House of the Dragon killed Ser Criston Cole in the opening minutes of Season 3 Episode 6, at the battle the books call the Butcher’s Ball. Broadly, HBO followed George R.R. Martin. Cole is surrounded by the enemies and challenges the enemy commanders to fight him all at once, but he is shot down before he can swing his sword.
The major difference is who pulls the bowstring in the book versus the show. In Fire & Blood, Cole parleys with Ser Garibald Grey, Ser Pate of Longleaf, and Roderick “Roddy the Ruin” Dustin at a stony ridge south of the Gods Eye. He draws his longsword and offers to take all three on at once.
Pate answers that he would want three more. He signals Red Robb Rivers, said to be the finest archer in Westeros, who raises his longbow alongside two of his men. Three arrows hit Cole in the belly, neck, and breast.
However, in the HBO show, the killing arrows are fired by one person. Alysanne “Black Aly” Blackwood, played by Annie Shapero, looses them herself from a distance before Cole gets a chance to duel. It’s a major change that lessens the impact of his death.
HOTD Skipped the Long Ruse Before Criston Cole’s Death
In the book, the Butcher’s Ball is the payoff to weeks of patient cruelty. It is not one clever trap that brings down Fabien Frankel‘s highly intelligent kingmaker. After the Fishfeed, Cole marched his weakened army south through the riverlands. Rhaenyra’s forces burned the land ahead of him and filled the road with bloated carcasses and dead men fouling the water.
The corpse feasts, where bodies were propped up at a table as though sitting down to dinner, were meant as a method of psychological warfare against the Greens. Cole and his army eventually became numb to these scenes. So when the army passed one last table of diners near the Gods Eye, nobody checked.
However, it was the Black soldiers hidden inside the corpses who then killed a dozen men. Cole and the rest of the survivors fled straight into the army waiting to surround them. However, in the show, the corpse feast appeared in House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 5 in an entirely different setting at King’s Landing, and it was used on the Gold Cloaks for a different purpose.
Sadly, House of the Dragon Season 3 portrayed Cole as stupider than he was, as he fell for an obvious trap at the abandoned Tully camp. Cole did not break psychologically. He was just outsmarted by an easy trap set by the Rivermen. The ambush only worked because Cole was careless. And carelessness was never his flaw.
Criston Cole Didn’t Deserve the Sadder Death in the Show
In Fire & Blood, the commanders give a clear reason why they turn down Criston Cole’s offer. They despised him so much that they gave up their honor in battle just to give him an unremarkable death. Ser Pate makes this comment in the book: “I’ll have no songs about how brave you died, Kingmaker. There’s tens o’ thousands dead on your account.”
So, he died as what he was in the book: a man who helped burn the realm down because his ego got bruised by a young princess. The show gives him close to the opposite. He spends Episode 5 talking about going out in a way singers would remember. He then valiantly cuts down the disguised corpses, ties Alicent’s favor around his sword, and squares up to Oscar Tully and Roddy the Ruin like a knight in a song.
Fabien Frankel plays the final beat in House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 6 with real sadness the character truly didn’t deserve. Black Aly is a book favorite character, but she deserved the attention for something different than dishonorably slaying this villain in the show.
What do you think of Ser Criston Cole’s death in the latest episode? Let us know in the comments below!
House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 6 is now available for streaming on HBO Max.
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