Watchers on the Wall

HBO’s Game of Thrones brandishes a consistent and high degree of fidelity to the nearly 5,000-page-long source material of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, but there still, of course, are differences. While most of these gaps from the page to the screen are small and detail-oriented, it is nonetheless the case that the most subtle discrepancies often hold the biggest insight into the adaptation process, into the demands of filmmaking, and into the rigors of the literary narrative.

This, then, is the anatomy of a key scene of Thrones – not because of its dramatic importance or visual effects whizbangery, but because of the telling nature of its realization.

Episode: “The Wars to Come” (501)
Scene: Tyrion’s new destiny

A Dance with Dragons, the fifth entry in the Song of Ice and Fire series, sees Tyrion’s opening chapter answer what was, at the time, an 11-year-long question: just what had happened to everyone’s favorite, witty, patricidal dwarf? (Unlike in the HBO series, which showed Tyrion Lannister boarding a ship right after he killed his erstwhile lover and lordly father, the previous novel contained no such precious information. The ensuing wait was long and terrible, made all the more pregnant with the seemingly infinite possibilities of where Lord Varys was sending Martin’s – and the audience’s – favorite character.)

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