‘Game Of Thrones’ And ‘The Winds Of Winter’ Will Diverge Significantly, Says George RR Martin

While I will not believe George RR Martin’s Winds of Winter will be finished until I am physically holding it in my hands, the author has returned to his famous blog to talk about the book, and its relationship to Game of Thrones itself, which had to fill in a lot of blanks, given that he did not come close to completing it in time.

Martin talks about his writing process and how he evolves his stories over time, and what’s been evolving is that he’s moving away from what was shot for the show:

“What I have noticed more and more of late, however, is my gardening is taking me further and further away from the television series. Yes, some of the things you saw on HBO in GAME OF THRONES you will also see in THE WINDS OF WINTER (though maybe not in quite the same ways)… but much of the rest will be quite different.”

He goes on to talk about the fact that he has many different character perspectives that were not heavily featured in the show, including characters that don’t even exist there at all. Among those are significant ones like Lady Stoneheart, the resurrected Catelyn Stark, who never showed up on the HBO series, despite fans waiting years for her to appear:

“The novels are much bigger and much much more complex than the series. Certain things that happened on HBO will not happen in the books. And vice versa. I have viewpoint characters in the books never seen on the show: Victarion Greyjoy, Arianne Martell, Areo Hotah, Jon Connington, Aeron Damphair They will all have chapters, and the things they do and say will impact the story and the major characters who were on the show. I have legions of secondary characters, not POVs but nonetheless important to the plot, who also figure in the story: Lady Stoneheart, Young Griff, the Tattered Prince, Penny, Brown Ben Plumm, the Shavepate, Marwyn the Mage, Darkstar, Jeyne Westerling. Some characters you saw in the show are quite different than the versions in the novels. Yarra Greyjoy is not Asha Greyjoy, and HBO’s Euron Greyjoy is way, way, way, way different from mine. Quaithe still has a part to play. So does Rickon Stark. And poor Jeyne Poole. And… well, the list is long. (And all this is part of why WINDS is taking so long. This is hard, guys).”

Finally, he concludes with the statement that just because a character survived until the end of Game of Thrones, does not mean they will survive A Song of Ice and Fire. And just because a character died in the post-books episodes of the show, that doesn’t mean A Song of Ice and Fire will kill them.

That may be enough to give fans hope that some big characters may be saved, specifically Daenerys after her “heel turn” and characters like Jaime and Cersei, who met their fate together on the show. Of course, it opens the door for the idea that surviving show characters like Tyrion, Jon, Sansa or Arya could die in the books.

In short, Martin is saying that the shows are not predictive of the books and we should not expect things to play out the same way. Given that it seems like he hasn’t even figured all this out yet, and he is constantly changing his mind about things, we may end up in a very different place indeed. In the year 2045, when this book is finally finished, perhaps.

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