YMMV / Outlander S 2 E 13 Dragonfly In Amber

• Adaptational Sympathy: In the show, Dougal dies because his fanaticism for returning a Stuart to the throne puts him on the wrong side of Jamie and Claire's drive to save the Clans from being wiped out in a hopeless cause. It's easy to feel bad for him because he seems so sincere in his desire. In the book, however, Dougal's death is presented as an inevitable result of the nearly decade long conflict between the two kinsman as Dougal has always feared that Jamie would supplant him as the successor as Laird of Clan MacKenzie. Dougal even admits that he was the one who tried to kill Jamie (in the series opening, the men of Clan MacKenzie are escorting Jamie back to Castle Leoch after his return from France, where he'd been recovering from a hatchet to the skull) and the only reason he didn't finish the job is because he couldn't bring himself to kill his sister's only remaining son after losing Ellen herself. He tells Jamie that he regrets that soft-heartedness because he's always known that one of them would kill the other.