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Tyrion Lannister kills his father, Tywin, with a crossbow while Tywin is on the privy in the Tower of the Hand. In HBO’s Game of Thrones, the killing closes Season 4’s finale, “The Children.” Tyrion has just been sentenced to death, freed by Jaime, and found Shae in Tywin’s bed. George R. R. Martin’s novel A Storm of Swords reaches the same outcome through a different chain of revelations: Jaime tells Tyrion the truth about Tysha, and Tywin’s final insult pushes Tyrion to fire. This guide covers both versions, why the death matters, and what follows for the Lannisters.
How does Tywin Lannister die?
Tywin dies from a crossbow wound inflicted by Tyrion in the Tower of the Hand, the seat of royal power in King’s Landing. The setting is deliberately degrading for a lord who has spent his life cultivating authority, dignity, and fear: his final moments are spent on a privy, with his bowels loosening as he dies.
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The basic outcome is the same in the television adaptation and the novels, but the details are not interchangeable. The show builds the scene around Shae and Tyrion’s death sentence; the book makes Jaime’s confession about Tysha central. Both versions end with Tywin calling Tyrion no son of his and Tyrion insisting that he is his son.
What episode does Tywin die?
Tywin dies in “The Children,” the Season 4 finale of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which aired in 2014. Charles Dance plays Tywin, and Peter Dinklage plays Tyrion. Dance also appears as Tywin’s corpse in Season 5’s opening episode, “The Wars to Come.”
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The finale follows the trial and trial by combat. Tyrion has been condemned after Joffrey’s poisoning, though he did not commit the crime. Jaime frees him from his cell and plans to have Varys smuggle him out of the city. Instead, Tyrion takes a secret route into the Tower of the Hand. The scene closes the television version of Tywin’s story; his body’s return in Season 5 begins the consequences.
How does the television scene unfold?
In the show, the killing follows Tyrion’s discovery of Shae in Tywin’s bed. It is not a planned escape route or a calculated bid for power: Tyrion is in shock, furious at his father, and grieving what he has just done.
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Shae in Tywin’s bed
Shae murmurs “Tywin, my lion” before she recognizes Tyrion. She reaches for a dagger, and Tyrion strangles her with the golden chain he once gave her. He is distraught afterward. Peter Dinklage described the character’s state in an Entertainment Weekly interview dated 16 June 2014: “Tyrion is grief-stricken about what he just did [to Shae] and Tywin doesn’t give a sh–. So that’s the finger that fires.”
The confrontation on the privy
Tyrion takes Joffrey’s crossbow from the wall and finds Tywin using the privy. Tywin works out that Jaime has freed him, noting that Jaime “always had a soft spot for you.” He also claims he never meant for Tyrion to be executed. Tyrion asks why Tywin passed sentence despite knowing he was innocent, then warns him not to call Shae a whore. Tywin says it again, and Tyrion shoots him in the stomach.
Tywin tells him, “You shot me… you are no son of mine.” Tyrion answers, “I am your son. I have always been your son.” He reloads and fires a second bolt into Tywin’s chest. The exchange gives the moment its emotional center: Tyrion claims the relationship Tywin has spent years denying, even as he ends his father’s life.
Why did Tyrion kill Tywin?
In the television version, the immediate triggers are Shae’s presence in Tywin’s bed and Tywin’s role in condemning Tyrion for Joffrey’s murder. Shae’s death leaves Tyrion raw and enraged; Tywin’s insistence that she was a whore turns that grief into the final confrontation. The earlier history between father and son explains why the argument carries more weight than a dispute over one sentence.
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Tywin blames Tyrion for Joanna’s death in childbirth and treats his dwarfism as a humiliation to the family. When Tyrion secretly marries Tysha, a commoner, Tywin has Jaime tell him that Tysha was a hired prostitute. He then forces Tyrion to watch his soldiers rape her and makes Tyrion go last, paying him gold while the soldiers are paid silver. The episode “Baelor” recounts this history in the show; it becomes crucial to the book’s version of the murder.
Tywin’s public creed is that House Lannister’s power must endure and that threats must be carried out. Charles Dance called Tywin a hypocrite in the same 2014 Entertainment Weekly interview: “[Tywin is] a hypocrite as well, I’m afraid. He’s a ‘do what I say, not what I do.’” Tywin has prohibited Tyrion from keeping Shae while secretly taking her himself. The hypocrisy sharpens Tyrion’s anger, but it does not make Tywin’s death a simple act of justice: the scene also shows the damage Tywin’s cruelty has done to his son.
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How is Tywin’s death different in the books?
The novel’s version appears in Chapter 77, “Tyrion XI,” of George R. R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords (first published in 2000). The killing still takes place in the Tower of the Hand, but Tysha—not Shae—is the decisive subject of the argument. The chapter gives more space to the lie at the center of Tyrion’s marriage and to Tywin’s refusal to acknowledge what he did.
| Detail | HBO television version | A Storm of Swords |
|---|---|---|
| Immediate trigger | Tywin has sentenced Tyrion to death; Tyrion finds Shae in Tywin’s bed and reacts to Tywin calling her a whore. | Jaime has confessed that Tysha was not a hired prostitute. Tywin calls her a whore and says she was sent “wherever whores go.” |
| Crossbow | Joffrey’s crossbow, taken from the wall. | Tywin’s own crossbow. |
| Bolts | Two: first to the stomach, then to the chest. | One, through the bowels and pelvis. |
| Shae | She recognizes Tyrion, reaches for a dagger, and is strangled with the golden chain. | She wears the golden chain of office and calls Tyrion “my giant of Lannister.” Tyrion strangles her while reciting, “For hands of gold are always cold, but a woman’s hands are warm.” |
| Jaime’s confession | The scene does not disclose the truth about Tysha in the cell. | Jaime tells Tyrion that Tysha was never a prostitute; the story Tywin ordered him to tell was a lie. |
| Where Tywin’s remains go | He is buried in the Sept of Baelor. | After the funeral display, silent sisters take his bones west with a Westerlands entourage. |
Jaime’s confession changes the book’s confrontation
In the novel, Jaime forces Varys at knifepoint to help free Tyrion; that part of the escape is revealed in A Feast for Crows. In the cell, Jaime finally tells Tyrion that Tysha was an innocent girl, not a paid accomplice. Tyrion reacts with rage and spite, claims he killed Joffrey, and names Cersei’s lovers. Varys warns him not to climb to Tywin, but Tyrion does it anyway.
Tyrion reaches the bedchamber by a secret ladder. Guards Red Lester and Lum are outside, joking and failing to notice him. Shae is wearing only the golden chain of office. After Tyrion kills her, he takes Tywin’s crossbow and confronts him on the privy. Tywin blames Varys and offers Tyrion the Wall if he puts the bow down. Tyrion asks about Tysha instead.
“Wherever whores go”
Tywin says he does not recall what happened to Tysha, then says she was paid for her “day’s work” and that the steward sent her on her way. Tyrion warns him, “The next time you say that word, I’ll kill you.” When Tywin says the steward sent her “wherever whores go,” Tyrion fires. The novel’s single bolt strikes through the bowels and pelvis.
After Tywin says, “you shot me,” Tyrion answers, “You always were quick to grasp a situation, my lord. That must be why you’re the Hand of the King.” Tywin disowns him; Tyrion replies that he is Tywin writ small. He asks his father to die quickly, and the smell as he leaves tells him Tywin has finally obeyed. The book also punctures the smallfolk’s joke that Tywin “shit gold”: the narration says the oft-repeated jape was another lie.
What does Tywin’s death reveal about him?
Tywin is Lord of Casterly Rock, Shield of Lannisport, Warden of the West, and, twice, Hand of the King. HBO also gives him the title Lord Paramount of the Westerlands, which is absent from the novels. He is the father of Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion; his cousin and wife Joanna dies giving birth to Tyrion. His authority rests on wealth, military force, and a cultivated reputation for carrying out threats.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesTywin is introduced as a calculating, ruthless guardian of House Lannister’s prestige, not as a father capable of offering Tyrion the approval he seeks. George R. R. Martin described the need behind Tyrion’s act in an Entertainment Weekly interview published 16 June 2014: “He’s been trying to win his father’s approval all his life.” Martin also connected the shot to Tywin’s own philosophy: “An important thing that has been drilled in with him since his youth—because it’s very much Lord Tywin’s philosophy—is that you don’t make threats and then fail to carry them out.”
That reading keeps Tyrion’s act from becoming either a triumphant revenge story or a clean moral resolution. Martin called the killing “something of enormous consequence that would be forever beyond the pale, for no man is as cursed as a kinslayer.” He also said of the split-second decision, “So his father says that word, his finger pushes on the crossbow, the decision of a split second, and then it’s done. And it will haunt him.” Tywin’s final insult echoes his lifetime of cruelty, but Tyrion’s reply does not undo the cost of killing his father.
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What was Tywin’s history before the murder?
The murder is the end of a long career in which Tywin repeatedly turned family and political crises into displays of force. He served as cupbearer and page alongside Prince Aerys Targaryen and Steffon Baratheon. After the War of the Ninepenny Kings, he crushed Houses Reyne and Tarbeck in 261 AC, drowning the Reynes at Castamere; “The Rains of Castamere” commemorates that destruction.
Aerys II appointed Tywin Hand in 262 AC, when Tywin was twenty. A Wiki of Ice and Fire, citing The World of Ice and Fire (2014), describes him as the youngest man to serve in the office. The realm prospered under his administration, and the rumor grew that Tywin, rather than Aerys, was ruling. Aerys became jealous, refused a proposed marriage between Cersei and Rhaegar, and later named Jaime to the Kingsguard in 281 AC, depriving Tywin of his chosen heir. Tywin resigned and sat out Robert’s Rebellion until the Trident; he then sacked King’s Landing, where Jaime killed Aerys.
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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteDuring the War of the Five Kings, Tywin responds to Catelyn Stark’s seizure of Tyrion as an affront to the family, sends Gregor Clegane into the Riverlands, and raises almost 40,000 men, according to the Wikipedia summary of his history. Jaime is captured at Riverrun. Tywin fights Roose Bolton at the Green Fork and later uses Harrenhal as a base. On television, his sharp young cupbearer at Harrenhal is Arya Stark, whose identity he does not discover.
Tywin helps relieve King’s Landing at the Battle of the Blackwater with the Tyrells, earns the title Savior of the City, and becomes Hand again. He demotes Tyrion to Master of Coin, refuses him Casterly Rock, and arranges his marriage to Sansa Stark. With Walder Frey and Roose Bolton, he engineers the Red Wedding. He melts Ice, the Stark family sword, into two Valyrian steel swords. After Joffrey’s death, he presides over Tyrion’s trial, sentences him after Oberyn Martell dies fighting Gregor Clegane, and is then freed from the burden of command only by the son he condemned.
What happens to the Lannisters after Tywin dies?
Tywin’s death creates a power vacuum in King’s Landing because the family loses the figure who has held its alliances and enemies in check. Cersei becomes Queen Regent and treats herself as Tywin’s heir. In the novels, she appoints Harys Swyft as Hand and offers a lordship for Tyrion’s head. The news also encourages enemies: A Dance with Dragons notes that the Golden Company judges the realm ripe for invasion once Tywin is gone, while Doran Martell is already pursuing vengeance for Elia Martell.
The funeral turns authority into spectacle
In the books, Tywin’s body lies in crimson armor for seven days in the Great Sept of Baelor. The corpse is poorly embalmed, and the stench sickens mourners. His drying lips curl into a smile, which Jaime recognizes as the first he has seen on his father’s face. The silent sisters then escort Tywin’s bones west. In the show, the body is buried in the Sept instead; Season 5 opens with the funeral and its display of Lannister grief and power.
Charles Dance had anticipated that the show would begin Season 5 with a state funeral. In the 16 June 2014 Entertainment Weekly interview, he joked: “I just hope I get a state funeral afterwards as well. They should start season 5 with a great f–k-off funeral for Tywin.” After the scene aired, Dance summed up the distinction to The Daily Beast, as quoted by ScreenCrush on 19 November 2014: “Well, only my body!”
Tyrion’s escape and the hunt
In the show, Varys discovers what Tyrion has done and hides him in a crate aboard a ship bound for the Free Cities. When bells ring, Varys boards too. Cersei blames Jaime for the jailbreak and orders a manhunt. She later continues to hold the kinslaying against Tyrion even after she knows he did not kill Joffrey.
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The novel does not show Tyrion’s escape from King’s Landing in this chapter. It is picked up in A Dance with Dragons, where he travels in a barrel rather than a crate; Podrick Payne leaves the city looking for him. The distinction matters if you are moving between the two versions: the book’s killing ends before its escape sequence is told.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Does Tywin die in the books too?
Yes. Tywin dies in A Storm of Swords, Chapter 77, “Tyrion XI,” in the books’ chronology in 300 AC. The character reference A Wiki of Ice and Fire gives his birth as 242 AC at Casterly Rock and his death at the Tower of the Hand in King’s Landing. The show preserves the core event but changes the route to it and several physical details of the scene.
The book-to-show difference also reflects a distinction Martin made about Shae. In his June 2014 Entertainment Weekly interview, he described the book’s Shae as “a manipulative camp-follower prostitute who doesn’t give a s–t about Tyrion any more than she would any other john…” and said she is “everything lord Tywin thought Tyrion’s first wife was that she actually wasn’t.” The show gives Shae a different emotional shape in the final scene, so the same act of strangling her lands differently across the two versions.
Martin also cautioned that not every question around Tywin, Shae, and Varys had been settled. “As to precisely what happened here, that’s something I don’t really want to talk about because there’s still aspects of it I haven’t revealed that will be revealed in later books. But the role of Varys in all of this is also something to be considered.” As of October 2026, The Winds of Winter remains unpublished; that does not change the completed killing in A Storm of Swords.
Why did Charles Dance leave Game of Thrones?
Dance’s departure follows Tywin’s death in the story; it is not a separate unexplained production exit. The character is killed in the Season 4 finale, after which Dance returns as the corpse in Season 5’s premiere. He later explained that he had not read Martin’s novels before filming and learned the manner of Tywin’s death from a fan who spoiled it for him in the street.
Dance recounted the story in remarks attributed to RadioTimes.com and quoted by Cheat Sheet in 2020 and the Express in 2016 and 2019. He said he went into Waterstones, bought the book, and saw the “khazi” scene. His reaction was, “Suitable demise, I thought.” The book he found was A Storm of Swords, the source for the novel chapter described above.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Dance’s performance helped make Tywin more than a stock villain: his composure and command coexist with the hypocrisy and family cruelty that lead to the privy scene. Clive James, writing in The New Yorker on 18 April 2016, called it “not only the best role of its kind that Dance has ever had; it is the best role of its kind that anyone has ever had.”
Where can I read or watch Tywin’s death?
The novel scene is in A Storm of Swords, Chapter 77, “Tyrion XI.” The television scene is in Game of Thrones Season 4, Episode 10, “The Children.” The episode title and chapter reference are the most reliable ways to find the relevant version, since the book and show stage the confrontation differently.
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The wider saga gives context that the single scene cannot: A Game of Thrones recounts the Tysha history, while A Feast for Crows supplies the detail of Jaime forcing Varys to help Tyrion escape. The World of Ice and Fire provides background on Tywin’s rise and the political history of the realm. Availability of the series on streaming services varies by country and date, so a current local listing is needed to identify where it can be watched.
How does Tywin’s death change the story?
Tywin’s death is a personal rupture and a political turning point. His family still has wealth, titles, and armed allies, but it no longer has the same single strategist able to make those resources serve a unified plan. The funeral makes that absence visible: the state honors a lord whose body is already failing, while the people around him begin to reposition themselves.
For Tyrion, the killing joins the private wound of Tysha to the immediate grief of Shae and the injustice of his trial. For the audience, it collapses Tywin’s image of invulnerability into an undignified death at the hands of the child he treated as his greatest failure. Martin’s phrasing captures the paradox: Tyrion is Tywin’s son, but the act of killing him leaves Tyrion marked as a kinslayer.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Tywin mean when he says Tyrion is no son of his?
It is an expression of rejection, not a claim about Tyrion’s parentage. Tywin has long treated Tyrion as a disgrace to the family, while Tyrion’s reply insists that Tywin’s denial cannot erase their relationship.
What is the meaning of “Tywin Lannister did not shit gold”?
It overturns the smallfolk joke that Tywin was so rich and powerful that he literally produced gold. The novel makes the line a deliberately bodily reminder that his wealth and reputation could not make him exempt from ordinary human weakness.
Does Tyrion get away after killing Tywin in the book?
Yes, but the escape is not narrated in the same chapter as the murder. A Dance with Dragons later shows Tyrion leaving King’s Landing concealed in a barrel, while the television finale uses a crate aboard a ship.
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Yes. Aerys II appointed him Hand in 262 AC, and Tywin later served again under Joffrey. His years as Hand are central to his reputation as a ruler whose administrative ability could stabilize the realm even as his methods bred lasting enemies.
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