Baelor Breakspear
Prince of Dragonstone, Hand of the King, heir to the Iron Throne ÔÇö and the man who broke Daemon Blackfyre's charge at Redgrass Field. Dark-haired like his Dornish mother, and reckoned the finest knight and best man in the realm.
A soul of House Targaryen, born at King's Landing.
The fuller tale
Season One
In The Hedge Knight ÔÇö The Hand rides out from King's Landing for a country tourney. In Ashford Meadow ÔÇö Remembers being unhorsed, once, by a hedge knight named Arlan. The princes of the realm arrive in force ÔÇö Baelor, Maekar and his sons: Aerion the Bright Flame, Daeron the Drunken, and somewhere unseen, a missing fourth son. In The Lists ÔÇö Watches, weighs, and says little. The Hand misses nothing.
In A Trial of Seven ÔÇö The seventh man. The best man in the realm, on a hedge knight's side. In The Judgment of the Gods ÔÇö Takes a mace blow meant for no one and shrugs it off. For now. Aerion recants. The trial is won ÔÇö but across the field Prince Maekar's mace has found his brother Baelor's helm, and the Hand of the King is swaying in the saddle. The blow that seemed nothing was everything: Baelor Breakspear, Prince of Dragonstone, Hand of the King, dies of a broken skull ÔÇö killed by his brother's mace in a hedge knight's quarrel.
Where they stand. King's Landing and Ashford Meadow.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Died of his brother's mace blow after the trial of seven (S1┬ÀE6)
The Prince of Dragonstone, Hand of the King, hero of Redgrass Field ÔÇö the best man in the realm ÔÇö took up a plain shield to make a hedge knight's seven when no other man would. In the melee his brother Maekar's mace glanced across his helm; he finished the fight, gave the judgment, and died days later of a broken skull. All Westeros mourned, and the realm's future cracked with him.
On the page. Died of his brother's mace blow after the trial of seven (THK, ch. 10)
'It seems my helm is dusty.' The heir to the Iron Throne made a hedge knight's seven complete, took his brother's mace across the helm in the press, and finished the fight before anyone knew how badly he was hurt. He died days later, and the good years of Daeron's reign began their long ending.
In the crush of the trial of seven, Prince MaekarÔÇÖs mace catches his own brother a glancing blow across the helm ÔÇö an accident of the meleeÔÇÖs chaos rather than any design, though the realm would spend years afterward unable to fully separate the two possibilities in retelling. Baelor finishes the fight anyway, delivers the judgment the trial requires, and only afterward does the true extent of the injury become apparent. He lingers for days rather than dying on the field, long enough for the whole court to understand exactly what is being lost, and dies of the broken skull with the peace his father built still, nominally, intact around him. Every difficult year of the reigns that follow ÔÇö AerysÔÇÖs indifference, MaekarÔÇÖs hard rule, the slow drift toward a throne nobody particularly wanted ÔÇö traces back, in the way the smallfolk tell it afterward, to the day the best man in the Seven Kingdoms decided a hedge knightÔÇÖs trial was worth his own head.
Their chapters, book by book
The Hedge Knight 3 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
Bertie CarvelÔÇÖs Baelor is the seasonÔÇÖs moral fulcrum as much as the novellaÔÇÖs ÔÇö the show gives him extra scenes of quiet observation before the trial, watching DunkÔÇÖs situation develop rather than simply arriving to solve it, which sharpens the eventual reveal of his intentions without changing its substance. Critics singled out the trial-of-seven episode as the seasonÔÇÖs high point, and CarvelÔÇÖs delivery of the characterÔÇÖs single most quoted line landed, by most accounts, exactly as the novella intends it to: understated to the point of dry humor, which makes the sacrifice underneath it hit harder rather than softer.
The adaptation otherwise treats BaelorÔÇÖs backstory ÔÇö Redgrass Field, his Dornish mother, his position as Hand ÔÇö largely through dialogue rather than flashback, trusting a single season to establish the character mostly through how everyone around him reacts to his presence in a room.
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.