Criston Cole beheaded the narrator of Joe Abercrombie's First Law audiobooks in House of the Dragon

This past weekend's episode of House of the Dragon, "The Red Dragon and the Gold," was an absolute barnburner. For the first time, HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series aired its own spectacular battle sequence that was up there with anything we got during the run of the original series. When the dust settles on the Battle at Rook's Rest, the dragons have danced and things will never be the same in Westeros.

At the heart of the Rook's Rest battle is Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), who set a plan in motion to lure out one of Rhaenyra's dragons so that Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) could swoop in on the monstrous Vhagar and kill them. In order for his plan to work, Criston first had to wage a campaign across the Crownlands, forcing a bunch of minor houses into his army in order to build a force capable of threatening Rook's Rest in the first place.

He captured the hosts of House Rosby and House Stokeworth during the offscreen days between Episodes 203 and 204. "The Red Dragon and the Gold" begins with him winning another victory at the town of Duskendale, where he gives its venerable lord an age-old Game of Thrones proposition: bend the knee to King Aegon II, or die.

Lord Gunthor Darklyn refuses to submit, and is summarily executed by Cole in front of his own men. But he doesn't go down without a last disdainful dig at the dishonorable knight, disparaging his "Kingmaker" nickname before spitting on Criston's boot and promising his own death will come in kind.

Gunthor Darklyn was played by Steven Pacey, an English actor who's had a long career...but among many fantasy readers, he's best known as the narrator for Joe Abercrombie's First Law audiobooks. So if you thought that disdainful voice would have fit right into the gritty world of The First Law, you were right. Say one thing for Lord Gunthor Darklyn, say he had a pretty cool voice while his head was still attached to his neck.

The actor who played Lord Gunthor Darklyn in House of the Dragon also narrates The First Law books

The First Law author Joe Abercrombie himself took to Twitter to join in on the fun of seeing his audiobook narrator meet a bloody end in Westeros. "Do what you will, Ser Criston, my superb narrations of Joe Abercrombie's First Law books shall live forever," the author captioned a picture of Lord Darklyn standing at the chopping block.

Pacey has narrated the original First Law trilogy, the three standalone books Best Served Cold, The Heroes, and Red Country, and even the latest trilogy, The Age of Madness, which brings the First Law saga into an industrial revolution and wrapped up with 2021's The Wisdom of Crowds. Lord Gunthor Darklyn may be gone, but Pacey's work lives on in a different fantasy world.

And hey, with a Best Served Cold movie in the works, maybe we'll see Pacey make the leap to the screen there as well. Here's hoping that if he does, it goes a little better for his character than it did on House of the Dragon.

In the meantime, new episodes of House of the Dragon air Sunday nights on HBO and Max. And if you have an itch to break into another top-tier fantasy series, The First Law audiobooks are a pretty good way to pass the time between episodes.

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