George R.R. Martin Calms Fans Over ‘Game Of Thrones’ Controversy [Spoilers]
George R.R. Martin has made an official comment on last night’s controversial episode of Game of Thrones, and some fans probably won’t like what the bestselling author had to say.
To recap, last night’s episode of Game of Thrones, “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” featured a disturbing scene which takes place on Ramsay Bolton and Sansa Stark’s wedding night. In the horrifying scene, Theon Greyjoy is forced to watch as Ramsay brutally deflowers Sansa. The scene is shot so that the audience never actually sees what happens, only hears Ramsay’s groans of pleasure and Sansa’s tears and whimpers of pain.
Some fans of the show, now in it’s fifth season, have expressed outrage at Sansa’s treatment.
i know Ramsey was gonna rape Sansa.
— Aya (@chayavillanueva) May 18, 2015
@blaackstarr @tordavis @geekbrat I’m not mad about the rape just annoyed. Then again, the whole Sansa arc is made up this season. — Tony Polanco (@Romudeth) May 18, 2015
GOT broke my heart last night. To have Sansa raped- while a virgin by Ramsey and Reek forced to watch, wow disturbing. A new low for GOT.
— JMA (@JASMINJazzsmin) May 18, 2015
Sansa: *has an actual storyline in Book 4* Game of Thrones: *ignores it for a rape scene* I have no more motivation to watch the show. — Rick Capone (@rcrejino) May 18, 2015
Some fans sought an opinion from George R.R. Martin, the creator of A Song of Ice and Fire, but if those fans expected Martin to condemn the scene, they were disappointed.
“Let me reiterate what I have said before. How many children did Scarlett O’Hara have? Three, in the novel. One, in the movie. None, in real life: she was a fictional character, she never existed. The show is the show, the books are the books; two different tellings of the same story”
Martin also commented on the divergent path Games of Thrones has taken from A Song of Ice and Fire, a path that made it possible for Sansa Stark to be brutalized by Ramsay Bolton.
“There have been differences between the novels and the television show since the first episode of season one. And for just as long, I have been talking about the butterfly effect. Small changes lead to larger changes lead to huge changes. HBO is more than forty hours into the impossible and demanding task of adapting my lengthy (extremely) and complex (exceedingly) novels, with their layers of plots and subplots, their twists and contradictions and unreliable narrators, viewpoint shifts and ambiguities, and a cast of characters in the hundreds. “
In the comparable plot from the novels, a girl posing as Arya Stark, Jeyne Poole, marries Ramsay Bolton. As reported by Business Insider, the character in Martin’s novel received much harsher treatment, including being repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted to prepare her for her wedding night. In the novels, Ramsay’s treatment of his wife is more brutal and violent than has so far been seen on Game of Thrones. Jeyne Poole eventually escapes Winterfell and Ramsay Bolton, but when and how that may happen for Sansa Stark is difficult to predict.
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