10 ways Game of Thrones improved on A Song of Ice and Fire

We often hear about how Game of Thrones didn’t live up to the source material…but the show also made plenty of improvements. Here are 10 of our favorites!

“It wasn’t like that in the books.”

If that’s a complaint you’re used to hearing — or even making yourself — you’re not alone. Let’s be real, if we received a golden dragon any time those words were uttered, we’d all have our own Iron Thrones by now. It’s pretty much inevitable that any screen adaptation of a beloved novel series will be compared to the written original, and Game of Thrones was no exception, with many pointing out how it differed from, and often didn’t live up to, the Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R.R. Martin.

Yet for all the things fans took issue with, there were also many others that Game of Thrones got right, and even some instances where it actually improves on the books. Since it’s Game of Thrones anniversary month, it’s the perfect time to look back and celebrate some of the times the show ascended beyond its brilliant source material, and delivered something even more powerful.

We’re going to be sticking to the first five seasons of Game of Thrones here, since after that the show no longer had complete source material on which to base itself. Those last two novels have yet to be released.

So without further adieu, here are 10 ways that Game of Thrones improved on the Song of Ice and Fire books.

1. Secondary Character Development

It’s no secret that A Song of Ice and Fire is a series with an enormous cast of characters; George R.R. Martin wrote the books to be more or less “unfilmable,” after all. So when it came time for the show to bring that huge roster to the screen, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they had to change things up a bit, cutting some characters and reducing the role of others.

What was slightly surprising, in the best way, was how much Game of Thrones fleshed out some of those secondary characters. We’re defining secondary characters here as those who didn’t get chapters from their point of view in the books, or didn’t get chapters until much later when they became more central to the plot.

A great example of this is the above scene with Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister, where they discuss their failed marriage. It’s one of my favorite character moments in the entire series…and of course, since neither Robert or Cersei had chapters from their point of view in A Game of Thrones, we never got to see it.

Especially in its early days, the series was riddled with these “two hander” scenes, where characters shared a few quiet pages of dialogue. Varys and Littlefinger’s verbal sparring in the throne room, Olenna and Margaery Tyrell debating the fallout of the Purple Wedding, Melisandre and Selyse discussing the finer points of pyre-based worship…you could literally pick just about any episode of Game of Thrones and find a moment where the show allowed its secondary characters more time to shine. And as a whole, Game of Thrones was better for it.