Tanselle
Tanselle Too-Tall, a Dornish puppeteer with a quick brush and quicker strings, who paints an elm and a shooting star on a hedge knight's shield. Not too tall by half, in Dunk's considered opinion.
A soul born at Dorne, sworn to Smallfolk & Showfolk.
The fuller tale
Season One
In Ashford Meadow ÔÇö Tanselle Too-Tall, the Dornish puppeteer ÔÇö not too tall by half, says Dunk. Dunk pitches his camp beneath an elm and walks the meadow: banners, merchants, puppeteers ÔÇö and a Dornish girl named Tanselle painting a wooden dragon. Steely Pate the armorer takes Dunk's measure and most of his coin; the shield gets new paint from Tanselle's brush ÔÇö a shooting star above an elm. In The Lists ÔÇö Her scream is the hinge the whole tale turns on.
That night Aerion finds the puppet show: the wooden dragon offends the Bright Flame, and he breaks Tanselle's fingers for it. In The Judgment of the Gods ÔÇö Gone from the meadow before the trial ends ÔÇö Dunk never finds her to say farewell.
Where they stand. Ashford Meadow.
How it ends for them
The chronicle records no death for this soul ÔÇö they are living when the tale leaves them, or their ending is a page the maesters have yet to turn.
Their chapters, book by book
The Hedge Knight 3 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
Tanzyn Crawford plays Tanselle in the showÔÇÖs first season, and the characterÔÇÖs warm, quietly flirtatious rapport with Dunk survives the adaptation largely intact ÔÇö the shield-painting scene, small as it is on the page, gives the show one of its gentler character beats amid a season otherwise building toward violence.
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.