Vaemond Velaryon
The Sea Snake's younger brother, a proud sailor with strong opinions about the hair color of his brother's heirs — opinions he insists on sharing at court.
A soul of House Velaryon, born at Driftmark.
The fuller tale
Season One
In The Lord of the Tides — Says the quiet part before the throne. Briefly. Six years on: Corlys takes a wound in the Stepstones that festers; his brother Vaemond sails to court to claim Driftmark over the 'strong boys.' Vaemond names Rhaenyra a whore and her sons bastards before the throne — Daemon takes his head off mid-sentence. 'He can keep his tongue.'
Where they stand. Driftmark and King's Landing.
Their story
Corlys's younger brother is a proud, weathered sailor with decades of his own service to the family's fleets, and a habit — indulged rather too long by a court that should have known better — of voicing, loudly and specifically, his opinions about the hair color of his brother's presumed heirs.
His grievance is not entirely without foundation, which is precisely what makes it dangerous: pressing his own claim to Driftmark by publicly calling Rhaenyra's sons bastards is exactly the kind of true thing that a functioning court cannot afford to have said aloud in front of the king.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Beheaded by Dark Sister before the throne (S1·E8)
Before the Iron Throne he called the queen's heirs bastards and Rhaenyra a whore — and Daemon took his head off crown-to-jaw with Dark Sister mid-sentence. 'He can keep his tongue,' the prince observed. The Silent Sisters got the rest.
On the page. Beheaded by Daemon; his tongue they kept (F&B, ch. 1)
He pressed his claim to Driftmark by calling Rhaenyra's sons bastards once too often and too publicly. Daemon beheaded him; the queen fed his tongue to her dragon, say the harsher accounts. His sons pressed the claim no further.
In the show, Vaemond presses his claim before the Iron Throne and calls Rhaenyra's heirs bastards and their mother worse — and Daemon, in one smooth motion, takes his head off with Dark Sister mid-sentence, observing afterward that the dead man can at least keep his tongue.
Fire & Blood's account agrees on the beheading and adds the detail the show trims for mercy: the harsher sources claim Rhaenyra ordered his tongue cut out and fed to her dragon before the body was even removed from the hall, a punishment for the specific words rather than merely the treason of speaking them. His sons, unsurprisingly, press the family's claim no further after that afternoon.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
Both tellings put Vaemond's fatal outburst before the Iron Throne itself, in nearly identical circumstances — a public claim to Driftmark built on calling Rhaenyra's sons illegitimate, delivered with a bluntness neither the show nor the book lets him survive. The versions differ mainly in staging detail rather than substance.
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.