How Jon Snow and Daenerys would look if HBO followed the books

Game of Thrones made some changes when adapting A Song of Ice and Fire. How would Jon Snow and Daenerys look if it stayed a bit closer to the books?

HBO famously adapted Game of Thrones from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, a sprawling fantasy series that’s still going on. And while the show stuck pretty close to the text, especially in the early going, changes were made.

For one thing, a lot of the characters were aged up. At the start of the novels, Jon Snow is only 14 years old, and Daenerys Targaryen is even younger at 13. Martin wrote his books with the medieval period in mind, when people were considered to be full-grown adults earlier in life. It’s an interesting idea, but I think it would have been pretty weird to see, essentially, children playing these roles considering what Jon and Dany get up to over the course of the series.

Still, some fans wonder what might have been. One mocked up what Jon and Dany may have looked like on the show had it stuck closer to their descriptions from the books, and came up with this:

"[NO SPOILERS] Book accurate Jon and Daenerys art from gameofthrones"

Jon is described as having a long face and shoulder-length hair in the novel, while Daenerys — like a lot of Targaryens — has purple eyes. Honestly, they still look a little old to be 14 and 13 to me, but then again, they live in Westeros and Essos; they’ve already seen too much.

Of course, on Game of Thrones, Jon and Dany were played by Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke respectively, both of whom did splendid work. But when the series gets remade in 20 years or whatever, maybe they can go a different way with it.

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