Game of Thrones’ Big Break from the Books

Let’s just say, Sansa and Littlefinger never go near Winterfell in the books. In fact, there’s no connection whatsoever to her and the Ramsay Bolton plotline. The fact that the show has taken this turn – and appears to dragging Brienne and Pod into it too – so fundamentally departs from the books that I cannot see how the two (book and show) will ever be the same again.

George R.R. Martin’s fifth novel in the series, A Dance With Dragons, contains a big story line involving the Bolton’s at Winterfell and Reek (f/k/a Theon Greyjoy). To legitimize his rule over Winterfell, Ramsay marries a woman posing to be Arya Stark, but who’s actually one of Sansa’s old friends, Jayne Poole. Of course, Ramsay is a total psychopath, so he proceeds to sadistically torture poor Jayne no end. I can’t imagine Sansa willingly putting herself in that same situation, especially when the Bolton’s killed her brother and mother at the Red Wedding. And how Littlefinger plans to control psycho Ramsay is frankly beyond me.

I have speculated that the show’s writers might be positioning Sansa to take the place of Lady Stoneheart and claim revenge “Don Corleone-style” against the Boltons and the Freys. She and Littlefinger might be plotting to do that, but if they do it will fundamentally change the end of A Dance With Dragons and presumably what Martin has set up to be a major story line in The Winds Of Winter. I won’t spoil the ending of book 5, but let’s just say I expect to see a lot of Ramsay Bolton in book 6.

But that’s just my take. If you’ve read A Dance With Dragons, how fundamentally do you view this change on Game of Thrones?