Board Thread:TV Show Discussion/@comment-5014364-20150610235433

What the heck was going on with changing Jeyne Westerling to Talisa Maegyr?

The most I ever heard was that GRRM Chicago Worldcon audio in which he explained that he basically demanded that if they wanted to change Jeyne so much they should have the token dignity of giving her a separate name and backstory...or something?

Did they make her from Volantis before or after he intervened like that? Was she going to be "Jeyne Westerling from Volantis"? Or was she just such a drastically changed Jeyne that he told them "make her from Volantis"?

The writing for her was godawful -- I mean as professional critics have said, utterly stereotypical Fantasy stuff GRRM doesn't actually write like.

'''Does anyone honestly have a favorite Talisa moment or line? Or nowadays to people most remember her for "wow she got stabbed in her pregnant belly and died?" -- meaning that we only remember her as "Robb's girlfriend" and her capacity to breed, but not as a character in her own right? This is called Stuffed in the Fridge writing.'''

The running theory that many pointed out, I mean MANY major critics, is that the writers wanted her to be a Lannister spy to seduce Robb out of his badly needed alliance to the Freys.

Basically, in the novels Jeyne's mother was actually in on the Red Wedding - though only after the marriage, and Jeyne herself NOR her brothers were in on it. So was this condensed?

The theory is that they were going to make her a spy....then chickened out, and thought it made a great love story. Problem is it didn't:

If the "Lannister honeypot theory" was correct, she had so many moments which were supposed to be hints she was a spy that now, because she isn't, come off awkwardly as her being an idiot.

Examples:

There's a point where she's writing a letter, and he asks what she's writing in the middle of his camp, and she mock-sarcastically says "I'm a Lannister spy sending reports on your movements."

or how could anyone be stupid enough to say "I don't know where Winterfell is on a map of Westeros?"...AFTER MARRYING Robb months before?

The idea is that they later backtracked and decided NOT to make her a spy...

...as critics pointed out, however, the very fact that *until the episode she died* many people thought her ENTIRE PERSONALITY was a sham kind of tells just how unpopular and ingenuine her characterization was to many people.

Thoughts on this? 