I have just gone through and read every one of there post. One difference which no one has mentioned in the Cerise and Robert had a child together before Joffery.
A boy who looked just like Robert and who died.
In the books it is mentioned several times how glad Cerise is that Jamie is the father of her children and that she never had to carry one of Robert’s.
I have my thoughts on who this child might be and it could turn into quite a significant difference if the story follows my train of thought.
In the books Cersei aborted Roberts babies, she tells Ned she drinks the abortion tea when she thought she was pregnant from Robert. I think they just upgraded her from abortions to child murder.
Probably also because the show is going to be filmed over several years while the story itself is more compressed. Kids grow and change a lot very fast, teenagers less so.
Having only finished reading the first book a month ago, I’m glad to see this thread come back. My thoughts:
Cat is much more unlikeable in the book and I barely could stand her in the show. In the TV series she is indifferent to Jon Snow, in the book she despises him. In the book she is so self-centered-- her favorite child is injured? The world must stop as she grieves-- fuck her other kids. The king wants her husband as his hand? Well, wouldn’t that be a nice feather in her bonnet, who cares what her husband wants.
Really, I can’t stand Cat. I hear Martin kills Starks left and right. I hope she’s the next one to go.
One change that really irked me. In the book Tryion fights in the diversionary battle and almost gets taken captive. There’s that funny and strange bit where he kills the horse with his helmet. In the TV series he gets knocked out in the beginning of the battle and wakes up when the battle is over.
While that battle change was done for budgetary concerns i always felt that “combat Tyrion” was a bit too unbelievable. Having him take on Knights an win just never felt right.
In the show, Cersei was dumber than Ned. She was relying entirely on Robert finding a boar and fucking up so badly that it kills him. That would have to happen 50% of the time for her to be an equal idiot to Ned.
In the book she had some backup plans to kill Robert, but I think in the book Ned comes across more of an idealist than an idiot. He knows that his actions might lead him t o die, he just doesn’t think his life is more important than his honor.
I thought it was pretty clear that Cat hated Jon in the show. They only really left out the “it should have been you” line, but that was over the top anyway.
The TV shows also moved a few events but that made sense. The children’s sword fight didn’t need to happen on the trip to King’s Landing. Someone mentioned it up thread but do you really wanna see an hour trudging up the mountain to get to the Eyrie?
Maybe I too am in the minority, but I was fully in agreement with you on all of the above years before the TV series came out ;). Sansa’s chapters were some of my favorites from a writing perspective, because I think Martin really captured naive, a little vain and not exceptionally bright particularly well.
