Stannis and the adaptation
Why did they do it? This question strikes deep into the differences in the adaptation and the original series of novels it's based upon.
The series isn't finished.
But you can very much look at the first three books(on which the first four seasons were based) as Act One of the books. A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords constitute act one of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Storm of Swords ends in a series of climaxes, as the characters are vaulted onto new levels . Climax after climax.
- The Red wedding
- Daenerys' conquering of Slaver's Bay and fall out with Jorah Mormont; the reveal of the missing Barristan the Bold
- Joffrey's death
- Mormont's Great ranging ending in treachery and murder
- Tyrion's arrest, trials, betrayal by Shae
- The Red Viper vs the Mountain
- Jon Snow's valiant defense of the Wall and subsequent election to the post of Lord Commander
- Stannis swooping down to rescue the Night's Watch from the Wildling army in the nick of time
- Tyrion's murder of Shae and Tywin
- the revelation of Littlefinger as the architect of Westeros' woes and the murder of Lysa Arryn
- Arya exacting her vengeance on the Tickler and abandon of the Hound and WEsteros
It's an incredible ending to an opening act in what has been one of the greatest fantasy series of all time.
ACT TWO:
And while the translation of all this to book and screen may not have fully satisfied all readers, it helped to make Game of Thrones one of the most-watched series on the Planet.
It also gave them an extremely tall order to fill.
Because the next two books, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, which together constitute 'Act 2' of the story were a lot harder to adapt. And they have to keep those ratings going!
I don't mean this as a criticism. This is their JOB. It's what they get paid to do. They don't have a choice in the matter. Their entire careers in Hollywood could be jeopardized if they are seen as failing in this duty, or at least not making every effort to fulfill it.
So, to the adaptation....
First of all, they have a vastly expanded cast of characters in Act Two to deal with.
New storylines. Lots of new characters. New convoluted plots in places only glanced upon in the first few books. At the same time both books run more-or-less concurrently, meaning that if they were to take the same approach to the adaptation of these two books as they had to the previous 3, they would end up with a lot of half-stories. With a lot of characters the audience, already confused by the sheer size of the cast, just didn't care about.
So they cut. And cut. And cut.
Out went Brienne's storyline. It's a beautifully written series of chapters in A Feast for Crows, full of world building and ruminations on the brutal toll war takes as well as a ironic comment on Brienne's knightly, ultimately fruitless quest to locate and protect Sansa Stark in a struggle to keep the vow she made to her mother. But it doesn't deliever the big blast that the last two seasons would.
Out went the Ironborn storyline. Just too many new characters when they were adding more in Dorne.
The Dorne characters came in but the storyline was completely changed from the complex political game of the book. Arianne and Quentyn Martell, point of view characters in the books, were completely written out of the show.
Out went the subplot of Aegon and the Golden Company. That would make seasons 6 7 too complicated; and might seem even more implausible to audiences than it did to readers; and the backstory of the Blackfyre rebellion necessary to plug that implausibility is just not going to be covered in a few sexposition scenes featuring Littlefinger and some acrobatic whores.
Jaime's journey towards honor and self-realization as he ties up the loose ends of the war in the Riverlands? Cut. INstead they put him in the Dorne storyline, which seemed mostly written to provide comic relief in a grim season. At least I hope that's what they were going for.
Sansa's development in the guise of her alter-ego Alayne Stone? Gone. Not exciting enough. Too feminine. No climax.
Most of Cersei's vile actions? also cut. They like Cersei. They see her as a soap opera bitch, not the novelistic embodiment of the evil queen/mother figure that runs rampant over our deepest, darkest fairy tales.
Ser Davos? Manderly? Lady Dustin? The Great Northern Conspiracy? Sorry. No time for that.
Jon's machinations and meddling in the politics of the North? Gotta go.Makes Jon look too bad. The readers may like grey characters with complex motivations. The audience is fine with some nods towards moral greyness but still needs heroes and villains.
So what we were left was a very simplified Dance with Dragons with Jon's, Dany's, Cersei's, Theon's and Arya's storyline retaining the vague shape that they had in the books; and Dorne/Jaime/Brienne/Sansa
And Stannis.
Stannis and the adaptation from book to screen
But what were they to do with Stannis? He had come to Wall at the end of season 5, vanquishing the Wildling army once and for all with his gang of hired sell-swords.
They'd had a problem with Stannis from the start and the problem was growing.
At the beginning of A Clash of Kings, Stannis doesn't make a good impression.
He is cold, has a mean-spirited sense of humor, is rude and unlikeable. Seemingly without any elements of compassion and love to leaven his hard, stern, cruel personality.A man who not only doesn't laugh but doesn't even understand or approve of other people's laughter, going so far as to ban outright laughter or loud speaking in his Great Hall.
As the book continues, and GRRM outlines Stannis' vision of kingship, the discerning readers can detect some glimmers of humanity in his philosophy of kingship; reflection reveals that his notions of justice and meritocratic instincts might be what a war-torn Westeros needs; but it's buried underneath the veneer of the character, the bitter sarcasm, the seething resentment towards his brothers and the lords who support them, his trucking with the powers of darkness, his murder of his own brother.
The show runners didn't get the complexity of the character. Or if they did, they lacked the writing skills to express it on screen in the short time they are given. His characterization since season 2 has been frustratingly wavering; in some episodes capturing the dark complexity and humanity of the book character nearly perfectly; in others reducing him to a two-bit villain without any real morality or ideas of his own, a weak-willed religious fanatic absolutely in thrall to the red witch who calls the shots. This is in stark contrast to the book character who seems sceptical of Melisandre's religion and foretellings and instead only seeks to utilize her power as another weapon to attain the Iron Throne.
The thing is, the reader discovers Stannis slowly. The reader(or at least a sizable contingent of them--like Daenerys and Tyrion, this is a very complex and controversial character) starts to like him.
It's in A Dance for Dragons that the reader's perception changes most markedly and we, through Jon Snow's respected eyes, see Stannis in a new, more favorable light.
- He punishes his own soldiers for committing war crimes, uniquely among all the kings and warriors of the SEven Kingdoms.
- He offers Jon Snow legitimization and the North; and even voices his respect for Jon when he turns Stannis down.
- He accepts Jon Snow's advice and counsel, altering his dictatorial approach to the more diplomatic approach needed to gain the support of the Northern Mountain clans;
- he embarks on a crusade to liberate the North from the scourge of the Ironborn and the unpopular uneasy reign of the Boltons.
- He refuses to sacrifice anybody but criminals to R'hllor as the awareness of the importance of his royal image and public relations slowly dawns on him.
He goes from being a dark, resentful, powerless 'king' into one of the most indomitable, iconic, kick-ass figures of the books. Stannis the m'f'ing Mannis!And his story-line ends on a cliff-hanger with his army bogged down in the snow, preparing for battle with another army made up of different double-crossing and triple crossing northern factions and the displaced, hated Freys.
Man. How were the show-runners going to depict that?
"It's time for negative population growth."
The adaptation has budget problems.
Even this simplified adaptationhas so. many. characters.So many actors to pay.
And many of the actors had just renogotiated their contract. Kit Harrington, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, Nikolai Coster-Waldau and Emilia Clarke are all making $300 000 per episode now. And they are all in 8 to ten episodes a year. Other actors on a second level also got big rises in pay. And the story is demanding more and more special effects as the magic of the tale grows in significance and the dragons grow bigger and make more of a direct impact on the story. They need to kill off characters that are not killed off in the books if they want to retain any prayer of finishing this series in 7 or 8 seasons on a high note.
So they decided to get rid of the story and offered instead the simplified version.
Stannis feats in the North are all cut. He goes South to Winterfell, still dependant on the mistaken visions of his witch-controller.
He brings his family.
His feats in the North, the slow slog towards his come-back are written out.
The competent and dangerous general, the one Tywin called the most dangerous threat to the Lannister's hegemony, is changed to a incompetent, weak-willed fool whose only motivation is his lust for power and kingship.
Sending Shireen and Selyse with them allows them to get rid of all three characters at once.
Shireen is going to sacrificed in the book series. At some point. Possibly by Stannis. At some point. Possibly by Stannis. But Shireen's not with Stannis in the books.
This seemingly small difference is actually HUGE and significant difference. A huge departure. Stannis can't sacrifice Shireen at this point in the books because Shireen is at the wall.
If Stannis is going to sacrifice Shireen in the books, it logically follows that Stannnis MUST SURVIVE THE BATTLE IN THE SNOW. Because she's not there with him in the books.
What I think is going to happen is that STannis in the books(as yet unpublished) is going to survive the Battle in the Snows. And he's going to be instrumental in achieving the downfall of the Bolton's.
But the show runners can't do that. That will bring the audience round to Stannis. I mean, they've just had Ramsay Bolton rape Sansa! He's absolutely hated by the audience.
Whoever gets rid of Ramsay Bolton is going to be seen as a hero of the first magnitude. If it's Stannis, the audience is going to start believing this Warrior of Light nonsense.
And they can't confuse the audience like that. So they decided to do something different instead. And, actually, they made it make sense. And managed to end the wavering uncertain characterization of Stannis with precision and a sort of logic.
The indomitable, unstoppable, iron-willed puritanical King from the books is replaced with the pathetic, dependent king of the show. A king who's in thrall to his ambition and his witch. A king who fervently believes the mutterings of an ancient prophecy. A king unable to get his own support and forced to hire support, which deserts him when times get tough. A king with a soft spot for his daughter; but not so much that it outweighs his ambition and his conviction that, as the One Chosen by God, all sacrifices are necessary.
So he burns Shireen.
And so Selyse commits suicide.
Melisandre realizes her mistake and abandons him.
And then his final, horseless mad charge towards the much bigger Bolton army, the resigned determination displayed as he draws his sword, has the waft of suicide about it.
Because if he's not the Warrior of Light; and if he's brutally killed his only daughter for naught...what is there left to live for? The only peace he'll ever find is in death. He dies never having been vanquished; never having gone down; never having bent the knee.
So in this way the show-runners achieved several goals:
- they got rid of three characters/actors, saving money and time;
- they got rid of a character that they were had struggled unsuccessfully for years to translate from page to screen;
- they told an interesting Agamemnon story with a dark ironic 21st century twist;
- they avoided confusing the audience;
- and, finally, are now free to take the heroic actions that probably would have been Stannis' if his path had followed that of the books and give them to a character that the audience already enthusiastically embraces as a hero: Jon Snow..
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