When it comes to book-to-screen properties, the more popular the literary source material becomes, the tougher it'll be to satisfy readers' imaginations of how characters look in the screen adaptation. Readers of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series have no doubt noticed that HBO's Game of Thrones has taken some creative license when it comes to characters' appearances, so here's what your favorite Westerosians would look like if they more closely matched the author's imagination...
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00:00Casting can make or break a show, and that's particularly true when it's based on a popular
00:06book series.
00:07When it comes to the beloved Game of Thrones on HBO, many of the characters don't quite
00:12match what's written in George R. R. Martin's books.
00:15In fact, in a few circumstances, they don't match at all.
00:18Here's how the cast of Game of Thrones should really look.
00:22Yara Greyjoy
00:23The producers of Game of Thrones changed Asha Greyjoy's name to Yara on the show, maybe
00:29to avoid confusion with Osha the Wildling.
00:31But her name isn't all that's been changed.
00:33The novel says she's got,
00:35"...black hair cut short, and that her nose was too big and too sharp for her thin face,
00:40but her smile made up for it."
00:41Yara doesn't do much smiling on the show, of course.
00:45But then, with a brother like Theon, you wouldn't smile either.
00:48Speaking of...
00:49Theon Greyjoy
00:51After he was tortured as the prisoner of Ramsay Bolton, Theon Greyjoy emerged from his ordeal
00:56mostly unscathed.
00:58Well, except for his dangly bits.
00:59"...next time you think about naked girls, when you feel an itch."
01:06But in the books, Theon was apparently treated much more harshly, with him getting a gaunt,
01:10skeletal appearance as a result.
01:12The trauma of his captivity also turned his hair white, making him look practically like
01:16an old man.
01:17Of course, Theon was probably not so concerned about his hair by the time he escaped Ramsay.
01:24Ramsay Bolton
01:25On the show, Ramsay is a really ugly person.
01:28But mostly because of his heinous acts, like the aforementioned torture and wiener-cutting
01:33of Theon Greyjoy, or when he kills his own daddy.
01:39But in the books?
01:40Martin wrote him as a real uggo.
01:42He wrote,
01:43"...he remained an ugly man, big-boned and slope-shouldered, with a fleshiness to him
01:48that suggested that in later life he would run to fat.
01:51His skin was pink and blotchy, his nose broad, his mouth small, his hair long and dark and
01:56dry.
01:57His lips were wide and meaty, but the thing men noticed first about him were his eyes.
02:01Small, close-set, queerly pale.
02:04His eyes were all but colorless, like two chips of dirty ice."
02:07Old dirty ice eyes.
02:09That's what we'll call him.
02:10And does anyone else think that shaggy haircut kinda makes him look like Glenn Danzig?
02:15Brienne of Tarth
02:17Part of Brienne's tragedy is how much she wants to fall in love and be loved, but she
02:21knows she's painfully awkward and ugly by Westerosi standards.
02:25Of course, because this is television, the showrunners cast the beautiful and statuesque
02:29Gwendolyn Christie for the part, so she'll never actually be the homely butt-kicker described
02:33in the books.
02:34Meanwhile, throughout the course of the novels, Brienne has run-ins with enemies that leave
02:38her even more damaged, like when she got her teeth knocked out.
02:42Martin wrote that Brienne's hair was
02:43"...a squirrel's nest of dirty straw," and that her eyes were very large and very blue.
02:48Meanwhile, her features were broad and coarse, her teeth prominent and crooked, her mouth
02:52too wide, her lips so plump they seemed swollen.
02:55A thousand freckles speckled her cheeks and brow, and her nose had been broken more than
03:00once.
03:01Sander the Hound Clegane
03:03HBO's makeup artists did a great job covering the mass of scars and twisted flesh that cover
03:08one side of Sander Clegane's face.
03:11It's pretty much perfect, except for one little thing.
03:14They got the wrong side of his face.
03:17The book says that the left side of his face was a ruin.
03:19His ear had been burned away, there was nothing but a hole.
03:22Down by his jaw, you could see a hint of bone where the flesh had been seared away.
03:27Aside from the ear and the bony jaw situation, the Hound looks pretty incredible, but it
03:31makes you wonder what made them flip sides like that.
03:34Maybe actor Rory McCann just doesn't like that side of his face?
03:38Yarr.
03:39Dario Naharis
03:40It's not too hard to figure out why the show's producers mixed things up for their take on
03:44Dario Naharis.
03:46That's because Dario should've looked less like a badass warrior and more like a reject
03:50from The Hunger Games.
03:51The novels describe Dario as flamboyant, with a beard that was cut into three prongs and
03:56dyed blue, the same color as his eyes and the curly hair that fell to his collar.
04:00His pointed mustachios were painted gold
04:03No wonder Daenerys fell for the old gold mustachio charmer.
04:06He probably picked up his style tips from the legendary Mystery, the pickup artist.
04:10"...Meeting Mystery was almost like love at first sight, with his cowboy hat and his medallion
04:18necklace.
04:19I was like, this guy is smoking balls tonight."
04:24Tyrion Lannister
04:25Peter Dinklage is just about perfect as Tyrion Lannister, better known as the Imp.
04:30But there's just one problem, and at this point, you can probably guess what it is.
04:35That's right, he's just not ugly enough.
04:37Noticing a trend here?
04:39The books describe him as having a squashed-in face.
04:42Then, after the events of the Battle of the Blackwater, he lost about half of his nose.
04:46And finally, he has different colored eyes.
04:49So… yeah.
04:51Jorah Mormont
04:52Don't look so surprised, but Ser Jorah in the books is not quite as handsome as the
04:57showrunners would have us believe.
04:59Our favorite friend-zone knight is more attractive and also more lightly built on the Game of
05:03Thrones television series than his book-version counterpart.
05:06Once again, Martin plainly states that this character isn't going to win any beauty contests.
05:11Ser Jorah was not a handsome man.
05:14He had a neck and shoulders like a bull, and coarse black hair covered his arms and chest
05:18so thickly that there was none left for his head.
05:20Yeesh.
05:21Kinda looks like a medieval version of, like, Clint Howard.
05:25Or Bob Balaban.
05:27Or even Wallace Shawn.
05:28He'd make a good Jorah, right?
05:32Yeah, you're probably right.
05:34Never mind.