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Changes from the books you would like to see (Spoilers for books 1-5)


Humble Asskicker

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She is not acknowledged as dead. That is why it was so easy for them to produce another fake Arya in the books.

Talisa is not an heir. I have no idea how Lady Hornwood could be lady in her own rights, but Talisa does not have that. She is only Robb's wife.

Lady Hornwood was the wife of Lord Hornwood, just as Talisa is the wife of the King in the North...

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She is not acknowledged as dead. That is why it was so easy for them to produce another fake Arya in the books.

I mean the Lannisters can just say she's dead. She's widely assumed to be, and anyway, she's missing, so it's pretty moot anyway. Producing real Talisa is presumably easier than producing a fake Arya and hoping everyone buys it.

I honestly think that the only reason GRRM went for fake!Arya instead of Jeyne Westerling in this role* is to add to the running theme of identity/false identity in those novels (Arya abandoning her identity, Sansa being Alayne, Theon being Reek, Jeyne being Arya - "You have to know your name" etc). In a televisual medium, the condensing of characters and plotlines may be more important than contributing to a theme.

*(Assuming she is not pregnant with Robb's baby - I personally believe she is not)

Talisa is not an heir. I have no idea how Lady Hornwood could be lady in her own rights, but Talisa does not have that. She is only Robb's wife.

Donella Manderly married Halys Hornwood, and became Lady Hornwood. Halys (along with his only trueborn child) at the Battle of the Green Fork. His sister is unavailable (her castle claimed by Ironmen). Therefore the lands pass to his widow, Lady Donella Hornwood. Ramsay then marries her, and claims her lands.

The Winterfell situation is almost exactly the same. It's clear that Talisa, as Robb's widow, can inherit Winterfell.

I do not know about that. Seems to much of a plot to go for a character that is not even in the books and not really important after the Freys betray Robb.

Doesn't really need too much plot. She's tied into Theon, she only needs to be shown being tortured alongside him a couple of times.

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In terms of the Fake Arya storyline, Ros is 15 years older than Sansa and looks absolutely nothing like her, that is not a plausible substitution at all. Sansa's been walking around in plain sight of way too many people in Westeros to have a fake be believable.The audience wouldn't buy it for one second, it would stop the story dead in its tracks. So that's a non-starter. In fact, any other character "posing" as one of the Stark girls is not a good idea because it's very tough to have your audience suspend their disbelief when they can see with their own eyes how little one character looks like the one supposed to be posing as. You can do it in the books because you have control over what details you can describe to the readers but on screen, it's a different story.

It's much better for the story for the girl shipped to Ramsay not to be posing as anyone but rather another character who they can use to legitimize Ramsay's claim. The best option is Talisa, both for being the link to Robb who was the former Lord of Winterfell and to find something for the character to do. As mentioned, it also makes Theon's redemption arc more dramatic as Talisa is the widow of his "brother" who he betrayed which is far better connection than he had with Jeyne Poole (a random girl at Winterfell he never interacted with).

The whole "she doesn't have a claim" chatter is some serious book nerd nonsense. If the show establishes that all of the Stark children are either dead or missing/presumed dead, then the claim is up for grabs and the widow of the Lord of Winterfell marrying Ramsay is as good a choice as any. The main point that would be made during this establishing of the Lannister/Bolton plan is that they are really not trying really hard to disguise the changing of power in the North from the Starks to the Boltons. They are basically doing the minimum action necessary for them to give the Boltons Winterfell. There is no one to challenge what they say and if they want to state that marrying Talisa to Ramsay gives them Winterfell, who is out there to stop them? The people in charge get to make the rules.

Maybe for some bookreaders who have been intimately schooled in how all of the Lords of the different castles are determined and who has a claim to what, this will not be "proper" but trust me, the audience of the show, if told that because the Stark kids aren't available then Robb's widow is the next best thing, will not bat an eye. It sounds completely plausible and logical and as I said, if the ruling family of Westeros says it's legit, who's to argue?

Even in the books, I don't think the whole Fake Arya ruse is supposed to be some brilliant long term con. At some point, someone in Westeros was going to realize that Jeyne Poole is not Arya. It doesn't matter because it's a quickie arrangement in order for Ramsay to have a ceremony anointing him as Lord of Winterfell and after that was done, who cares how they made it happen? It's a means to an end, not something that you're supposed to think too hard about as far as heirs go.

In terms of why Talisa would agree to this, obviously it would be presented as her having no choice in the matter. After being taken prisoner at the RW, she would be at the Twins or at King's Landing under guard until Tywin decided that this was the best use of her a season or so later. It's pretty much the exact same thing Tywin did with Jeyne Poole. I don't think she was in any way agreeable to the arrangement to being Ramsay's wife either but she did it anyways because she had no choice. I think it's also infinitely interesting to examine what the psychological damage would be on her from having to witness the RW and possibly put a fair amount of the blame on herself for it. It would completely alter her character and leave her ripe for the psychological manipulation Ramsay would have in store for her.

I think having Theon come to Winterfell with Ramsay is easily explainable since Ramsay clearly likes to have his "Reek" pet with him at all times.

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I'd like to see more Balon Greyjoy, please. Patrick Mallahide did a great job in Season Two, and it would be awesome if they could expand on his character a bit more, have him interact with someone else, just like they did with Tywin/Arya.

He'll probably have a scene or two with Yara this Season before he gets ganked.

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I'm not sure why people think that the Shae-Tyrion storyline conclusion is going to be any different at the end of Season 4.

The arc is slightly different, mainly that it appears that Shae and Tyrion are really in love (esp Shae) but that just means the betrayal is going to be bigger and hurt even more.

Shae will fill betrayed by Tyrion being married to Sansa and Tyrion will feel the same when she testifies against him at his hearing and when he finds her in bed with Tywin leading to her death, although it might be presented slightly differently emotionally speaking. I'm hoping Tyrion walks in on them in the act or sees them in the act at least.

I'd like to hear the reasons why people think this will be changed.

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I don't think it has necessarily to be changed. But they can change it if they want. The whole arc doesn't seem to be necessary for the larger picture, it doesn't start off new arcs or changes the situation in any major way. So if they want to keep the actress or keep a women around Tyrion for any reason, they could do so. I'm not even sure it'd be a good solution, but it's a possibility.

I like Penny too, but it's difficult to introduce a new character at such a point. With Jorah and possibly Victarion around, I don't think we'd see enough Tyrion/Penny scenes for it to be worth it. I don't see Shae being around after S4. Whether Tyrion kills her as in the books, or she's killed or sent away by Tywin, she won't be with Tyrion. He's a suicidal mess throughout ADWD, and I don't see him being in that same state if Shae was around.

Agreed that Shae being around would change the dynamics, but that wouldn't be a first for the show, eh? ;) (Oh, and I would have Shae dying nevertheless, maybe Tyrion taking Shae with him was not planned and Illyrio disposes of her somehow or she dies in that ghost/zombie/lepers colony on the Rhoyne, where Connington gets infected) I'm not advocating this change though, but I see how they can do it ;)

As for Penny, I guess it largely depends on how long they want to draw out AFFC/ADWD or how fast they want to move past the books and maybe even past what GRRM will have had written so far then.

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In terms of the Fake Arya storyline, Ros is 15 years older than Sansa and looks absolutely nothing like her, that is not a plausible substitution at all. Sansa's been walking around in plain sight of way too many people in Westeros to have a fake be believable.The audience wouldn't buy it for one second, it would stop the story dead in its tracks. So that's a non-starter. In fact, any other character "posing" as one of the Stark girls is not a good idea because it's very tough to have your audience suspend their disbelief when they can see with their own eyes how little one character looks like the one supposed to be posing as. You can do it in the books because you have control over what details you can describe to the readers but on screen, it's a different story.

The audience doesn't have to buy it, they know it's not Sansa, and they can believe noone will recognise her in the north because we never saw any of the northern lords visiting Winterfell before she left for KL. I don't see Ros as as old as you make her, a,d the likeness can be worked on. I like that theory because it explains the whole Ros plotline.

Something for Talisa to do : die. Tragically.

Connection for Theon : Ros works much better than Jeyne, even more than Talisa he never even met

The whole "she doesn't have a claim" chatter is some serious book nerd nonsense. If the show establishes that all of the Stark children are either dead or missing/presumed dead, then the claim is up for grabs and the widow of the Lord of Winterfell marrying Ramsay is as good a choice as any. The main point that would be made during this establishing of the Lannister/Bolton plan is that they are really not trying really hard to disguise the changing of power in the North from the Starks to the Boltons. They are basically doing the minimum action necessary for them to give the Boltons Winterfell. There is no one to challenge what they say and if they want to state that marrying Talisa to Ramsay gives them Winterfell, who is out there to stop them? The people in charge get to make the rules.

Maybe for some bookreaders who have been intimately schooled in how all of the Lords of the different castles are determined and who has a claim to what, this will not be "proper" but trust me, the audience of the show, if told that because the Stark kids aren't available then Robb's widow is the next best thing, will not bat an eye. It sounds completely plausible and logical and as I said, if the ruling family of Westeros says it's legit, who's to argue?

I agree that the actual inheritance laws in Westeros are not an issue for viewers, However, the purpose of the fake Arya was not so much to give a legal base on Ramsay's claim, rather an affective one : the northerners can feel some loyalty towards a child of Ned Stark's, and from there to the Boltons. Talisa, not only coming from another land, but from a Lannister-allied family, and being at the source of Robb's fall, cannot hope to trigger the same loyalty, even as a widow (of a few weeks marriage). I think we have been shown she was not welcome by Robb's lords (or have we?) so why would they accept she has any sort of claim?

Even some viewers will feel she's in part to blame.

Even in the books, I don't think the whole Fake Arya ruse is supposed to be some brilliant long term con. At some point, someone in Westeros was going to realize that Jeyne Poole is not Arya.
Who ? How ?

I

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I agree that the actual inheritance laws in Westeros are not an issue for viewers, However, the purpose of the fake Arya was not so much to give a legal base on Ramsay's claim, rather an affective one : the northerners can feel some loyalty towards a child of Ned Stark's, and from there to the Boltons. Talisa, not only coming from another land, but from a Lannister-allied family, and being at the source of Robb's fall, cannot hope to trigger the same loyalty, even as a widow (of a few weeks marriage). I think we have been shown she was not welcome by Robb's lords (or have we?) so why would they accept she has any sort of claim?

Likewise they will feel some loyalty towards King in the North Rob's widow.

I don't think on tv that they can put across the same idea/concept that non of the Northern lords know that Arya is a fake, I don't think it works in the medium.

I also hope they'll cut out whatever Ramsey's wife (whichever version) is forced to do with dogs.

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The audience doesn't have to buy it, they know it's not Sansa, and they can believe noone will recognise her in the north because we never saw any of the northern lords visiting Winterfell before she left for KL. I don't see Ros as as old as you make her, a,d the likeness can be worked on. I like that theory because it explains the whole Ros plotline.

The audience would have to at least buy that the people of Westeros would believe Ros to be a 16 year old girl which is not even remotely plausible. Esme Bianco is 30 and Sophie Turner is 16. It's just not happening. For the audience to believe the storyline, they need to believe that this character could pass for the other character and you would completely mess with their suspension of disbelief. This doesn't even go into the issues involved with using a fake Sansa as opposed to a fake Arya since Sansa at that point would have been a conspirator in the death of the King. There's no way she would be allowed to return to Winterfell and rule there without consequence under those circumstances.

And unlike Jeyne Poole, Ros would be a pretty familiar face in the North (and King's Landing) seeing as she has probably banged a good number of Northmen during her time at the brothel there. Pretty implausible that no one running into "Sansa" in Winterfell would recognize her as the whore they banged on a regular basis a year ago.

I agree that the actual inheritance laws in Westeros are not an issue for viewers, However, the purpose of the fake Arya was not so much to give a legal base on Ramsay's claim, rather an affective one : the northerners can feel some loyalty towards a child of Ned Stark's, and from there to the Boltons. Talisa, not only coming from another land, but from a Lannister-allied family, and being at the source of Robb's fall, cannot hope to trigger the same loyalty, even as a widow (of a few weeks marriage). I think we have been shown she was not welcome by Robb's lords (or have we?) so why would they accept she has any sort of claim?

Even some viewers will feel she's in part to blame.

If sending "fake Arya" to marry Ramsay was not to simply carry out a farce so that the Bolton's and Lannisters could do the minimum amount to justify their usurping of Winterfell from the Starks (something I think is made fairly clear in the books), then the plan to somehow instill loyalty in the Northmen not with the Bolton's was pretty shitty and not well thought out. From the moment everyone gathers for the sham of a ceremony, all of the Manderly's and Umbers who aren't loyal to the Boltons are actively plotting to bring down the Boltons and Freys. They didn't feel any loyalty to "Arya" being married to Ramsay because they knew the whole thing was a sham. It actually galvanized them more against the Boltons because it's clear the girl is doing it against her will. So no, I don't think that was the point of Tywin and Roose's plan. They are the one's with the power and that's how they'll keep everyone in line, through force and numbers (which is why the Frey's are sent to reinforce Bolton's entourage).

Substituting Talisa into that role accomplishes the exact same thing, an unwilling participant who will be married off to Ramsay as a farce so that he can make some kind of claim on Winterfell, whether anyone feels it is a legit claim or not. Since the whole thing is being orchestrated by the men in power, no one can challenge how legit this marriage actually is and that's why they're rushing it through and not really caring about the hearts and minds of anyone else involved.

Who ? How ?

Mors Umber came within a hair of figuring it out within five minutes of talking to her. It would only be a matter of time before someone else made the connection. And hopefully no one from King's Landing (where Arya was cavorting around in full view of everyone in the court) visited or ran into her because they'd know right away that she wasn't Arya either. It's not meant to be this long deception with her posing as Arya longterm. It's a means to an end to establish Ramsay at Winterfell. After that, he'll be the Lord of WInterfell and no one will have the will or power to say any different.

I really don't think we're going to see Talisa die at the RW (that would be extreme overkill and a serious deviation from the books) and she's also not going to be revealed as a traitor (one of the more stupid theories out there right now). She'll be a witness, she'll be taken prisoner and she'll be affected severely by what she saw and the guilt that she will undoubtedly have regarding her role in setting it all in motion. It's a great arc to play with and having her then be subjected to Ramsay's psychological warfare in what her new fragile mental state would be will elicit a ton of sympathy for the character, much more than a never before introduced Jeyne Poole would have. It's also great for Theon's arc because it ties saving her with redeeming himself for his betrayal of Robb, which was Theon's major mistep that caused all the misery that he finds himself dealing with.

If you're curious to know where Ros fits in, that's harder to say but I think a good theory is that she will be taking up the Dontos role this season and will be Littlefinger's emissary with Sansa in King's Landing. We've already seen photos of scenes shot for S3 where Littlefinger is leading Ros down to a rendez-vous with Sansa which would indicate that she's going to be brought into Sansa's escape plot. I don't think that LF will be sticking around King's Landing that long in S3 and it makes sense for him to leave now (as he did in the books). The fact that Lysa Tully and Robin Arryn are in S3 means that there's a good chance that he'll be in the Eyrie with them for some time as well. In the S2 finale, it was set up that Varys would be using Ros to spy on her boss LF so there's that whole dynamic too. If they have balls, I think the perfect ending to the Ros plotline would be in S4 after the PW, for her to help Sansa escape as Dontos did, meet up with LF and for LF to kill her immediately (like Dontos) to tie up loose ends and possibly as payback for finding out she had been feeding Varys info on him. I don't think she'll have anything to do with Bolton or going up North but we'll see I guess.

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I don't see how the hell Ros could fake either of the Stark girls. It's waaayyy too big of an age difference. Sansa and Arya look and act like little kids...Ros is a 30 year old whore. She may look young for her age, but not THAT young. And remember, it seems like Ros is one of the only whores in Westeros when watching the show, so you'd think she's well-known and stuff. I agree that the audience would not buy into that at all...it will never happen.

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I don't mind a few changes when it makes sense for production and time saving. However, it seems that most of the ideas in the main post assume that these characters will have no plot relevance later on.

I don't think you should be writing characters out of the story unless you are absolutely certain they are expendable. Just as an example, UnCat or Sandor (assuming he is alive) may have a role to play in GRRM's endgame. If Stoneheart ends up being the reason for the annihilation of the Freys, that would be a payoff for the Red Wedding that would be cheapened if she was replaced by some random old woman with no real connection to the Starks.

Since Undead have long since been established as existing in the form of Wights North of the Wall, I disagree about them being too comical.

I'm with you on the Pig Riding thing anyway, that needs to go.

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I'd like to see what the Lord of Bones would do with Arya Stark, or Sansa. That would be interesting.

Welcome to the forums.

I do not think any meeting with them will happen, this is just a very random proposition you make (at least for me).

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I think y'all have sufficiently convinced me of substituting FakeArya for Talisa. I can't stand Talisa, but I see how it would work TV plot-wise. FakeArya will be too hard to pull off and confusing to explain. Hopefully Talisa won't continue to be super annoying after the RW. I suspect she's going to be there and possibly that's when she'll be taken prisoner and the Ramsay plot takes over.

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