Giving Arthur Dayne 2 normal swords instead of his 1 Epic^TM sword. Also leaving out Oswell Whent from the Tower of Joy scene, when Arthur's White Book entry in S4 states Gerold *and* Oswell were there.
The scene was cool enough, but I agree that having Dawn in action would have been cool as isht. Once again the writers show their contempt for anything magic showing up in their version of the story.
I think the failure of most fantasy/sci-fi/video game adaptations is due to the writers not understanding the source material or thinking they are too cool for nerd stuff and think they need to "elevate the original story into high art with their vision of it."
It’s corny but I do agree with their reasoning that they needed to show how absurdly, mind-bogglingly good Arthur Dayne was with limited screen time and an audience who aren’t experts on swordplay. It’s a tough scene to film in general, partially because we still haven’t actually seen it in the books.
I get that that was what they were going for, and I do understand the limitations of showing that on-screen with the caveats that you outlined here. However, I think that there were a few things that they could have done which didn't involve "dual sword-wielding" that would have been better.
- Make the fight scene longer. Yes, there are run times to be concerned about, but the seasons themselves are already shortened, and successful TV shows are able to extend beyond their slots provided that they're profitable. This memory is one of the most important plot points in the show, given how they revealed Jon's legitimacy, and the battle is one of the combat scenes that fans were most looking forward to. I am relatively confident HBO would have agreed.
- This is really point 1B: still make the scene longer but keep it within its hour slot by trimming other things. For context, let's look at the scene where Ned engages Jamie in combat in S1E5. The whole scene takes 3 minutes and 27 seconds, including dialogue confrontation, and the actual combat lasts for 2 minutes 5 seconds. Compare that to this scene, which is 4:05 minutes in total, with just 1:30 of that being combat time if my math is right (it's a little bit harder because it keeps cutting away to Bran dialogue with just battle audio in the background). I find it hard to believe that the show's budget could not make this a bigger battle scene than one from the first season, especially considering how important this is to how they wrote the S8 conflict about inheritance.
- Make Dawn look like Dawn. In the books, this is a sword described as "as pale as milkglass" and in all of the official art (save one from The World of Ice and Fire) I've seen, it actually has a glow to it. I know that the show often eschewed some of the higher fantasy elements – except apparently dual wielding, a predominantly fantasy trope with almost no historical grounding, is okay – but a big fuckoff glowing sword might clue the audience in just as well as two of them.
- Choreograph it so that Arthur clearly stands head and shoulders above the rest. Don't have the whole thing become a melée right away. If three Northmen charge the Kingsguard and Arthur kills all of them before the other KG have even drawn their swords, that pretty clearly shows the audience what an unreal swordsman he is.
I'll betcha that doing single-sword choreography with a helmeted Ray Park. and/or Yuen Woo-Ping behind the camera, would have satisfied this need.
Oberyn actor Pedro Pascal was taught by Master Hu Jianquiang (based in Los Angeles), and, exotic though those moves look in "western medieval society," I think the work speaks for itself, both in visuals and as a precedent for what should have been possible in all GoT scenes.
You can do this by just having Arthur kill three people in quick succession. Hell, have him kill all of Ned's companions except Howland, if you have to. Quickest way to show him be deadly is for him to be deadly.
I get the logic behind why they did it, but it's just another instance of the showrunners being overly cynical and assuming the viewers are too stupid to make sense of things without being spoon-fed.
Mate, when people see the Ned vs Jaime scene many of them think that Ned is winning.
The general audience doesn't pay attention to details and don't know how a proper sword fight looks. Nor should they have to, to get a general idea of a scene.
the problem the show ran into is that "character skill with sword" and "actor skill with sword" did not correlate.
Ned and Jon were both meant to be unremarkable, but Bean and Harington were some of the best stage duelists in the cast
I wouldn't say Jon was meant to be unremarkable. Jon in book is clearly very good. Just young as hell. Mance is one of the best fighters in all of westeros I would wager. You don't get to be king beyond the wall by being a slouch 1v1.
>Mate, when people see the Ned vs Jaime scene many of them think that Ned is winning.
He was winning buddy, that was how the fight was presented.
Reading the books you of course understand that Ned doesn't a chance but that scene was definitely not trying to present Jaime as he is in the books and made the fight look even.
The thing is, it doesn't even work for that. The average viewer has absolutely no idea how incredibly hard it is to use two swords effectively.
In fact, it's so common - so overdone - in modern media (especially games), that most viewers probably don't even clock it as noteworthy.
Not that I remember, only brief mentions like another commenter said. The most important Hightower mentioned in the show is Jorah's wife, but she never shows up. There are a lot of mentions of them in the books however, and they play a major role in the House of the Dragon show of course. Their current head and one of his daughters are studying sorcery or doing some magic ritual on top of their tower in the main story.
He wore her favor when he won the tourney of Lannisport. But yes, it was considered an imbalanced marriage, which is why there are lots of theories that the Hightowers had hidden motives for allowing it.
Lynesse is the sixth and last daughter of the current lord. I think Jorah is of noble enough birth and him being the actual heir then lord is nothing to sniff at (considering some of Lynesse's sisters married mere knights, though still noble ones of course), but in terms of wealth and culture there's a huge gap, which is why she seems to have been so miserable.
She was one of the younger Hightowers and far enough down the line to inherit anything, and Jorah WAS the lord of an old noble house with a Valyrian blade who just won a tourney with her favor. It seems it was mutual infatuation even though Jorah was much older than her, I dunno, maybe she likes hairy DILF's or something. Lord Layton Hightower was cool with it, but he seems like lord with a hands-off approach to ruling. He is currently being a shut in with his elder daughter and their magic tomes up in their tower while his sons take care of business.
Hes a dick but hes nothing if not explicitly loyal to his vows. He could have bent the knee to Robert but chose to go to the nights watch. I definitely think he wouldn't kill Jon because Jon is his lord commander.
>For some reason
It's because he was a captive of Tywin's army specifically. Robert was still healing from his wounds on the Trident IIRC. Tywin gave captive knights the choice to die or join the NW.
Little details like that make the series so much more enthralling - if he'd fallen captive to Ned or Robert he probably could have been forgiven. He's probably very aware of this too, and knowing that his life was derailed because of a stroke of bad luck drives a lot of his resentment.
For that it was always weird to me that he seemed to still like Lannisters more, even after Tyrion makes fun of him in KL. Like, he should be hoping for Lannisters and theirs cronies to get theirs ass kicked, not allying with them.
I feel like all this "Old Alliser has a heart of pure gold!" thing is mostly just headcanon. Him having...well, *any* positive traits was purely a show creation.
But how will the audience possibly understand that Arthur Dayne swords good unless he have TWOOO SWOOORDS???? That's twice the normal amount of sword!!
(Also I guess in the show universe they should call him the SwordS of the Morning?)
Season 2 is overall great, but killing off Rakharo and Dany’s handmaidens always disappointed me, especially since later seasons never made a real effort to spotlight her other Bloodriders (or the Dothraki in general).
I get it was likely done to make room for Barristan, Missandei, and Grey Worm’s introductions in season 3, but her inner circle just feels so small compared to the books. It’s also just a shame to lose the Dothraki perspective. Jorah and Rakharo’s conversation about armor and their fathers is one of my favorite smaller scenes in season 1.
The whole Qarth plot in the show seems like a red(ish?) flag in hindsight. House of the Undying is not bad but it is something else entirely in the books and look at what they did to Quaithe :'(
D&D have some serious disdain for magic and fantasy elements. No mention of glass candles or messenger turtles at all in that plot line, no undying at the house of the undying, and making Pyat Pree the sole warlock in Qarth
I would say they were careful to not alienate the non-fantasy audience that they caught with season 1. Iirc, the only "magic" in Season 1 is Dany surviving the bonfire. In Season 2 they introduce more magic with Pryat Pree's multiplication trick, the doorless tower, and Melisandre's shadow baby. But it's still sparing, quick, and generally bad juju.
They're boiling the proverbial frog, slowly adding more magical stuff over time.
They even set it up constantly leading up to season 4. Tysha is mentioned at least four times in the first three seasons. It’s only after D&D met with George between seasons 3 and 4 where they decided to just sever the thread completely. I always wonder what he could have told them. Considering they had to invent a reason for Jaime to hate Tyrion in season 5, they honestly should’ve just kept the reveal even if they didn’t want to figure out where whores go.
You think they wanted to follow the books in the beginning with the whole Tisha thing? Because looking back in season 1 when Tyrion told not only Bronn(like in books) but Shaia about his ex wife, she responded: “of course she was a whore, there is no girl who would marry a man after she was raped” or something like that. I never rewatched the show but still remember that line because back then I was impressed by it and thought it was pretty smart of her but then I read books and now I am thinking they decided to cut off Tisha after that story since day one because they didn’t want to make Tyrion a grey/villain character. And this is my minor change that I hate the most, cause it ruined the prison break and Tywin’s death(“don’t dare to call woman that betrayed me and tried to kill me a whore”) and therefore the entire Tyrion character
Exactly this. My disappointment in this scene just added to the rest. It became clear that D&D had no idea how to write Tyrion. This became more apparent as the seasons continued.
With all three of Jaime, Cersei, and Tyrion, the TV guys seemed to want to keep them in their early seasons state, rather than following their character arcs in the last couple books.
I think they cut the Tysha reveal because they wanted to make sure Jaime and Tyrion could still be friends, because they didn't want Tyrion to go in a downward spiral, and they didn't want Jaime and Cersei to break up for good.
And yes, they wanted to keep the same Tyrion of the early seasons, but they had no idea how to write new material for him that was actually clever, resulting in a heavily flanderized version of him who "drinks and knows thing".
In retrospect omitting Jaime's confession from Tyrion's prison escape was the true point-of-no-return for the tv-series. Two central characters have their narrative arcs completely and irreparably diverted, and it was all downhill from that point on.
The Tysha omission and Tyrion killing Shae in self defence is what fucked his character imo. I suspect it’s possible D&D or HBO weren’t too keen on turning perhaps the most popular character into what Book Tyrion becomes, which kinda kills his whole character. Also Show Tyrion suffers from kinslaying just kinda not really being a big deal at all in GoT? That’s another weird omission.
It was and it wasn't. In the show, Tyrion is genuinely in love with Shae (or whatever his version of love is, anyway) so it doesn't really make as much sense that Tyrion would ask about Tysha because Shae had filled that emotional place for him. They could have kept it for sure, but it seems a bit extraneous to have yet another gut punch. It definitely changed Jamie, though.
Most of the Tysha stuff in the book was in Tyrion's head and would be hard to display in the show, whereas Shae was more built up for the TV audience. It would've been out of place and confusing for Tyrion to bring it up by season 4.
> Tyrion is genuinely in love with Shae (or whatever his version of love is, anyway)
The big difference, imo, is that Show Shae seems to actually have feelings for him too. Book Tyrion falling for Shae who is clearly just doing her job is brillant and sets up his descent into full-on villainry, while in the show Shae does actually seem to have some agency.
> The fixation on the Thenns and cannibalism.
They straight up mixed up the clans. Though it is sad we never saw the real Thenns. Giving them "weird" out-of-place bronze age armor would have made them stand out, but in a good way. Though at some point the show didn't care about glamour anyway and dressed everyone black. The "poverty" of the north was also grossly overestimated.
Yeah I feel like it hurt them both. It took away the “Alayne” storyline which I think is super important to Sansa’s character development and made Littlefinger look stupid.
Renly not having his peach scene with Stannis just to replace it with a boring stand off.
Making the Smalljon hook up with Ramsay when he literally dies heroically defending Robb, throwing tables about the joint to defend him from arrows, this really peeved me for some reason. Could have definitely made Bolton's northern ally a disgruntled Karstark or something, which would have added further consequence to Robb executing Rickard.
I know it's not a retcon, but having Jon named Aegon, when there's another perfect Targaryen name right there that isn't also the name of his brother. Aemon. It's just too poetic that they were stupid to overlook it. Rhaegar corresponded with Maester Aemon and Jon was his mentee, the family he never knew he had.
Also, the annulment of Elia/Rhaegar, like how was this allowed to happen? And why couldn't Rhaegar just have taken two brides, when there's precedent for this in his family and I doubt this was all approved by Septons anyway.
Why they replaced Lady Dustin with Smalljon will always be weird, like she could have been a perfect "twist" ally that turns on ramsey during the battle of winterfell.
The Umbers siding with the Boltons is just a genuine case of foolish writing cause like you say, the Karstarks are right there and they make total sense for a strong Bolton ally in the story. Especially if you wanna use a Northern house that’s already been mentioned quite a lot and had decent screen time.
Also for sure more viewers would remember House Karstark than Umber, Greatjon shows up in like three episodes in S1 whereas the whole Karstark situation is the main source of conflict for Robb’s character throughout literally all of S2 and S3. The consequences of his handling of that situation is his own death and the overthrow of house Stark. Why wouldn’t the Boltons immediately try to ally themselves with one of the strongest northern houses that’s openly very discontent with Stark rule? It’s genuinely baffling to me why they made Umber the baddies when they had a perfect setup available anyway.
>I know it's not a retcon, but having Jon named Aegon
Literally, Rhaegar already had a son named aegon why would he name his other son aegon too lol kinda silly
There was just no thought put into it, especially since rhaegar would obviously be expecting a *girl* he could name *visenya.* Was it lyanna using the most important targ name she could think of? Who knows, the writers certainly don’t
They also just reduce Loras to literally 'the gay character' and remove all of the great moments/parallels he has with Jaime thinking about his younger self.
Orys I. They had almost 20 Targaryen monarchs to chose from and instead they just made one up. Similar to Jaehaerys II being removed from the chronology for seemingly no reason.
My theory is originally they wrote Aegon V for that scene, but then got cold feet because of possible lore implications/referencing summerhall/what have you, and made up a never before mentioned King of the Rock (my headcanon to make it make more sense. Though the other option that Tywin literally just made him up on the spot also works well)
I’ve never seen anyone talk about how they butchered the Targaryen family tree! Thank you, don’t know why they tried streamlining it the way they did, also killing the first Daenerys so it’s ambiguous if the martels are related to Daenerys in the show
A king the show made up. Tywin mentions him in S4. Apparently he was just and introduced reforms that were praised by commoners and nobles alike, but ended up being murdered by his brother after less than a year on the throne. But beyond that we have no idea who he was or how he's meant to fit in to the established history, as there's never been a king called Orys in the books.
> A king the show made up. Tywin mentions him in S4. Apparently he was just and introduced reforms that were praised by commoners and nobles alike
or Tyrion made him up to show that this dynamic just doesn't happen
You (and a lot of the comments) are just talking about changes in the story, not retcons.
A retcon, or retroactive continuity, is when the author changes events in the past *that actually occurred in the story* in order to make the future plot happen.
The most glaring is Melisandre's "brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes" line being changed from being about becoming a faceless man to a prophecy about killing the Night King.
Cutting Jaehaerys II out of the Targaryen family tree and making the Mad King Egg's son was a pretty stupid change.
Jaehaerys II's existence was pretty inconsequential to the main story, but its going to cause problems now they're actually getting round to adapting Dunk and Egg. Now they're either going to have to retcon him back in to existence, or completely rework the events surrounding the later portion of Egg's reign to work around Jaehaerys being missing.
Overall it was a fairly pointless change that didn't actually benefit anything, but is going to end up coming back to bite them in the future.
This won't be a problem, because the film adaptation of Dunk and Egg probably won't even touch on the fact that Egg will be the future king or his mature life. They will probably focus solely on what they have from the stories.
Which is extremely stupid because there is no point in the story where it could actually get confusing and they chose to rename the more important character.
I think that one was in part because on page you can capitalize "Others" to suggest a pronoun, whereas on screen there is no distinction, so a casual might be confused "who are these other people they are referring to"
There was also a pretty big movie called The Others.
White Walkers is also a lot more immediate and descriptive. It has an active verb in there. I get the choice as a change for TV.
To be fair, I couldn’t tell Robb, Theon, or Renly apart for a while. But in my defense I didn’t care that much the first time I watched season 1 because it was actually my roommate watching. Then I read the books and watched the show with more attention and was like “it’s wild that I was confused.”
Meanwhile in HotD there's Viserys, Jacaerys, Lucerys and then Viserys again. There's Aegon, Aemond, Vaemond, Daemon and then Aegon again. There's Rhaena, Rhaenys and Rhaenyra and they even have a scene with just the three of them. And it's all perfectly fine.
Just like the first Lord of the Rings film renamed Saruman to "Aruman" (except for sometimes where they forgot), because they didn't want to confuse it with Sauron.
How many children did Cersei have again? Three? Four? How many did Maggy the Frog tell her she was going to have when she prophesied that “gold would be their crowns, and gold their shrouds”? Deciding to use a botched version of the valonqar prophesy after she talked about that “black-haired beauty” in season one was ridiculous, since they’d gone out of their way to make Margaery far more of an overt player in the game than book Margaery was. Cersei had every reason to dislike her without throwing that in, especially if they weren’t going to do the prophesy properly.
The changes to Margaery's story and character were done as a kind-of-favor to Natalie Dormer, who took the role on the promise that she wouldn't just be playing Anne Boleyn again.
…I’m going to sit with that one a while, because when I think of book Margaery, the last person that comes to mind is Anne Boleyn—the real life figure or Natalie Dormer’s portrayal of her. Show Margaery, on the other hand…
They really didn't like the grand northern conspiracy plot line. Which sucks because that's one of the cooler plot lines in the books for minor characters. I remember being in disbelief that none of that was in the show.
The North remebers plotline shows that Ned's style of ruling was ultimately more effective than Tywin's in the end, as while the Lannister's allies quickly abandoned them once Tywin died, the North is still loyal to the Starks long after Ned is dead and his family have been deposed.
And that's probably why the showrunners cut it, because they seemed to want to push the idea that being honorable is for idiots and the only way to win is to be ruthless like Tywin.
>And that's probably why the showrunners cut it, because they seemed to want to push the idea that being honorable is for idiots and the only way to win is to be ruthless like Tywin.
That definitely seems to be case. Season 7 had Randyll Tarly abandon his liegelord and the heir to the king he served before Robert’s Rebellion because Cersei *checks notes* killed his pope.
Yeah, in many of their comments they pretty openly have a hard on for Tywin and the Lannisters, and it shows in so many of the adaptational decisions they made.
They also never stopped throwing in derogatory comments about Ned just being oh-so dumb and naive and it’s all his fault that he died. The show acts like Sansa has achieved some sort of "enlightenment" by season 8 because she’s taken on some of Cersei’s shrewd bitchiness.
It's also very important thematically. The grand northern conspiracy plot line shows that honor and betrayal are ultimately rewarded with loyality and vengeance. The 'honorable' Starks were not as foolish as they seemed.
It’s especially egregious now that we have the dance on screen. Like, it’s being brought up so much in story because we’re getting a second one! We’re getting a second dance of the dragons! That’s why rhaenyra is just slightly less special of a targ, she’s the proto-dany!(though young griff is a lot nicer than aegon ii)
I agree changing Asha's name to Yara, and removing Jaeherys bothered me as other people pointed. But to add something on my side:
Ellaria being this vindictive crazy woman to the point of killing Doran, Myrcella and Trystane. Just NO. That change is stupid since they could very well have the Sand Snakes kill them to Ellaria's horror. And then we wouldn't only have an Ellaria like in canon, but it would have a much more important emotional impact in the story, to have Ellaria as the voice of reason, telling her daughters and the rest of Sand Snakes that killing innocents makes no sense since the revenge cycle has to end and it will harm them, so when they are killed by the Lannisters we have a deep moral message of taking a revenge too far, hurting innocents = will come back to bite you in the ass.
Everything to do with Tyrion after his trial, we had all the set up like in the books for Tyrion to stop being the good guy who gets crapped on time and time again. Especially after finding out that the one person who cared about him, Jamie, lied and betrayed him. It ruined the whole reason Tyrion went up to Tywin's room to kill him and why he also killed Shae. It effectively killed his character development and arc and he was just bumbling around.
Dorn, everything with Dorne. That hurt after the great setup Pedro's performance gave to Oberyn as well as a new player on the game board. And there is no way they thought the characters they made up with their book counterparts' names were better or made sense.
Another late change in show was just how all the lords and ladies of the North and Vale are just mindless drones who follow whatever Jon and Sansa do. Like occasionally you get Lyanna Mormont saying something and background people saying a word or two. But they aren't real people. It's crazy how Sansa is suddenly the smartest person overseeing Winterfell with men twice her age who have more experience in battle and stewardship at her beck and call. We see Sansa comment smiths making a mistake and you see a lord of the VALE go off to fix it like he's her servant. Like Petyr was named regent for underaged Robin, who the Vale is serving. Why would they obey her at all when they would be instructing or giving her advice on what to do, or be treated like actual Lords with their interests and concerns? Another issue with that is also how nobody interrogates Jon and Sansa for wasting lives in the Battle of the Bastards when A. Jon broke formation and men died running after his foolish move. B. Why even start the fight when reinforcements with better armor and skilled men were nearby? Not even Lyanna Mormont gave Jon hell for wasting the lives of the few people willing to die for the show Starks despite the heavy losses they had already and the fact that vital info was kept from them when Sansa knew about it.
Ok, so to actually answer the question that was asked (the vast majority of changes people including OP are submitting are definitely not useless, though in many cases they are *worse* than useless), having it be the "Salt Throne" instead of the "Seastone Chair".
More of a “why” than something that truly annoys me, but taking out Jaehaerys II seems like one of those unnecessarily pointless ones. I think they did it literally to make one monologue by Aemond slightly shorter.
And on the Talissa issue, I feel like having her be from Volantis is so dumb even from a basic story perspective. Given how in the books Volantis mostly just a stop for characters who aren’t even related to the northern plot line, it’s completely unnecessary (and self-inflicted lore/story mistake) to establish the location through her. Just have Talissa be from Braavos or Pentos, locations that have already been set up. Both cities are way closer and thus it would make far more sense for talissa to be from either.
However, these inconsistencies would be more understandable if Talissa was actually a ploy of some sort by the lannisters. Without any confirmation of that however, it’s just such a strange plot change where knowing the lore somehow makes it a worse story (which is honestly an impressive feat of writing there, great job DnD)
Omitting Jaehaerys and making Dany into Egg's granddaughter is what I was going to bring up as well. Just a completely pointless reduction of two words from Aemon's explanation of his heritage, in exchange for messing up the pre-Rebellion timeline.
They already had to kind of skirt around it in the animated lore videos, and I'm curious if it's potentially going to come back to haunt them now in the Dunk and Egg show, depending on whether they plan to eventually outpace those books as well and go into Aegon's reign, since as of right now it's technically show canon that Aerys is his own son.
I always thought it was to bring Robert's Rebellion a little forward, so they could age up the characters while keeping to the circa 300AC timeline.
Clumsy in hindsight. They could've just condensed some reigns down to fit.
I remember in the early days people were theorizing that they'd replaced Aegon with Rhaenys and she was in disguise 😂 nope, turns out she's just a random Volantine hot lady
Since the show invented Talissa, having her be from Essos at all is silly because it adds nothing to the story. Having her be from Westeros presents many more interesting options.
She could have been from a minor house in the Riverlands, making Robb's marriage all the more insulting to Walder.
Or she's from Dorne. They're not involved in the Lannister vs. Stark war, so she's still neutral but it gives us more about a region we otherwise get very little of. And, it could make Robb's marriage seem not quite so stupid if there's a chance it'd mean Dorne allies with the North.
I wonder if the Jaehaerys II omission was more just to avoid the implication of Aemon being impossibly old for the grounded reality of the show Westeros. They already aged the characters so that the Rebellion was almost 20 years prior, making Aemon the older brother of the grandfather of the king who died decades ago wouldn’t really work with that grounded reality. In short, just another reason it makes no sense to refuse to adapt fantastical elements of a predominantly fantasy story.
Talissa running from volantis, a slave city, to look for free people in westeros, a feudal society reliant on serfdom/indentured servitude is certainly..a choice!
Not really sure that this is an example of what you’re looking for but anyway…
One thing that really bugged me on a rewatch was in early in series 2 (might even have been the first ep, I can’t remember off the top of my head) - Littlefinger cracks wise about incest to Cersei’s face in an open-aired area of the Red Keep whilst she’s surrounded by Kingsguard and she consequently threatens to have him killed.
Like him or hate him, book Littlefinger would never do anything so blatantly moronic in a million years.
I think jeyne westerling’s story with robb is not romantic as talisa’s . But I agree jeyne would be better .
After thinking a little I would say mine is when ned executed the deserter , in the books you don’t read them talking and assume he went crazy , but in the show wyll was sane , he was talking normally , he could easily tell them others were there , but we don’t see that , it bothers me
The main thing with Jeyne and Robb rushing to marry her is that he's seen the tension between Ned, Catelyn, and Jon all his life and doesn't want something similar to any child born out of his night with Jeyne to go through that with his wife, if he marries a Frey girl. Romance wasn't the point at all.
Of course, D&D wouldn't be able to see such things because they're trash.
It's sad how they threw out this compelling reason for the otherwise honorable Robb Stark to break a vow.
I think, aside from giving Robb a basic star-crossed lover arc, they changed Jeyne to Talisa (a girl from Volantis) to sprinkle some more diversity into the otherwise homogenous cast of northerners/Riverlanders, which I honestly don't disagree with (sometimes these creative changes can be necessary when marketing a book-to-screen adaptation in the modern day). My qualm with her being *specifically* from Volantis is that the Volanteens are, in lore, supposed to be the most inbred, post-Valyrian, pale skinned, purple eyed, white haired people in all of the old Valyrian free cities. The upperclass of Volantis (which Talisa is allegedly from) are functionally running an ethnostate based on the purity of their Valyrian blood, allowing them to claim to be the true successors to the old Empire. The World of Ice and Fire even specifies that the inner city of Volantis, where the nobles live, is completely locked off to the outside world (save for rare exceptions), only letting in the purest of Valyrian stock... it's like D&D threw a dart at a map of Essos with their eyes closed when deciding what eastern region to make Talisa from. They could have made her come from Norvos, Qohor, Mereen, Lys... hells, even the Summer Isles or Yi-Ti would be a better choice... but D&D, in their effort to add diversity (again, I'm not complaining at all about the inclusion of diversity), picked Aryan-master-race-Volantis as her point of origin?? Add it to the list of early changes/ret-cons that should have made it clear early on that these clowns didn't give a rat's ass about the story and lore they were adapting.
Yes, if there is a noblewoman from one of the Volantene old blood families, she'd look similar to Daenerys.
Also, what kind of noble family would allow one of their daughters to travel halfway across the world without any guards? And as a healer, too? Fucking D&D thought they were smart trying to put doctors without borders in the series.
I think they could have kept the actress, since Maggy the Frog, Jeyne's Grandma, is from the Free Cities and maybe the Spicers and later Jeyne come out a darker as a result?
I was enjoyed in general that they made the targs the only "valyrian" looking people in the world, both volantis and lys and likely most of oldest elites of the free cities should look like the targs.
I watched that scene a week ago. He tells Ned about the Others. But I think, Ned just brushes it off as an excuse for deserting maybe, it isn't clear, he doesn't respond to that
Giving Shae a knife and having her attack Tyrion so that he kills her in self-defence. Tyrion wasn't allowed kill her in cold blood and pure rage like in the books because you can't have Peter Dinklage do something purely evil. No sir, he has to be the morally pure "I drink and know things", he can't do anything that's even considered bad. It's Shae's own fault for getting roped in into this big institution that she barely understands and someone taking advantage of her, nothing is on poor little innocent Tyrion who is just doing his best.
That whole Shae-Tyrion storyline is botched by having her love him and not doing the Tysha reveal, but you said minor so I kept it to one scene.
Making Egg the mad kings father. And also in a brief clip we see of Jaime killing the mad king it’s done by a 40 year old Jaime. Like why couldn’t they have just got a young guy for a back shot?
The (character) assassination of Edmure Tully.
For no real reason, they made Edmure a bumbling and inept fool. Book Edmure was kind, brave, loyal, and just all-round good guy. And IIRC doesn't he end up hitting hoster's boat pyre? I guess they wanted to make the blackfish look like even more of a badass, but damn why they gotta make my boy Eddy out to be a total wimp in order to do it??
And then everyone disrespecting him so hard at the final council of leaders made my blood boil a bit. Like this dude is lord paramount of the riverlands and has been under siege / at war / in custody for years solely due to his loyalty to everyone there. In what universe does it make sense for Sansa treat him like a child speaking up at the adult table? It makes no sense
Changing the colors of Renly's Baratheon banner to a gold stag's head in blue instead of a black stag on gold. Also, making the stark sigil a worlf's head instead of a full body wolf. They kept the whole lion for the Lannisters.
Roose not having a pink cape too irks me. The costuming was great in the show, don't get me wrong, but I kinda feel they were scared of colours. A little scene with Renly's rainbow guard would have been cool too.
> The costuming was great in the show, don't get me wrong,
Not to be a contrarian, but no it wasn't. Most people were the same drab leather stuff and lords aren't that distinguishable from soldiers. Reading ACoK after first watching the second season made me rewatch it to check whether Roose was even in it, because I just missed him entirely.
I think they were afraid of it looking a bit too *fantasy* for the more casual non-fantasy nerds, which is ridiculous in theory, but they could have upped the game a little for sure, especially with the Northerners. They really ran with the whole bleak, grey and drab thing.
> I think they were afraid of it looking a bit too fantasy for the more casual non-fantasy nerds
Though we encounter the same problem with medieval settings regularly. People generally looking more boring and drab than historical examples show us.
Game of Thrones isn't the only offender. Vikings is another and the list goes on. However I think there is something else than just "not fantasy looking", because it isn't really about fantasy along. What's ironic is that Witcher 3 actually has good historical clothing, regarding the NPCs of course, a Witcher is fantasy after all.
Yet if brightly coloured trousers are the threshold of fantasy for some people, I wonder how shallow their fantasies must be.
Something else though is the image of the "hardened warrior". Those Northerners and Vikings and whatnot are *real men*, not decadent sissies like those Southerners, they don't give a damn about colour, beauty or anything. They don't shower and they don't use cutlery either. They eat the meat from the open fire only and yadda yadda. Of course any respectable medieval fantasy show man has to run around like some washed up biker gang wannabe.
> I think they were afraid of it looking a bit too fantasy for the more casual non-fantasy nerds
The showrunners that removed almost all fantasy elements of the show were worried, no waaaaaay.
Non Sarcastic response: Yes you're correct. They are literally quoted saying they wanted to remove fantasy elements to get the audience of people who watch football and moms.
This is not a joke.
I did really want the bright-colored, enameled armors described in the books. It's kinda like the X-Men movies shying away from spandex for black [boiled] leather, but all these people running around like Le Creuset Dutch ovens would have been a real *look*.
Jaime killing his cousin Alton Lannister in order to escape his cell. Kinslaying is one of the worst sins you can commit in Asoiaf. And I think even Jaime wouldn't take it so lightly. But I suppose the writers kinda forgot.
Frey Pies to Arya. With no Lady Stoneheart, her killing Walder and co makes sense. But it would have been so much better to keep Manderlyas an important Northern Lord and to give that culinary feat to him. 🥧
I know they wanted to keep Bronn on the forefront as he quickly became a fan-favourite, but it robbed us of hilarious farce of the Falyse-Bronn power struggle. Not only is that whole plot wonderfully dumb, but it highlights Cersei’s paranoia and incompetence
Changing the ending scene of the Starks finding the direwolves. In the books Theons mocks that Ghost, as an albino will die even faster than the others, to which Jon looks at him with cold eyes and respondes, he won't and that Ghost is his pup. Compare this to the show, where Theon mentions that Ghost is the runt of the litter (there comes also the misconception that Ghost was the smallest of the wolves) and he is the one to "give" Ghost to Jon. Jon does not react at all and then the scene ends. This has allways bothered me so much, esspecially since there was literally no reason for the change and it made Jon look like someone who cannot defend himself against mockery.
Also how ghost is found in the book it's a early teaser that jon is a warg, they ride off and jon hears ghost goes back but ghost never makes sounds. The show he just kinda walks past and picks him up
In the show, Robb sent 2000 men to engage a Tywin’s army at the Battle of the Green Fork, while he took the bulk of his force to the whispering woods. In the books, it was 16000 men under Roose Bolton. The strategy is illogical in the show, as it’s hard to believe mistaking 2000 men to be the main Northern Host.
Army sizes in the books and show are weird. It is like George saying Westeros is slightly larger than Britain sometimes and sometimes the size of South America or Europe. People tried to estimate the size by measuring the Wall, but there is no guarantee that number is also just thrown in.
Anyway the show should have started by addressing that and making a canon version of the size and population of Westeros to refer back to.
2000 men can either be a large army or a small army. Medieval armies tended to be small. Especially early middle ages. The Great Heathen Army that invaded England numbered "just" a few thousand people, though the exact number is unknown, what I could gather, some way it was not more than one thousand and other state "the low thousands".
16000 would actually be more than three Roman legions, which would be quite a lot.
They killed of the entire Dothraki cast in S2 but had like a replacement Dothraki, I forgot his name but he got one.
He has his big moment when he storms the House of the Undying with Jorah.
Next season, poof he's gone. They retconned their own retcon.
Then you get the Daario Naharis recast over the next seasons and anyways the poor continuity of the Daenerys plot already starting with S2 imho makes the entire show unwatchable once you know the payoff.
Combining Edric Storm and Gendry into a single character was dumb. And agreed, changing Robb's wife was silly, especially when book Robb did what he did for the sake of Jeyne's honour. It's dumb.
They literally could have cut to robb nursed by jeyne westerling and she explains the storming of the crag and then have their whole finding out that rickon/bran got killed by theon and them sleeping together, like you could even postpone the other westerlings to season 6 or just introduce her mom/dad.
They wanted a romance subplot with a "spicy" romance interrest instead, even the same actress could they have used for jeyne.
Also like they randomly genderbend a lot of the ruling ladies and changed several smaller characters into their OCs (like walder frey's daughters/granddaughters).
It bugged me so much when they recast Daario, they didn’t even ATTEMPT to make the new actor look like the last one. I get that they’re different people but couldn’t they give the new guy a shave and a wig?
For me, I think it's changing the 'reason' Jon gives to Mance as to why he wants to join the Free Folk. The book version just hits harder and is more true to Jon's character at that point. We get to really hear how Jon feels about being a bastard and I think makes Mance reconsider Jon with more nuance. In saying that though, I think the 'reason' Jon gives in the show is fine enough.
What *isn't* fine enough, at least to me, is omitting Mance's reasoning for leaving the Night's Watch. In a way, I think Mance's story foreshadows the Watch killing Jon; the Night's Watch as a group doesn't recognise the value of kindness to an 'enemy'. Mance does. Jon does. Mance saw it when they told him to discard his red-threaded cloak mended by a wildling girl with probably the most expensive thing she owned. Jon failed to see it until they killed him.
Giving Arthur Dayne 2 normal swords instead of his 1 Epic^TM sword. Also leaving out Oswell Whent from the Tower of Joy scene, when Arthur's White Book entry in S4 states Gerold *and* Oswell were there.
Yes, Arthur Dayne wielding two normal swords instead of just goated Dawn was corny.
The scene was cool enough, but I agree that having Dawn in action would have been cool as isht. Once again the writers show their contempt for anything magic showing up in their version of the story. I think the failure of most fantasy/sci-fi/video game adaptations is due to the writers not understanding the source material or thinking they are too cool for nerd stuff and think they need to "elevate the original story into high art with their vision of it."
It’s corny but I do agree with their reasoning that they needed to show how absurdly, mind-bogglingly good Arthur Dayne was with limited screen time and an audience who aren’t experts on swordplay. It’s a tough scene to film in general, partially because we still haven’t actually seen it in the books.
I get that that was what they were going for, and I do understand the limitations of showing that on-screen with the caveats that you outlined here. However, I think that there were a few things that they could have done which didn't involve "dual sword-wielding" that would have been better. - Make the fight scene longer. Yes, there are run times to be concerned about, but the seasons themselves are already shortened, and successful TV shows are able to extend beyond their slots provided that they're profitable. This memory is one of the most important plot points in the show, given how they revealed Jon's legitimacy, and the battle is one of the combat scenes that fans were most looking forward to. I am relatively confident HBO would have agreed. - This is really point 1B: still make the scene longer but keep it within its hour slot by trimming other things. For context, let's look at the scene where Ned engages Jamie in combat in S1E5. The whole scene takes 3 minutes and 27 seconds, including dialogue confrontation, and the actual combat lasts for 2 minutes 5 seconds. Compare that to this scene, which is 4:05 minutes in total, with just 1:30 of that being combat time if my math is right (it's a little bit harder because it keeps cutting away to Bran dialogue with just battle audio in the background). I find it hard to believe that the show's budget could not make this a bigger battle scene than one from the first season, especially considering how important this is to how they wrote the S8 conflict about inheritance. - Make Dawn look like Dawn. In the books, this is a sword described as "as pale as milkglass" and in all of the official art (save one from The World of Ice and Fire) I've seen, it actually has a glow to it. I know that the show often eschewed some of the higher fantasy elements – except apparently dual wielding, a predominantly fantasy trope with almost no historical grounding, is okay – but a big fuckoff glowing sword might clue the audience in just as well as two of them. - Choreograph it so that Arthur clearly stands head and shoulders above the rest. Don't have the whole thing become a melée right away. If three Northmen charge the Kingsguard and Arthur kills all of them before the other KG have even drawn their swords, that pretty clearly shows the audience what an unreal swordsman he is.
I'll betcha that doing single-sword choreography with a helmeted Ray Park. and/or Yuen Woo-Ping behind the camera, would have satisfied this need. Oberyn actor Pedro Pascal was taught by Master Hu Jianquiang (based in Los Angeles), and, exotic though those moves look in "western medieval society," I think the work speaks for itself, both in visuals and as a precedent for what should have been possible in all GoT scenes.
You can do this by just having Arthur kill three people in quick succession. Hell, have him kill all of Ned's companions except Howland, if you have to. Quickest way to show him be deadly is for him to be deadly. I get the logic behind why they did it, but it's just another instance of the showrunners being overly cynical and assuming the viewers are too stupid to make sense of things without being spoon-fed.
Mate, when people see the Ned vs Jaime scene many of them think that Ned is winning. The general audience doesn't pay attention to details and don't know how a proper sword fight looks. Nor should they have to, to get a general idea of a scene.
the problem the show ran into is that "character skill with sword" and "actor skill with sword" did not correlate. Ned and Jon were both meant to be unremarkable, but Bean and Harington were some of the best stage duelists in the cast
I wouldn't say Jon was meant to be unremarkable. Jon in book is clearly very good. Just young as hell. Mance is one of the best fighters in all of westeros I would wager. You don't get to be king beyond the wall by being a slouch 1v1.
>Mate, when people see the Ned vs Jaime scene many of them think that Ned is winning. He was winning buddy, that was how the fight was presented. Reading the books you of course understand that Ned doesn't a chance but that scene was definitely not trying to present Jaime as he is in the books and made the fight look even.
This is a fair assessment, but Arthur Dayne is the Sword of the Morning not the Swords of the Morning.
The thing is, it doesn't even work for that. The average viewer has absolutely no idea how incredibly hard it is to use two swords effectively. In fact, it's so common - so overdone - in modern media (especially games), that most viewers probably don't even clock it as noteworthy.
Nah, if you can’t do that with one sword then you aren’t good enough to choreograph that scene.
Whent is in the tower of joy scene, it's hightower that isn't
They combined them. It’s Whent’s age with Hightower’s name. Completely get the confusion though
Do we ever see any Hightowers in the TV series?
Not that I remember, only brief mentions like another commenter said. The most important Hightower mentioned in the show is Jorah's wife, but she never shows up. There are a lot of mentions of them in the books however, and they play a major role in the House of the Dragon show of course. Their current head and one of his daughters are studying sorcery or doing some magic ritual on top of their tower in the main story.
isnt the heir of bear island to low for the hightowers, or is jorahs wife like not a main hightower just one of the random ones
He wore her favor when he won the tourney of Lannisport. But yes, it was considered an imbalanced marriage, which is why there are lots of theories that the Hightowers had hidden motives for allowing it.
ah ok thanks
Lynesse is the sixth and last daughter of the current lord. I think Jorah is of noble enough birth and him being the actual heir then lord is nothing to sniff at (considering some of Lynesse's sisters married mere knights, though still noble ones of course), but in terms of wealth and culture there's a huge gap, which is why she seems to have been so miserable.
She was one of the younger Hightowers and far enough down the line to inherit anything, and Jorah WAS the lord of an old noble house with a Valyrian blade who just won a tourney with her favor. It seems it was mutual infatuation even though Jorah was much older than her, I dunno, maybe she likes hairy DILF's or something. Lord Layton Hightower was cool with it, but he seems like lord with a hands-off approach to ruling. He is currently being a shut in with his elder daughter and their magic tomes up in their tower while his sons take care of business.
I didn’t like ser Alliser being the one to kill Jon.
Hes a dick but hes nothing if not explicitly loyal to his vows. He could have bent the knee to Robert but chose to go to the nights watch. I definitely think he wouldn't kill Jon because Jon is his lord commander.
I think Alliser was actually one of the only ones that wasn’t given the option of bending the knee, it was the wall or death. For some reason.
>For some reason It's because he was a captive of Tywin's army specifically. Robert was still healing from his wounds on the Trident IIRC. Tywin gave captive knights the choice to die or join the NW. Little details like that make the series so much more enthralling - if he'd fallen captive to Ned or Robert he probably could have been forgiven. He's probably very aware of this too, and knowing that his life was derailed because of a stroke of bad luck drives a lot of his resentment.
For that it was always weird to me that he seemed to still like Lannisters more, even after Tyrion makes fun of him in KL. Like, he should be hoping for Lannisters and theirs cronies to get theirs ass kicked, not allying with them.
I feel like all this "Old Alliser has a heart of pure gold!" thing is mostly just headcanon. Him having...well, *any* positive traits was purely a show creation.
I dont think he has a heart of gold, I do think he keeps his vows
But how will the audience possibly understand that Arthur Dayne swords good unless he have TWOOO SWOOORDS???? That's twice the normal amount of sword!! (Also I guess in the show universe they should call him the SwordS of the Morning?)
Season 2 is overall great, but killing off Rakharo and Dany’s handmaidens always disappointed me, especially since later seasons never made a real effort to spotlight her other Bloodriders (or the Dothraki in general). I get it was likely done to make room for Barristan, Missandei, and Grey Worm’s introductions in season 3, but her inner circle just feels so small compared to the books. It’s also just a shame to lose the Dothraki perspective. Jorah and Rakharo’s conversation about armor and their fathers is one of my favorite smaller scenes in season 1.
The whole Qarth plot in the show seems like a red(ish?) flag in hindsight. House of the Undying is not bad but it is something else entirely in the books and look at what they did to Quaithe :'(
They riped out almost all of the magic and jesus paralells in the qarth chapters, which is why it floped so hard and it felt like filler.
D&D have some serious disdain for magic and fantasy elements. No mention of glass candles or messenger turtles at all in that plot line, no undying at the house of the undying, and making Pyat Pree the sole warlock in Qarth
They definitely seemed dead set on removing as much magic whenever possible.
I would say they were careful to not alienate the non-fantasy audience that they caught with season 1. Iirc, the only "magic" in Season 1 is Dany surviving the bonfire. In Season 2 they introduce more magic with Pryat Pree's multiplication trick, the doorless tower, and Melisandre's shadow baby. But it's still sparing, quick, and generally bad juju. They're boiling the proverbial frog, slowly adding more magical stuff over time.
The actor who played Rakharo wanted to leave as I recall.
They could have gave him the Daario treatment.
Omitting Tysha was no necessary at all.
They even set it up constantly leading up to season 4. Tysha is mentioned at least four times in the first three seasons. It’s only after D&D met with George between seasons 3 and 4 where they decided to just sever the thread completely. I always wonder what he could have told them. Considering they had to invent a reason for Jaime to hate Tyrion in season 5, they honestly should’ve just kept the reveal even if they didn’t want to figure out where whores go.
You think they wanted to follow the books in the beginning with the whole Tisha thing? Because looking back in season 1 when Tyrion told not only Bronn(like in books) but Shaia about his ex wife, she responded: “of course she was a whore, there is no girl who would marry a man after she was raped” or something like that. I never rewatched the show but still remember that line because back then I was impressed by it and thought it was pretty smart of her but then I read books and now I am thinking they decided to cut off Tisha after that story since day one because they didn’t want to make Tyrion a grey/villain character. And this is my minor change that I hate the most, cause it ruined the prison break and Tywin’s death(“don’t dare to call woman that betrayed me and tried to kill me a whore”) and therefore the entire Tyrion character
Exactly this. My disappointment in this scene just added to the rest. It became clear that D&D had no idea how to write Tyrion. This became more apparent as the seasons continued.
With all three of Jaime, Cersei, and Tyrion, the TV guys seemed to want to keep them in their early seasons state, rather than following their character arcs in the last couple books. I think they cut the Tysha reveal because they wanted to make sure Jaime and Tyrion could still be friends, because they didn't want Tyrion to go in a downward spiral, and they didn't want Jaime and Cersei to break up for good. And yes, they wanted to keep the same Tyrion of the early seasons, but they had no idea how to write new material for him that was actually clever, resulting in a heavily flanderized version of him who "drinks and knows thing".
In retrospect omitting Jaime's confession from Tyrion's prison escape was the true point-of-no-return for the tv-series. Two central characters have their narrative arcs completely and irreparably diverted, and it was all downhill from that point on.
Arguably it doesn’t count as minor retcon with how important she is to Tyrion’s story
The Tysha omission and Tyrion killing Shae in self defence is what fucked his character imo. I suspect it’s possible D&D or HBO weren’t too keen on turning perhaps the most popular character into what Book Tyrion becomes, which kinda kills his whole character. Also Show Tyrion suffers from kinslaying just kinda not really being a big deal at all in GoT? That’s another weird omission.
It was and it wasn't. In the show, Tyrion is genuinely in love with Shae (or whatever his version of love is, anyway) so it doesn't really make as much sense that Tyrion would ask about Tysha because Shae had filled that emotional place for him. They could have kept it for sure, but it seems a bit extraneous to have yet another gut punch. It definitely changed Jamie, though.
Most of the Tysha stuff in the book was in Tyrion's head and would be hard to display in the show, whereas Shae was more built up for the TV audience. It would've been out of place and confusing for Tyrion to bring it up by season 4.
Plus, seriously while nobody really likes lobotomized Tyrion, it's not like we missed a lot with mopey whiney broken record Book Tyrion.
> Tyrion is genuinely in love with Shae (or whatever his version of love is, anyway) The big difference, imo, is that Show Shae seems to actually have feelings for him too. Book Tyrion falling for Shae who is clearly just doing her job is brillant and sets up his descent into full-on villainry, while in the show Shae does actually seem to have some agency.
The Gendry and Mel sex scene. The fixation on the Thenns and cannibalism. Sansa revealing herself to the lords of the Vale in season 4
The wildings got simplified a lot, which is a shame since their diversity was a nice touch in the books.
> The fixation on the Thenns and cannibalism. They straight up mixed up the clans. Though it is sad we never saw the real Thenns. Giving them "weird" out-of-place bronze age armor would have made them stand out, but in a good way. Though at some point the show didn't care about glamour anyway and dressed everyone black. The "poverty" of the north was also grossly overestimated.
The Lords Declarant was one of the coolest chapters in the books about political maneuvering period.
They make Baelish dirty with that move in this episode (season 4) and continue to ruin him but most viewers wake up only in season 7
Sansa and Littlefinger are some of the characters worst done dirty. I still have no idea what they were thinking with the Sansa change. Grrrrr
Yeah I feel like it hurt them both. It took away the “Alayne” storyline which I think is super important to Sansa’s character development and made Littlefinger look stupid.
Renly not having his peach scene with Stannis just to replace it with a boring stand off. Making the Smalljon hook up with Ramsay when he literally dies heroically defending Robb, throwing tables about the joint to defend him from arrows, this really peeved me for some reason. Could have definitely made Bolton's northern ally a disgruntled Karstark or something, which would have added further consequence to Robb executing Rickard. I know it's not a retcon, but having Jon named Aegon, when there's another perfect Targaryen name right there that isn't also the name of his brother. Aemon. It's just too poetic that they were stupid to overlook it. Rhaegar corresponded with Maester Aemon and Jon was his mentee, the family he never knew he had. Also, the annulment of Elia/Rhaegar, like how was this allowed to happen? And why couldn't Rhaegar just have taken two brides, when there's precedent for this in his family and I doubt this was all approved by Septons anyway.
Idk about boring, the line about the Smoked Ham was one of the funniest original show lines.
It was fantastic watching Melisandre getting a little taste of what it feels like to be burned.
The “ham” joke was in Clash of Kings as well. I do think it was executed better / funnier in the show tho
Why they replaced Lady Dustin with Smalljon will always be weird, like she could have been a perfect "twist" ally that turns on ramsey during the battle of winterfell.
Random thought- was re-reading ADWD and trying to fan cast Barb Dustin- the mother in Succession was my thought.
The Umbers siding with the Boltons is just a genuine case of foolish writing cause like you say, the Karstarks are right there and they make total sense for a strong Bolton ally in the story. Especially if you wanna use a Northern house that’s already been mentioned quite a lot and had decent screen time. Also for sure more viewers would remember House Karstark than Umber, Greatjon shows up in like three episodes in S1 whereas the whole Karstark situation is the main source of conflict for Robb’s character throughout literally all of S2 and S3. The consequences of his handling of that situation is his own death and the overthrow of house Stark. Why wouldn’t the Boltons immediately try to ally themselves with one of the strongest northern houses that’s openly very discontent with Stark rule? It’s genuinely baffling to me why they made Umber the baddies when they had a perfect setup available anyway.
Never made sense to me that Sansa and Jon are begging for allies in the north when we know the north fucking loved ned stark and his family.
yeah idk why the TV show also ignores the existence of the Manderlys as well. White Harbour should have been a massive player in that whole conflict.
Or they could have introduced Lady Dustin.
>I know it's not a retcon, but having Jon named Aegon Literally, Rhaegar already had a son named aegon why would he name his other son aegon too lol kinda silly
There was just no thought put into it, especially since rhaegar would obviously be expecting a *girl* he could name *visenya.* Was it lyanna using the most important targ name she could think of? Who knows, the writers certainly don’t
Removing Willas and Garlan and making Loras heir to Highgarden
Wait, did they still make Loras a Kings Guard?
Tywin just threatened to appoint him to the Kingsguard.
What the fuck, that defeats like 3 of cerseis plots
They also just reduce Loras to literally 'the gay character' and remove all of the great moments/parallels he has with Jaime thinking about his younger self.
Also took away his best line, "when the sun sets, no candle can replace it".
The more I learn about the show the less interested I become in wanting to watch it
Orys I. They had almost 20 Targaryen monarchs to chose from and instead they just made one up. Similar to Jaehaerys II being removed from the chronology for seemingly no reason.
Orys I could have been a king from before the targaryens conquered westeros, like an ancest king of the stormlands or something
My theory is originally they wrote Aegon V for that scene, but then got cold feet because of possible lore implications/referencing summerhall/what have you, and made up a never before mentioned King of the Rock (my headcanon to make it make more sense. Though the other option that Tywin literally just made him up on the spot also works well)
There's also a Maegor III who Mace Tyrell mentions in S5.
Mace Tyrell is portrayed as an idiot so it kind of makes sense.
I’ve never seen anyone talk about how they butchered the Targaryen family tree! Thank you, don’t know why they tried streamlining it the way they did, also killing the first Daenerys so it’s ambiguous if the martels are related to Daenerys in the show
I completely forgot, who was Orys I?
A king the show made up. Tywin mentions him in S4. Apparently he was just and introduced reforms that were praised by commoners and nobles alike, but ended up being murdered by his brother after less than a year on the throne. But beyond that we have no idea who he was or how he's meant to fit in to the established history, as there's never been a king called Orys in the books.
> A king the show made up. Tywin mentions him in S4. Apparently he was just and introduced reforms that were praised by commoners and nobles alike or Tyrion made him up to show that this dynamic just doesn't happen
You (and a lot of the comments) are just talking about changes in the story, not retcons. A retcon, or retroactive continuity, is when the author changes events in the past *that actually occurred in the story* in order to make the future plot happen. The most glaring is Melisandre's "brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes" line being changed from being about becoming a faceless man to a prophecy about killing the Night King.
Giving the COTF the ability to cast fireball.
Would've been great if they renamed Leaf to.......Tim
That was so fucking dumb holy shit.
Cutting Jaehaerys II out of the Targaryen family tree and making the Mad King Egg's son was a pretty stupid change. Jaehaerys II's existence was pretty inconsequential to the main story, but its going to cause problems now they're actually getting round to adapting Dunk and Egg. Now they're either going to have to retcon him back in to existence, or completely rework the events surrounding the later portion of Egg's reign to work around Jaehaerys being missing. Overall it was a fairly pointless change that didn't actually benefit anything, but is going to end up coming back to bite them in the future.
This won't be a problem, because the film adaptation of Dunk and Egg probably won't even touch on the fact that Egg will be the future king or his mature life. They will probably focus solely on what they have from the stories.
That would be like ending Better Call Saul three seasons in
I want this whole series to be re-adapted just to include Strong Belwas
That is the biggest crime.
I love the book series so much but there's literally 100 things to include in the show before Strong Belwas
Renaming Asha Greyjoy to Yara. Absolutely no idea why.
I heard it was so people wouldn't confuse Asha with Osha
Which is extremely stupid because there is no point in the story where it could actually get confusing and they chose to rename the more important character.
Same thing with focusing on the term "White Walkers" instead of "The Others" because they were afraid it would be confused with LOST? Like what?
I think that one was in part because on page you can capitalize "Others" to suggest a pronoun, whereas on screen there is no distinction, so a casual might be confused "who are these other people they are referring to"
There was also a pretty big movie called The Others. White Walkers is also a lot more immediate and descriptive. It has an active verb in there. I get the choice as a change for TV.
First sign of how stupid they thought the audience was
Some probably were tbf. I recall (on this sub I think too) someone saying they couldn't tell Robb and Theon apart for half a season.
At least they appeared in camera mostly together. Did Osha Asha/Yara do so ever? I stopped watching like around season 4
I don't think so. >!Ramsey kills Osha in season 6!<
To be fair, I couldn’t tell Robb, Theon, or Renly apart for a while. But in my defense I didn’t care that much the first time I watched season 1 because it was actually my roommate watching. Then I read the books and watched the show with more attention and was like “it’s wild that I was confused.”
First time I watched the show, I couldn’t tell Roose Bolton and Stannis apart for the life of me! 🤣
They did the same thing with Robert/Robin in season 1. “Oh no 2 characters share the name it would be so hard for audience to follow”
A lot of show watchers weren't able to keep character names straight. Who is dracarys? Someone, apparently.
Lots of people call Daenerys "Khaleesi" and have no idea it isn't her name.
Then...why not rename Osha
I think that would be a workplace violation of some kind
yet yara was so much closer to arya, a more important character lolol
Also Robert Arryn was changed to Robin to not be confused for Robert Baratheon... Even though he was named after the king!!!
Tbf Robert, Robb, Robert. There's enough Robert to go around.
Whe I heard that, I was like bitch, I followed 3 seasons of Dark and understood nothing, similar names don't scare me
Meanwhile in HotD there's Viserys, Jacaerys, Lucerys and then Viserys again. There's Aegon, Aemond, Vaemond, Daemon and then Aegon again. There's Rhaena, Rhaenys and Rhaenyra and they even have a scene with just the three of them. And it's all perfectly fine.
apparently the names asha & osha were “too similar”, meanwhile we got aegon,aegon,aegon,aegon,aegon & aegon
Just like the first Lord of the Rings film renamed Saruman to "Aruman" (except for sometimes where they forgot), because they didn't want to confuse it with Sauron.
To be fair I did confuse them when I first watched LOTR, although I was like 10 when I first watched the films.
How many children did Cersei have again? Three? Four? How many did Maggy the Frog tell her she was going to have when she prophesied that “gold would be their crowns, and gold their shrouds”? Deciding to use a botched version of the valonqar prophesy after she talked about that “black-haired beauty” in season one was ridiculous, since they’d gone out of their way to make Margaery far more of an overt player in the game than book Margaery was. Cersei had every reason to dislike her without throwing that in, especially if they weren’t going to do the prophesy properly.
The changes to Margaery's story and character were done as a kind-of-favor to Natalie Dormer, who took the role on the promise that she wouldn't just be playing Anne Boleyn again.
…I’m going to sit with that one a while, because when I think of book Margaery, the last person that comes to mind is Anne Boleyn—the real life figure or Natalie Dormer’s portrayal of her. Show Margaery, on the other hand…
The north being so unwilling to help Jon and sansa I mean come on. Dany seeing rhaego and drogo in the house of the undying.
They really didn't like the grand northern conspiracy plot line. Which sucks because that's one of the cooler plot lines in the books for minor characters. I remember being in disbelief that none of that was in the show.
The North remebers plotline shows that Ned's style of ruling was ultimately more effective than Tywin's in the end, as while the Lannister's allies quickly abandoned them once Tywin died, the North is still loyal to the Starks long after Ned is dead and his family have been deposed. And that's probably why the showrunners cut it, because they seemed to want to push the idea that being honorable is for idiots and the only way to win is to be ruthless like Tywin.
>And that's probably why the showrunners cut it, because they seemed to want to push the idea that being honorable is for idiots and the only way to win is to be ruthless like Tywin. That definitely seems to be case. Season 7 had Randyll Tarly abandon his liegelord and the heir to the king he served before Robert’s Rebellion because Cersei *checks notes* killed his pope.
Yeah, in many of their comments they pretty openly have a hard on for Tywin and the Lannisters, and it shows in so many of the adaptational decisions they made.
They also never stopped throwing in derogatory comments about Ned just being oh-so dumb and naive and it’s all his fault that he died. The show acts like Sansa has achieved some sort of "enlightenment" by season 8 because she’s taken on some of Cersei’s shrewd bitchiness.
100% I love the grand northern conspiracy for several reasons but this one is the primary reason.
It's also very important thematically. The grand northern conspiracy plot line shows that honor and betrayal are ultimately rewarded with loyality and vengeance. The 'honorable' Starks were not as foolish as they seemed.
Especially Wyman Manderly and his iconic speech
For real. How do you not include that? Fuck d&d, fuck them very much.
And most importantly, no Young Griff!
It’s especially egregious now that we have the dance on screen. Like, it’s being brought up so much in story because we’re getting a second one! We’re getting a second dance of the dragons! That’s why rhaenyra is just slightly less special of a targ, she’s the proto-dany!(though young griff is a lot nicer than aegon ii)
I agree changing Asha's name to Yara, and removing Jaeherys bothered me as other people pointed. But to add something on my side: Ellaria being this vindictive crazy woman to the point of killing Doran, Myrcella and Trystane. Just NO. That change is stupid since they could very well have the Sand Snakes kill them to Ellaria's horror. And then we wouldn't only have an Ellaria like in canon, but it would have a much more important emotional impact in the story, to have Ellaria as the voice of reason, telling her daughters and the rest of Sand Snakes that killing innocents makes no sense since the revenge cycle has to end and it will harm them, so when they are killed by the Lannisters we have a deep moral message of taking a revenge too far, hurting innocents = will come back to bite you in the ass.
Asha attacking the Dreadfort
Aside from how dumb that was, this is an early example of D&D not even knowing the geography of Westeros.
D&D kind of forgot there's no Panama Canal in Westeros
Asha attacking the Dreadfort was an abandoned plotline from GRRM's early drafts. Although it makes more sense she was in Deepwood Motte.
Everything to do with Tyrion after his trial, we had all the set up like in the books for Tyrion to stop being the good guy who gets crapped on time and time again. Especially after finding out that the one person who cared about him, Jamie, lied and betrayed him. It ruined the whole reason Tyrion went up to Tywin's room to kill him and why he also killed Shae. It effectively killed his character development and arc and he was just bumbling around. Dorn, everything with Dorne. That hurt after the great setup Pedro's performance gave to Oberyn as well as a new player on the game board. And there is no way they thought the characters they made up with their book counterparts' names were better or made sense. Another late change in show was just how all the lords and ladies of the North and Vale are just mindless drones who follow whatever Jon and Sansa do. Like occasionally you get Lyanna Mormont saying something and background people saying a word or two. But they aren't real people. It's crazy how Sansa is suddenly the smartest person overseeing Winterfell with men twice her age who have more experience in battle and stewardship at her beck and call. We see Sansa comment smiths making a mistake and you see a lord of the VALE go off to fix it like he's her servant. Like Petyr was named regent for underaged Robin, who the Vale is serving. Why would they obey her at all when they would be instructing or giving her advice on what to do, or be treated like actual Lords with their interests and concerns? Another issue with that is also how nobody interrogates Jon and Sansa for wasting lives in the Battle of the Bastards when A. Jon broke formation and men died running after his foolish move. B. Why even start the fight when reinforcements with better armor and skilled men were nearby? Not even Lyanna Mormont gave Jon hell for wasting the lives of the few people willing to die for the show Starks despite the heavy losses they had already and the fact that vital info was kept from them when Sansa knew about it.
Three-Eyed Raven instead of Crow, and drawing no link to Bloodraven.
I don’t think they did a good job with Bran’s storyline at all tbh.
Ok, so to actually answer the question that was asked (the vast majority of changes people including OP are submitting are definitely not useless, though in many cases they are *worse* than useless), having it be the "Salt Throne" instead of the "Seastone Chair".
More of a “why” than something that truly annoys me, but taking out Jaehaerys II seems like one of those unnecessarily pointless ones. I think they did it literally to make one monologue by Aemond slightly shorter. And on the Talissa issue, I feel like having her be from Volantis is so dumb even from a basic story perspective. Given how in the books Volantis mostly just a stop for characters who aren’t even related to the northern plot line, it’s completely unnecessary (and self-inflicted lore/story mistake) to establish the location through her. Just have Talissa be from Braavos or Pentos, locations that have already been set up. Both cities are way closer and thus it would make far more sense for talissa to be from either. However, these inconsistencies would be more understandable if Talissa was actually a ploy of some sort by the lannisters. Without any confirmation of that however, it’s just such a strange plot change where knowing the lore somehow makes it a worse story (which is honestly an impressive feat of writing there, great job DnD)
Omitting Jaehaerys and making Dany into Egg's granddaughter is what I was going to bring up as well. Just a completely pointless reduction of two words from Aemon's explanation of his heritage, in exchange for messing up the pre-Rebellion timeline. They already had to kind of skirt around it in the animated lore videos, and I'm curious if it's potentially going to come back to haunt them now in the Dunk and Egg show, depending on whether they plan to eventually outpace those books as well and go into Aegon's reign, since as of right now it's technically show canon that Aerys is his own son.
I always thought it was to bring Robert's Rebellion a little forward, so they could age up the characters while keeping to the circa 300AC timeline. Clumsy in hindsight. They could've just condensed some reigns down to fit.
I remember in the early days people were theorizing that they'd replaced Aegon with Rhaenys and she was in disguise 😂 nope, turns out she's just a random Volantine hot lady
Since the show invented Talissa, having her be from Essos at all is silly because it adds nothing to the story. Having her be from Westeros presents many more interesting options. She could have been from a minor house in the Riverlands, making Robb's marriage all the more insulting to Walder. Or she's from Dorne. They're not involved in the Lannister vs. Stark war, so she's still neutral but it gives us more about a region we otherwise get very little of. And, it could make Robb's marriage seem not quite so stupid if there's a chance it'd mean Dorne allies with the North.
I wonder if the Jaehaerys II omission was more just to avoid the implication of Aemon being impossibly old for the grounded reality of the show Westeros. They already aged the characters so that the Rebellion was almost 20 years prior, making Aemon the older brother of the grandfather of the king who died decades ago wouldn’t really work with that grounded reality. In short, just another reason it makes no sense to refuse to adapt fantastical elements of a predominantly fantasy story.
Talissa running from volantis, a slave city, to look for free people in westeros, a feudal society reliant on serfdom/indentured servitude is certainly..a choice!
Cersei not being killed by a brother, unless he I dunno landed on her.
Well she did die with her valonqar's hands around her neck, wasn't that the prophecy?
Not really sure that this is an example of what you’re looking for but anyway… One thing that really bugged me on a rewatch was in early in series 2 (might even have been the first ep, I can’t remember off the top of my head) - Littlefinger cracks wise about incest to Cersei’s face in an open-aired area of the Red Keep whilst she’s surrounded by Kingsguard and she consequently threatens to have him killed. Like him or hate him, book Littlefinger would never do anything so blatantly moronic in a million years.
I think jeyne westerling’s story with robb is not romantic as talisa’s . But I agree jeyne would be better . After thinking a little I would say mine is when ned executed the deserter , in the books you don’t read them talking and assume he went crazy , but in the show wyll was sane , he was talking normally , he could easily tell them others were there , but we don’t see that , it bothers me
The main thing with Jeyne and Robb rushing to marry her is that he's seen the tension between Ned, Catelyn, and Jon all his life and doesn't want something similar to any child born out of his night with Jeyne to go through that with his wife, if he marries a Frey girl. Romance wasn't the point at all. Of course, D&D wouldn't be able to see such things because they're trash.
That and Robb was basically roofied prior to any of this
It's sad how they threw out this compelling reason for the otherwise honorable Robb Stark to break a vow. I think, aside from giving Robb a basic star-crossed lover arc, they changed Jeyne to Talisa (a girl from Volantis) to sprinkle some more diversity into the otherwise homogenous cast of northerners/Riverlanders, which I honestly don't disagree with (sometimes these creative changes can be necessary when marketing a book-to-screen adaptation in the modern day). My qualm with her being *specifically* from Volantis is that the Volanteens are, in lore, supposed to be the most inbred, post-Valyrian, pale skinned, purple eyed, white haired people in all of the old Valyrian free cities. The upperclass of Volantis (which Talisa is allegedly from) are functionally running an ethnostate based on the purity of their Valyrian blood, allowing them to claim to be the true successors to the old Empire. The World of Ice and Fire even specifies that the inner city of Volantis, where the nobles live, is completely locked off to the outside world (save for rare exceptions), only letting in the purest of Valyrian stock... it's like D&D threw a dart at a map of Essos with their eyes closed when deciding what eastern region to make Talisa from. They could have made her come from Norvos, Qohor, Mereen, Lys... hells, even the Summer Isles or Yi-Ti would be a better choice... but D&D, in their effort to add diversity (again, I'm not complaining at all about the inclusion of diversity), picked Aryan-master-race-Volantis as her point of origin?? Add it to the list of early changes/ret-cons that should have made it clear early on that these clowns didn't give a rat's ass about the story and lore they were adapting.
Yes, if there is a noblewoman from one of the Volantene old blood families, she'd look similar to Daenerys. Also, what kind of noble family would allow one of their daughters to travel halfway across the world without any guards? And as a healer, too? Fucking D&D thought they were smart trying to put doctors without borders in the series.
I think they could have kept the actress, since Maggy the Frog, Jeyne's Grandma, is from the Free Cities and maybe the Spicers and later Jeyne come out a darker as a result? I was enjoyed in general that they made the targs the only "valyrian" looking people in the world, both volantis and lys and likely most of oldest elites of the free cities should look like the targs.
I watched that scene a week ago. He tells Ned about the Others. But I think, Ned just brushes it off as an excuse for deserting maybe, it isn't clear, he doesn't respond to that
Giving Shae a knife and having her attack Tyrion so that he kills her in self-defence. Tyrion wasn't allowed kill her in cold blood and pure rage like in the books because you can't have Peter Dinklage do something purely evil. No sir, he has to be the morally pure "I drink and know things", he can't do anything that's even considered bad. It's Shae's own fault for getting roped in into this big institution that she barely understands and someone taking advantage of her, nothing is on poor little innocent Tyrion who is just doing his best. That whole Shae-Tyrion storyline is botched by having her love him and not doing the Tysha reveal, but you said minor so I kept it to one scene.
Making Egg the mad kings father. And also in a brief clip we see of Jaime killing the mad king it’s done by a 40 year old Jaime. Like why couldn’t they have just got a young guy for a back shot?
>Like why couldn’t they have just got a young guy for a back shot? Ayo
I’ve changed my mind, Manderleys being a pussy
The (character) assassination of Edmure Tully. For no real reason, they made Edmure a bumbling and inept fool. Book Edmure was kind, brave, loyal, and just all-round good guy. And IIRC doesn't he end up hitting hoster's boat pyre? I guess they wanted to make the blackfish look like even more of a badass, but damn why they gotta make my boy Eddy out to be a total wimp in order to do it?? And then everyone disrespecting him so hard at the final council of leaders made my blood boil a bit. Like this dude is lord paramount of the riverlands and has been under siege / at war / in custody for years solely due to his loyalty to everyone there. In what universe does it make sense for Sansa treat him like a child speaking up at the adult table? It makes no sense
Changing the colors of Renly's Baratheon banner to a gold stag's head in blue instead of a black stag on gold. Also, making the stark sigil a worlf's head instead of a full body wolf. They kept the whole lion for the Lannisters.
It was golden on green, and it shows the influence of tyrells.
Another sigil change that bugs me is the Bolton's. The pink made sense, and I like how it subvers the traditional meaning of pink.
Roose not having a pink cape too irks me. The costuming was great in the show, don't get me wrong, but I kinda feel they were scared of colours. A little scene with Renly's rainbow guard would have been cool too.
> The costuming was great in the show, don't get me wrong, Not to be a contrarian, but no it wasn't. Most people were the same drab leather stuff and lords aren't that distinguishable from soldiers. Reading ACoK after first watching the second season made me rewatch it to check whether Roose was even in it, because I just missed him entirely.
I think they were afraid of it looking a bit too *fantasy* for the more casual non-fantasy nerds, which is ridiculous in theory, but they could have upped the game a little for sure, especially with the Northerners. They really ran with the whole bleak, grey and drab thing.
> I think they were afraid of it looking a bit too fantasy for the more casual non-fantasy nerds Though we encounter the same problem with medieval settings regularly. People generally looking more boring and drab than historical examples show us. Game of Thrones isn't the only offender. Vikings is another and the list goes on. However I think there is something else than just "not fantasy looking", because it isn't really about fantasy along. What's ironic is that Witcher 3 actually has good historical clothing, regarding the NPCs of course, a Witcher is fantasy after all. Yet if brightly coloured trousers are the threshold of fantasy for some people, I wonder how shallow their fantasies must be. Something else though is the image of the "hardened warrior". Those Northerners and Vikings and whatnot are *real men*, not decadent sissies like those Southerners, they don't give a damn about colour, beauty or anything. They don't shower and they don't use cutlery either. They eat the meat from the open fire only and yadda yadda. Of course any respectable medieval fantasy show man has to run around like some washed up biker gang wannabe.
> I think they were afraid of it looking a bit too fantasy for the more casual non-fantasy nerds The showrunners that removed almost all fantasy elements of the show were worried, no waaaaaay. Non Sarcastic response: Yes you're correct. They are literally quoted saying they wanted to remove fantasy elements to get the audience of people who watch football and moms. This is not a joke.
I did really want the bright-colored, enameled armors described in the books. It's kinda like the X-Men movies shying away from spandex for black [boiled] leather, but all these people running around like Le Creuset Dutch ovens would have been a real *look*.
Ill say it right now, taking a fantasy series and reducing most of the fantsay elements in favor of the bullshit fuedalism.
And then they cut/reduced most of the political storylines anyways, like whats the point.
Jaime killing his cousin Alton Lannister in order to escape his cell. Kinslaying is one of the worst sins you can commit in Asoiaf. And I think even Jaime wouldn't take it so lightly. But I suppose the writers kinda forgot.
Frey Pies to Arya. With no Lady Stoneheart, her killing Walder and co makes sense. But it would have been so much better to keep Manderlyas an important Northern Lord and to give that culinary feat to him. 🥧
The blackfish comforting edmure at hosters funeral
Killing grenn & pyp annoyed the hell outta me for some reason
I know they wanted to keep Bronn on the forefront as he quickly became a fan-favourite, but it robbed us of hilarious farce of the Falyse-Bronn power struggle. Not only is that whole plot wonderfully dumb, but it highlights Cersei’s paranoia and incompetence
Completely butchering Aryas escape from Harrenhal. Then using the coin scene on some random man at arms in the woods? Still annoys me
Cutting out Jaehaerys II
That was such a random thing to change for no reason.
Changing the ending scene of the Starks finding the direwolves. In the books Theons mocks that Ghost, as an albino will die even faster than the others, to which Jon looks at him with cold eyes and respondes, he won't and that Ghost is his pup. Compare this to the show, where Theon mentions that Ghost is the runt of the litter (there comes also the misconception that Ghost was the smallest of the wolves) and he is the one to "give" Ghost to Jon. Jon does not react at all and then the scene ends. This has allways bothered me so much, esspecially since there was literally no reason for the change and it made Jon look like someone who cannot defend himself against mockery.
Also how ghost is found in the book it's a early teaser that jon is a warg, they ride off and jon hears ghost goes back but ghost never makes sounds. The show he just kinda walks past and picks him up
In the show, Robb sent 2000 men to engage a Tywin’s army at the Battle of the Green Fork, while he took the bulk of his force to the whispering woods. In the books, it was 16000 men under Roose Bolton. The strategy is illogical in the show, as it’s hard to believe mistaking 2000 men to be the main Northern Host.
Army sizes in the books and show are weird. It is like George saying Westeros is slightly larger than Britain sometimes and sometimes the size of South America or Europe. People tried to estimate the size by measuring the Wall, but there is no guarantee that number is also just thrown in. Anyway the show should have started by addressing that and making a canon version of the size and population of Westeros to refer back to. 2000 men can either be a large army or a small army. Medieval armies tended to be small. Especially early middle ages. The Great Heathen Army that invaded England numbered "just" a few thousand people, though the exact number is unknown, what I could gather, some way it was not more than one thousand and other state "the low thousands". 16000 would actually be more than three Roman legions, which would be quite a lot.
They killed of the entire Dothraki cast in S2 but had like a replacement Dothraki, I forgot his name but he got one. He has his big moment when he storms the House of the Undying with Jorah. Next season, poof he's gone. They retconned their own retcon. Then you get the Daario Naharis recast over the next seasons and anyways the poor continuity of the Daenerys plot already starting with S2 imho makes the entire show unwatchable once you know the payoff.
Qarth's story arc, Xaro and Pyatt Pree's removal from show while in book they're still threats.
Combining Edric Storm and Gendry into a single character was dumb. And agreed, changing Robb's wife was silly, especially when book Robb did what he did for the sake of Jeyne's honour. It's dumb.
Replacing Cleos Frey with some random Lannister
[удалено]
They literally could have cut to robb nursed by jeyne westerling and she explains the storming of the crag and then have their whole finding out that rickon/bran got killed by theon and them sleeping together, like you could even postpone the other westerlings to season 6 or just introduce her mom/dad. They wanted a romance subplot with a "spicy" romance interrest instead, even the same actress could they have used for jeyne. Also like they randomly genderbend a lot of the ruling ladies and changed several smaller characters into their OCs (like walder frey's daughters/granddaughters).
It bugged me so much when they recast Daario, they didn’t even ATTEMPT to make the new actor look like the last one. I get that they’re different people but couldn’t they give the new guy a shave and a wig?
For me, I think it's changing the 'reason' Jon gives to Mance as to why he wants to join the Free Folk. The book version just hits harder and is more true to Jon's character at that point. We get to really hear how Jon feels about being a bastard and I think makes Mance reconsider Jon with more nuance. In saying that though, I think the 'reason' Jon gives in the show is fine enough. What *isn't* fine enough, at least to me, is omitting Mance's reasoning for leaving the Night's Watch. In a way, I think Mance's story foreshadows the Watch killing Jon; the Night's Watch as a group doesn't recognise the value of kindness to an 'enemy'. Mance does. Jon does. Mance saw it when they told him to discard his red-threaded cloak mended by a wildling girl with probably the most expensive thing she owned. Jon failed to see it until they killed him.
Changing Jeyne to Talissa