Styr
The Magnar of Thenn, lord of the most disciplined and fearsome of the free folk, who leads a raiding party over the Wall.
A soul born at Beyond the Wall, sworn to The Free Folk.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Fell at Castle Black (S4┬ÀE9)
The Magnar of Thenn, scarred and earless, met Jon Snow in the yard of Castle Black when the wildlings breached the gate. He nearly beat Jon to death before taking a smith's hammer through the skull.
On the page. Fell in the assault on Castle Black (ASOS, ch. 55)
The earless Magnar of Thenn led the climb over the Wall's shoulder and the assault on Castle Black's naked southern face. The Watch's traps met him on the ice: he fell screaming from the Wall he'd beaten.
Both tellings kill him at Castle Black, in the assault he led. On screen he gets a villainÔÇÖs exit: breaking through the gate with his Thenns, he beats Jon Snow half to death in the yard ÔÇö swordless, outmatched, spitting ÔÇö until JonÔÇÖs hand closes on a smithÔÇÖs hammer and drives it up through the MagnarÔÇÖs skull. The books end him with the Wall itself: leading the escalade against the castleÔÇÖs southern face, Styr and his climbers meet the WatchÔÇÖs prepared defenses on the ice, and the great stair collapses in fire and frozen thunder, taking the Magnar down with tons of ice ÔÇö the mountain lord killed by the only thing in the south taller than his mountains. His peopleÔÇÖs story continues without him in the books, wearing Karstark colors.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
The show reinvented the Thenns wholesale. The booksÔÇÖ Thenns are the least savage of the free folk ÔÇö bronze-armored, Old Tongue-speaking, so orderly that the Watch later marries their new Magnar, StyrÔÇÖs son Sigorn, to Alys Karstark, founding a house of Thenn kneelers in the northÔÇÖs heartland. The screenÔÇÖs Thenns are scarified, bald, and eat their enemies ÔÇö cannibalism borrowed from the ice-river clans to give season four a memorable villain, with Styr rebuilt to match as a leering brute. Book-Styr is no monster, merely absolute; his quarrel with Jon is professional, not sadistic. The two versions share a name, a mission and a death at Castle Black, and almost nothing else.
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.