Throne for a Loss
OK, I've been pretty satisfied with the inevitable changes and differences of interpretation in moving from the books to TV on Game of Thrones, but tonight's episode officially carried a particular trend once too far.
Tonight's "Really? Really???" moment was in the scene where Daenerys halts the riders and goes off wandering, and Viserys has a hissy fit and ends up with a whip around his neck. My gripe is that in the book, it was Daenerys who, having had enough, ordered that his horse be taken so he was stuck walking - and fully appreciated what that meant in a culture of warrior horsemen (even if Viserys didn't). The fact that Ser Jorah followed her lead rather than Viserys' - which was true in both - was a very significant development, but not the most significant.
This builds on top of a couple of similar story changes earlier: first, when Drogo gives her the horse at the wedding, there's a bit more business in the book in which she takes it for a quick ride, which she takes to faster than expected, and scores points without realizing it by saying, "tell Khal Drogo that he has given me the wind." I thought it was a cute line and was disappointed to see the sequence get compressed to "no word for 'thank you' in Dothraki," but was willing to write it off as part of the cost of keeping a TV show moving.
Second, when they eventually consummate the wedding, she doesn't just get bent over and think of EnglandHouse Targaryen - there's more foreplay with him saying "no" until she eventually says "yes."
As a result, we're losing several interesting aspects of the character from the book: the seed of a spirit that can find communion with the Dothraki people, even in her earliest and most tentative moments, and a personal agency that grows, where the TV character can still be seen as a frightened girl just trying to be as pleasing as possible to her new husband and his people.
(On the plus side, leaving the Continent for Westeros for the moment, I was very happy with the first Syrio scene.)
Tonight's "Really? Really???" moment was in the scene where Daenerys halts the riders and goes off wandering, and Viserys has a hissy fit and ends up with a whip around his neck. My gripe is that in the book, it was Daenerys who, having had enough, ordered that his horse be taken so he was stuck walking - and fully appreciated what that meant in a culture of warrior horsemen (even if Viserys didn't). The fact that Ser Jorah followed her lead rather than Viserys' - which was true in both - was a very significant development, but not the most significant.
This builds on top of a couple of similar story changes earlier: first, when Drogo gives her the horse at the wedding, there's a bit more business in the book in which she takes it for a quick ride, which she takes to faster than expected, and scores points without realizing it by saying, "tell Khal Drogo that he has given me the wind." I thought it was a cute line and was disappointed to see the sequence get compressed to "no word for 'thank you' in Dothraki," but was willing to write it off as part of the cost of keeping a TV show moving.
Second, when they eventually consummate the wedding, she doesn't just get bent over and think of EnglandHouse Targaryen - there's more foreplay with him saying "no" until she eventually says "yes."
As a result, we're losing several interesting aspects of the character from the book: the seed of a spirit that can find communion with the Dothraki people, even in her earliest and most tentative moments, and a personal agency that grows, where the TV character can still be seen as a frightened girl just trying to be as pleasing as possible to her new husband and his people.
(On the plus side, leaving the Continent for Westeros for the moment, I was very happy with the first Syrio scene.)