Re: The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread
I haven't read the books. I don't want specific examples, but have any important plot points differed from the show? Just wondering if Martin is messing with people who have read the books.
There are a few significant deviations, but all the major events have, thus far at least, been the same. A lot of characters have been cut out.
There are no spoilers below if you're caught up with the show. Unless Coldhands shows up, I guess, but even then I haven't really spoiled anything since he'd have already done all the stuff I talk about.
One primary example is, during the second book, Arya never served as a cupbearer for Tywin Lannister. In the books, she served Roose Bolton, but never told him or any of the other Stark bannermen at Harrenhal who she was because none of them were the families she trusted from her time in Winterfell. Given how everything turned out, looks like she made a pretty good call there.
There is also a character nicknamed Coldhands who has likely been cut from the show. He finds and saves Sam and Gilly during their trek back to the Wall and he is the one who shows Sam the secret gate so he can get through the Wall and meet Bran and his crew. The gate is called the Black Gate and can only be entered by a man who has said the vows of the Night's Watch. It's essentially a giant weirwood that opens when a brother of the Watch says the words of their oath. I was actually pretty disappointed that they cut that particular moment out because it sounded pretty badass in the books. Coldhands was a brother of the Watch who died and became a wight, but for reasons unknown (at least now) he seems to have free will, or at least serves the Three-Eyed Crow (who Bran is traveling to find right now) rather than the Others.
Another major change is that Theon just disappears in the books after the second book. He only reappears in the fifth book. They obviously removed that disappearance for contractual reasons, as it would be difficult to allow a key actor on your show to just walk away out of fear that he could find another job and be unavailable next time you need him. In the books, Theon is right now about where he was at the start of the fifth book. Bran is another character who is currently in fifth book territory, and Dany will be moving into her book five content later this season. The King's Landing stuff and Arya's plot line are all from book three, though.
Oh yeah, one other interesting change is that, in the books, Jaime and Brienne didn't make it back to King's Landing until after Joffrey died. I'm fairly certain that they changed this because it wasn't feasible to have Jaime and Brienne just disappear for like five or six episodes (or travel for an ungodly amount of time), but it had the unintended side effect of making Jaime look like pretty much the worst Kingsguard member of all time. He's currently batting 0-3 on keeping kings alive.
There are plenty of other changes too, but nothing really ground-shaking that messes up the overall plot. I anticipate that all the other major events from the third book will pretty much remain unchanged this season.
