5 Game of Thrones book characters that deserved to be a part of the HBO series

Game of Thrones was an adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s politically complex epic saga, A Song of Ice and Fire novels. However, the show has faced backlash for its oversimplified ending and abandoning the rules that made Game of Thrones so great. The streamlining involved cutting subplots, combining characters, and, in some instances, eliminating those who are integral to the thematic and narrative scaffolding of the novels.

Several characters excluded from the show weren’t small background roles, but they were crucial emotional and political chess pieces whose arcs were sacrificed for the sake of a rushed endgame.

Here are five Game of Thrones book characters who definitely should have made the jump to the HBO series.

Here are 5 Game of Thrones book characters that deserved to be a part of the HBO series

Quentyn Martell

Quentyn Martell is one of the saddest characters in A Song of Ice and Fire. As the eldest son of Prince Doran Martell, Quentyn is sent in secret on a dangerous mission across Essos to seek Daenerys Targaryen’s hand in marriage, in doing so fulfilling an ancient Targaryen-Martell alliance pact.

After Daenerys rebuffs him, Quentyn makes a reckless, deadly decision to try to break one of her dragons. But during this, he eventually suffers dire results. This character's presence impacts the possibility of Daenerys reaching Westeros directly in the books.

Jeyne Poole

The omission of Jeyne Poole in the series was hugely felt. In the novels, she is a childhood companion of Sansa Stark and later becomes one of the most traumatic victims of the War of the Five Kings. Dressed up as Arya Stark, Jeyne is married off to Ramsay Bolton and beaten almost to death, and this comes as a sequence that demonstrates the harshness of false identities and political lies in the GRRM classics.

Her storyline allows Sansa to continue playing politics elsewhere, while Jeyne represents the price paid by faceless girls who find themselves in the gears of power. Therefore, the show dumbed down and weakened the characters by swapping Jeyne with Sansa on the show to put shock value before nuanced character depictions.

Edric Storm

Edric Storm is the bastard son of Robert Baratheon and is important in the books’ examination of legitimacy and sacrifice. Edric, unlike Gendry, is of highborn birth on his mother's side and raised at Storm's End. Therefore, by merging Edric with Gendry, the series streamlined Stannis’s storyline and downplayed the moral implications of blood magic in Westeros.

Coldhands

Coldhands is an undead creature who is not a wight or White Walker that travels with Bran Stark and the Three-Eyed Raven. His identity is a secret, and George R. R. Martin has revealed that he is not Benjen Stark, as it was in the show.

By combining Coldhands and Benjen, the show took away a layer of mythic mystery from the story. Coldhands implies there are ancient, morally ambiguous powers in the world and especially within the magic of the North.

Lady Stoneheart

The most notorious cut remains of Lady Stoneheart, whose character embodied what vengeance does to a person. She is not the woman she once was, but grows into a ruthless, silent specter by the end. Stoneheart is Martin’s way of saying that resurrection in his world isn’t a miracle, but a distortion.

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These were 5 such characters who could have been part of the Game of Thrones TV show, and the book is filled with many of them. This is the beauty of Martin's stories that they never abandon what they are deemed best, their complexity.

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