Adapting Game of Thrones Part I: Clashing Kings and Storming Swords

Weeks have gone by without a new Game of Thrones episode. Weeks will soon give way to months, and then over a year will go by where we cannot check up on all of our favorite tyrants, assassins, imps and dragons in the wonderful world of Westeros. That’s a cold world indeed, even colder than the frozen realms north of the Wall.

But fear not! For I will help you fill that large Iron Throne-sized hole in your hearts. After spending the last three years binging the show and reading George R.R. Martin’s source novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, I’m finally ready to blog about this little fantasy saga that has blown up into a pop culture phenomenon.

However, instead of simply dissecting the many, many awesome things that make Game of Thrones must-see TV, I’m going to take a different approach. After reading all five of Martin’s novels, I started actively comparing the show to the books starting with season 5. As a result, I can effectively comment on Thrones as an adaptation of Martin’s sprawling fantasy saga.

The verdict? Simply put, Game of Thrones is the most ambitious translation of a fantasy series since Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings made their respective bows. Since I have a lot of ground to cover here, I will emulate what Martin did with his fourth and fifth books and split this post in two. Today I will be covering seasons 1-4, while seasons 5-6 will come in a later post. So let’s get started, shall we? The cold winds are rising, so there’s not a moment to lose.

Beware: for those who haven’t read the books or seen the show through season 6, there will be spoilers. Out of respect for those still catching up, I’ll do my best to keep certain details vague, but there’s a lot of spoiler-y analysis here, so be warned.

Seasons 1-2: Translation at its finest

The first thing you have to understand about Game of Thrones is that it basically adapts one book per season. Or at least, it did at first. Seasons 1-2 adapt books 1 and 2, which is simple enough. But book 3 was so massive it took seasons 3 and 4 (20 hours of TV!) to adapt it properly. And even then, parts of books 4 and 5 were mixed in.

Those books together became season 5, although a few minor plots became part of season 6. (Confused yet?) By that season, though, the show had surpassed the books, so it was mostly doing its own thing at that point. The one constant throughout was that the show removed the books’ reliance on POV chapters and some of the rich backstory to focus more on characters and a consistent worldview.

The first season adapted the first book as literally as it could, capturing Martin’s world in vivid detail. Only minor changes came, usually by fleshing out characters whose perspectives we didn’t see in the book. Robb Stark, King Robert and the Lannister family come to mind here.

For the second season, however, the show started deviating more, in ways that seem small yet still change the story in subtle ways. For example, season two found the captive Arya in the service of Tywin Lannister, instead of the book’s Roose Bolton. This serves to help us as viewers understand the political situation of the War of the Five Kings, while letting two great characters bounce off each other and build a thrilling dynamic.

It also puts Arya in greater danger, as she’s a captive of her family’s biggest enemy. The situation characterizes Tywin more than the novels, as we see his ruthlessness, ambition and intelligence on full display through Arya’s eyes. The irony of course is that despite Tywin’s intelligence, he never suspects that the small girl in his service could be a key bargaining chip against his enemies. The entire scenario is much more interesting than the books, while making for great television.

Season 2 also adds more conflict to Daenerys Targaryen’s travels in Qarth. Whereas the books climaxed this story by having her ascend a mystical tower and hear a prophecy, the show wisely has the sorcerers running this tower steal her baby dragons. Her story changes to her entering the tower to save them, creating more conflict and justifying her whole stay in Qarth. It’s much more satisfying than the book, even though the prophecy she learned in the books was interesting.

This is also indicative of a larger change in the overall story from page to screen. Martin uses prophecies in his novels to foreshadow events to come, but leaves them incredibly vague and delivers them to readers through conflicting imagery. The show wisely bypasses all that, sacrificing prophecies for more character work. This also makes it more shocking as various events unfold, instead of leaving readers with dense puzzles to solve.

Season 3: A Matter of Perspective

Seasons 3 and 4 make even more changes, although together they serve as a wonderful translation of the third book. Season 3 sticks mostly to book 3, adapting all the content up to the Red Wedding and climaxing with this pivotal moment. This does wonders for the show, as it affords us more time with major characters who are killed off at the Wedding. In doing so, the show makes us feel genuinely shocked at these characters’ deaths, when their book counterparts weren’t nearly as developed.

Since the book only rotates perspectives among a handful of characters, everyone else is sidelined in terms of development.  Robb Stark is a character who, despite his importance to the story, isn’t developed as much in the books since we see him through the POV chapters of his mother, Caitlyn. The show corrects this, allowing his romance with a foreign healer to play out in front of us instead of off to the side, like the books’ approach. When it comes to the Red Wedding, we now empathize more with Robb and his new wife, making the tragedy all the more heartbreaking.

Season 4: Have Timeline, Will Travel

Another side effect of splitting up book three into two seasons are some minor shifts in the story’s timeline. Jaimie’s travels with Brienne of Tarth take up all of season 3, ending with him back in King’s Landing. When season 4 rolls around, Jaimie has been back for weeks and witnesses the Purple Wedding first hand. In the book, Jaimie is still travelling with Brienne when the Purple Wedding occurs, and doesn’t return to King’s Landing until after it’s happened. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a minor change, but important nonetheless due to a key moment.

Jaimie and Cersei have sex after the Wedding in both the book and the show, but the context is entirely different. Since the book has Jaimie returning, the sex marks their reunion and feels cathartic. Since Jaimie was already reunited with Cersei in the show, their sex after the Wedding has a new context. They make love to cope with the death of a loved one, even though Jaimie instigates it and the whole ordeal initially comes off as rape. The event itself also feels tone deaf due to it happening on top of said loved one’s coffin. It’s a rather over-the-top moment that, while technically translated from the book, doesn’t have the same effect due to the different context.

The rearranging of the books’ timeline continues throughout season 4, and is more apparent at its end. With only a portion of the third book to adapt, season 4 has elements of the fourth and fifth books occur alongside book 3’s timeline. Brienne’s quest to find Arya and Sansa Stark, which comes in book 4, is adapted here even though the timeline is still at the end of book 3. Her story is actually an improvement on her book 4 arc, climaxing with Brienne finding Arya and fighting the real Sandor Clegane, aka the Hound. Book 4 had her fight a Hound imposter and still get nowhere close to the Stark girls.

The timeline change comes from mixing Arya and the Hound’s book 3 arc of travelling Westeros with Brienne’s book 4 arc. This dovetails nicely into how Arya and the Hound’s arc ends in the third novel. The Hound is cut down, not by tavern brawlers like the book, but by Brienne herself, leading to the same outcome. This change works wonders for the show but also improves on the books in a way, taking one of book 4’s lesser story arcs and redeeming it by making Brienne a more competent person.

Decisions like these help make season 4 one of the best seasons in the series, even though it’s only adapting a few hundred pages of content. The Purple Wedding, the Battle at the Wall, Tyrion’s trial and the fight between the Mountain and the Viper are all major plots in the third book that get more room to breathe here. By letting these elements play out over a full season, we get a better appreciation for the severity of these moments.

Season 4: Expanding and Contracting

Other ways in which the fourth season makes up for its seeming lack of content is by extending minor subplots to fit the season’s narrative. One plot involves a mutiny north of the Wall, which is blown into a major story for everyone’s favorite underdog, Jon Snow. The mutiny happens in the book but is quickly brushed aside and dealt with off page. In the show, Jon and a loyal band of Sworn Brothers go deal with the mutiny directly. While it can come across as filler for book readers, it actually does a huge service to Jon’s character growth. It serves to give Jon agency and emphasize his emergence as a leader. This provides a more organic transition into his taking command at the battle at the Wall that climaxes the season.

While the Wall battle is probably season 4's most thrilling moment, it’s closed by a key confrontation between Tyrion and his father Tywin. This is a huge moment in book three that, unfortunately, loses some narrative impact due to removing key backstory. Back in season 1/book 1, Tyrion explains to his new lover Shae how he once had a wife, Tysha, who was revealed to be a whore paid by his father to humiliate him. When Jaimie breaks Tyrion out of jail, he reveals in the book that Tysha was in fact a commoner, and Tywin had her beaten, raped and exiled rather than see his son happy. This infuriates Tyrion, and not only informs his confrontation with Tywin but his final scene with Jaimie, where he acts cold and venomous towards the only family member who showed him love.

While Tyrion talks of Tysha briefly in season 1, she is never mentioned again. Shae quickly becomes the love of Tyrion’s life, and so in season 4 when Tyrion confronts Tywin, it is over Shae’s betrayal. While the scene still works in the moment and has enough emotional weight, it has been re-contextualized by removing this backstory. Why would the showrunners do this, considering it was a huge moment in the books?

Well, there are several reasons. One: Shae had become a huge part of the show, so making the confrontation about her felt natural. Two: since we lose the POV narrative of the books, we lose Tyrion’s internal monologue where he often reminisces of Tysha, so we never really see how important she was to him. Three: revealing this in the show would ruin Tyrion’s relationship with Jaimie, which was built up throughout the season and does wonders for Jaimie’s redemptive arc. As such, a moment from the books that was pretty much left intact is heavily altered due to the context. The outcome is the same, but the journey getting there is different.

This is something to keep in mind, as the showrunners use this philosophy in seasons 5 and 6. It is here where the biggest changes from Martin’s books take place. Unlike widening characters’ perspectives, removing backstory or showing key book events in a new light, the next two seasons make huge changes to Martin’s story. And yet, despite this, they still have similar outcomes, in some ways even streamlining unnecessary subplots.

Many of these changes wouldn’t happen without the few subtle changes the first four seasons made from the books. Now that Tyrion’s reasons for confronting Tywin are different, his arc in season 5 is changed dramatically. How so? The next post will reveal all. I promise I won’t pull a George R.R. Martin and bait you for five plus years, either. My next post will arrive soon, as surely as the Stark words signal the coming of winter.