knives. The fifth book ends on his dying view of the ceiling ÔÇö the epilogue of Tywin's whole order, killed not for its crimes but for its competence.
Their chapters, book by book
A Dance with Dragons 1 chapter of their own
Where the page and the screen part
The show keeps Kevan peripheral ÔÇö a stern face at councils, a walkout from Cersei's regency, a return as Tommen's Hand ÔÇö while the books make him the hinge of an entire volume's ending. His refusal scene with Cersei is on the page far longer and colder, and his regency is the fifth book's demonstration that the realm's sickness was never inevitable: given one honest administrator, Westeros starts healing within months. Readers who know him only from television are often surprised to learn his book sendoff is among the most celebrated chapters Martin has written; the show, folding the Faith crisis to its own timeline, gives him a communal exit instead of his own.
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.