User blog comment:The Dragon Demands/Worst changes made by the TV series/@comment-1600847-20141216192523/@comment-5014364-20141216201809

We don't know about Griff, brother, we don't know. I mean, they've at least mentioned the Golden Company in Season 4. We all feel the pain.

The TV-Martells are in flux at the moment. We don't know any more than Westeros.org, though their most recent video is worth watching as a news roundup on Season 5 casting news (it was made in late August but no new info has come out since then).

Basically, the TV series may or may not be cutting Arianne Martell entirely...while including three Sand Snakes. Why not have two Sand Snakes, AND Arianne? It doesn't make sense.

Quentyn is probably cut but I assumed that.

They couldn't cut Trystane on account of his betrothal to Myrcella being a major plot point. Problem is that Season 2 directly called him the "youngest son"...now he's the only child?

This extended to the point that in their video, Westeros.org wondered if the press release at SDCC was simply misprinted: it describes Trystane as "heir of Doran" and Tyene Sand as "daughter of Oberyn and Ellaria"...which makes no god-damned sense. The entire point of Tyene is that she's the only Sand Snake who looks "white" because her mother was a septa from outside of Dorne. UNLIKE the other Sand Snakes who are Ellaria's children (the youngest four). So why would you keep Tyene white (as the actress is), only to then make her inexplicably the daughter of two dark-featured Dornish characters?!

Frankly I was expecting some condensation with the Sand Snakes, that doesn't upset me as much as Arianne. The TV series DID establish in dialogue that Oberyn has eight daughters, and that one of them is named Elia Sand (one of the younger four).

The younger four Sand Snakes aren't really major characters (yet...I imagine things get setup years in advance, like with Rickon, Tommen, and Myrcella in book one).

Of the older four, Sarella isn't appearing...yet. Then again she only shows up later anyway, as she's "not in Dorne" at the time.

They kept the names for the other three but, as Westeros.org put it...basically condensed them all into one character, then multiplied it three times. We think. Tyene doesn't seem like a subtle poisoner now, but uses knives (hopefully poisoned).

Obara is apparently now the daughter of a Dornish commoner and/or whore, not an Oldtown whore. Fine, small change in the grand scheme of things. Already explained the problems with Tyene. Nymeria is interesting: in the books her mother was "from the East" in that she was "from Volantis". The TV series put a twist on this by saying her mother was "from the East" in the sense that her mother was from Yi Ti -- which I actually think is a lot more interesting, keeps the general spirit, and gives a chance to put a YiTish character in for once. So they cast an ethnically Chinese actress to play Nymeria. I'm fine with this.

But the Arianne thing....yikes.

Meanwhile, the Greyjoy subplot seems to have been almost totally cut.

Will it be "off screen" but Yara at least mentioning what is going on back in the Iron Islands? Don't know.

I didn't mind how much they shorted the ironborn before because Seasons 3 and 4 were based on book 3, in which the ironborn really didn't do much and were on the back burner. But now....in book 4 the ironborn come back to the forefront. Don't know.