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.

The fuller tale

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.

The page and the screen

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.

In the show, season by season

Season One. In The Lord of the Tides — Says the quiet part before the throne. Briefly.

Where they stand, season by season

Their fate — if death has found them, it is written here. Open at your peril.

The show: Beheaded by Dark Sister before the throne (S1·E8)

The books: Beheaded by Daemon; his tongue they kept (F&B, ch. 1)

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.

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.