Aedan Juvet
Senior Staff Writer
Game of Thrones is known for its brutality and characters’ lack of morals, but this week’s episode managed to shock many as it deviated from the original books by George RR Martin.
In the episode titled “Breaker of Chains,” Cersei Lannister stands over son Joffrey’s dead body (post purple wedding obviously) consumed by grief and rage, when her brother and the father of Joffrey Jaime Lannister appears to rape his lover/sister, which is quite different from the novelization version where she only slightly hesitates in the beginning. Writer George Martin released a statement on the scene through his website which reads:
I think the ‘butterfly effect’ that I have spoken of so often was at work here. In the novels, Jaime is not present at Joffrey’s death, and indeed, Cersei has been fearful that he is dead himself, that she has lost both the son and the father/ lover/ brother. And then suddenly Jaime is there before her. Maimed and changed, but Jaime nonetheless. Though the time and place is wildly inappropriate and Cersei is fearful of discovery, she is as hungry for him as he is for her.
Martin continued: The whole dynamic is different in the show, where Jaime has been back for weeks at the least, maybe longer, and he and Cersei have been in each other’s company on numerous occasions, often quarreling. The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan & David played the sept out differently. But that’s just my surmise; we never discussed this scene, to the best of my recollection. Also, I was writing the scene from Jaime’s POV, so the reader is inside his head, hearing his thoughts. On the TV show, the camera is necessarily external. You don’t know what anyone is thinking or feeling, just what they are saying and doing.
Martin concluded with: If the show had retained some of Cersei’s dialogue from the books, it might have left a somewhat different impression — but that dialogue was very much shaped by the circumstances of the books, delivered by a woman who is seeing her lover again for the first time after a long while apart during which she feared he was dead. I am not sure it would have worked with the new timeline. That’s really all I can say on this issue. The scene was always intended to be disturbing… but I do regret if it has disturbed people for the wrong reasons.
What were your thoughts on the extremely dark scene?
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