willowbark

I agree with all of your points - I think the show just wanted the battle to look as desparate as possible, and didn't think about the fact that there is an actual line of believability that gets crossed - they were way too overwhelmed, for way too long, for me to believe that they have enought soldiers left to go after Cersei.

If NK doesn't exist in books, then there would't be a single person to kill the NK. MAybe in books, AOTD is settled differently. They have already said that there are some changes from book/show, while major points are still the same, and they won't tell us what those changes are. Or, if Rhaegar hadn't stolen Lyanna, then Brandon would marry Catelyn Tully, and Arya would not be born. So maybe it's that.