Ser Waymar Royce
A young lordling of the Vale, newly of the Night's Watch and proud of his sable cloak, leading his first ranging beyond the Wall.
A soul born at Runestone, sworn to The Night's Watch.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Killed beyond the Wall (S1┬ÀE1)
Led his first ranging into the haunted forest with a lordling's confidence and met the Others in the dark. He crossed swords with a White Walker, died for it, and rose again with eyes of blue.
On the page. Killed in the haunted forest (AGOT, ch. 1)
The lordling ranger stood his ground when the pale shadows stepped from the trees, and called his first foe to the dance. His sword shattered against crystal; his own men found him after ÔÇö and he found them first.
He dies in the haunted forest on his first ranging, the first sworn brother lost in the saga. In the books it is nearly a formal duel: an Other steps from the dark, blades meet, and the inhuman thing toys with him ÔÇö parry by parry, in a cold that makes steel scream ÔÇö until WaymarÔÇÖs sword bursts and the shard takes his eye, and then the watching Others close in together and cut the boy apart. What rises afterward wears his sables and his wounds and strangles the last of his men in a tree. The show gives him the same end with less ceremony, cut down in the dark by the first White Walker the audience ever sees. Either way his corpse is the storyÔÇÖs first proof that beyond the Wall, dying is not the end of oneÔÇÖs service.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The prologueÔÇÖs duel belongs to the books: the mocking, patient Other, the crystal sword that shivers WaymarÔÇÖs blade to splinters, the watchers who emerge from the wood to finish the work with cold courtesy. The show shortens the encounter to a massacre glimpsed in the dark ÔÇö Waymar dies quickly and mostly off-camera, and the eerie fencing-lesson quality of the book scene is spent elsewhere. Readers may also enjoy the long echo the books give him: seasons later, his father Bronze Yohn passes through the story still ignorant of how his son died, and the Vale plotline keeps House RoyceÔÇÖs grief quietly in view. The showÔÇÖs Royces appear too, but the connection to the frozen boy from the first scene is never drawn.