Varys
The Spider: the realm's Master of Whisperers, a soft, bald, perfumed eunuch whose little birds carry him every secret in the Seven Kingdoms. He serves, he says, the realm.
A soul born at Lys.
The fuller tale
Season Three
In And Now His Watch Is Ended ÔÇö Patience measured in decades, revenge measured in crates. Varys reveals what was in the box the sorcerer sent him ÔÇö and who is in his crate now. Littlefinger wins the Vale-sized game with Varys and ships Ros to Joffrey's crossbow.
Season Five
In The Wars to Come ÔÇö "A ruler who is loved... you'll never make one out of Cersei." Tyrion arrives in Pentos in a crate; Varys offers him a queen worth serving.
Season Eight
Varys chooses the realm one last time; the dragon chooses fire.
Where they stand. Winterfell and Dragonstone.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Executed at Dragonstone (S8┬ÀE5)
The Spider backed the realm one last time over its queen, whispering Jon Snow's secret to anyone who could use it. Tyrion informed; Daenerys sentenced; Drogon burned him on the Dragonstone shore at dusk.
The show grants him the death he predicted for himself, on his own terms and schedule. At Dragonstone, on the eve of the last war, Varys commits openly to what he has been edging toward: Jon Snow's claim is better, Jon's temperament is safer, and the realm outranks his queen. He writes the letters naming Jon's birth, sounds out Jon directly, and ÔÇö the detail the show leaves deliberately ambiguous ÔÇö may already have moved against Daenerys's life through her kitchens. Tyrion, forced to choose between his friend and his queen, informs. Varys is arrested on the beach at dusk; he removes his rings before they come for him, burning his correspondence ÔÇö tidy to the last. Facing Daenerys, Tyrion confesses it was he who betrayed him, and Varys's farewell is without rancor: he hopes he deserves this, truly he does, and he hopes he is wrong about her. He was not, which is the epitaph the next episode writes for him in fire across a city. Drogon burns him on the shore at his queen's single word ÔÇö dracarys ÔÇö the appointment both of them made in that same castle, kept. In the published books Varys is alive, victorious and terrifying: last seen in the Red Keep's walls with a crossbow, clearing the board for his hidden prince.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 3 chapters that name them
Eddard VII
The tourney ends; by night Varys comes to the Hand's chambers with soft words about poison, the king's wine, and men who serve the realm.
Arya III
Chasing cats through the Red Keep, Arya overhears two men in the cellars plotting delay and war ÔÇö Varys and Illyrio, though she cannot name them.
Eddard XV
In the black cells Varys comes disguised with water and arithmetic: confess, take the black, and Sansa lives. ÔÇ£The realm bleeds, Lord Eddard.ÔÇØA Dance with Dragons 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The book Varys is running a much longer and stranger game. In the novels his decades of whispering serve a specific restoration: with his partner Illyrio Mopatis he has raised a hidden claimant ÔÇö a boy presented as Rhaegar's son Aegon, supposedly saved from the sack as an infant ÔÇö educated him in secret aboard a poleboat on the Rhoyne, and timed his landing in Westeros with the Golden Company at his back. The show cut the boy, the company plot and the partnership's depth entirely, redirecting Varys's loyalty to Daenerys herself; book Varys, pointedly, never serves her, and his fifth-book reappearance in the capital ÔÇö emerging from the walls to murder the realm's ablest administrator precisely because a mending realm leaves no room for his prince ÔÇö reveals a conspirator far more ruthless than the show's weary humanist. Which face is the true one is the books' open question about him.
The tellings also part on texture: the books' Varys is a master of disguise who moves through the city as a gaoler, a begging brother, a gap-toothed turnkey, and the whispered horror of his cutting is delivered to Tyrion in the dark of a tunnel rather than a bright chamber. The show's finest Varys material ÔÇö the odd-couple sparring with Tyrion in Meereen, the ships-and-sails banter, the last quiet talk on the steps at Dragonstone ÔÇö is its own invention, and among its best.
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.