With George RR Martin’s books being enormous, detail heavy, and just generally taking a long time to be published, it was inevitable that eventually the television adaptation would catch up to the books at some point. Also, with so many characters, some had to be cut, changed, or amalgamated (as is the case with Joe Dempsie’s Gendry). There’s nothing else for it: Martin’s revered source material had to be altered to work for the series.
This strategy will no doubt divide the book-lovers amongst Game of Thrones’ enormous audience, but it sure does give existing characters meatier, edgier, and more game-changing storylines. This is especially the case with long-suffering Stark sister, Sansa (Sophie Turner).
David Benioff has said that the Stark sisters, particularly Sansa, have always been favourites of the Thrones writing staff, and that they wanted Sansa to play a more active role in the show, as in Martin’s series she is still very much a bystander in Westerosi politics. “We really wanted Sansa to play a major part this season,” Benioff said. “If we were going to stay absolutely faithful to the book, it was going to be very hard to do that. There was as subplot we loved from the books, but it used a character that’s not in the show.”
As was revealed in this week’s episode “High Sparrow”, Littlefinger’s big plan for Sansa is for her to wed deranged flaying-enthusiast, Ramsay Bolton. Ramsay’s father is Roose Bolton, current Warden of the North, who was responsible for that eventful wedding back in season three. As is to be expected, Sansa isn’t too pleased at this new development, but Littlefinger convinces her to get in the game and stop being passive. She decides to go ahead, and rides to Moat Cailin to meet her future husband.
Many fans have expressed their worries about this new development and what it can mean for Sansa[2], but her brazen staring-down of Roose Bolton, and her subsequent charming of his awful son, makes me think that she’ll soon have the Boltons wrapped around her little finger – or, at least, she’ll use Margaery Tyrell-like skills to charm her new husband into doing her bidding.
Turner has grown as an actress and turned Sansa from a naïve young girl to a legitimate player in the game of thrones. This is one of the reasons why the Thrones writing team has given her this storyline – Turner’s emerging acting skills are too good to waste. If you have an actress there, who we’ve spent five seasons getting to know, why introduce yet another character and leave the existing one without anything to do? Game of Thrones writer and producer Bryan Cogman has said that the writers made this decision early on. “In the books, Sansa has very few chapters in the Vale once she’s up there. That was not going to be an option for one of our lead characters,” Cogman said. “While this is a very bold departure, [we liked] the power of bringing a Stark back to Winterfell and having her reunite with Theon under these circumstances.”
There have been rumours of a couple of beloved characters from the books not making appearances in the show due to a lack of action (follow this link if you want to find out, but beware of spoilers). Bran, Hodor and co. are taking an entire year off due to a lack of material in their storyline, and we haven’t seen Gendry for over a season. While book fans may not like such large departures from the books, the material must be changed to work for the screen, so that the show can maintain the pace and level of entertainment. After four seasons of thrills, shocks and excitement, perhaps it’s time to trust that Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and the rest of the Game of Thrones writing staff know what they’re doing.
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