ShreyaYara/Asha Greyjoy
Yara Greyjoy is the more competent one of the Greyjoy siblings, the other one is Theon. She is headstrong, bravely built woman who is even her father’s choice as the heir to the throne of Iron islands. With her command over a complete army and her frank liking of women, she defies traditional gender roles.
Asha Greyjoy’s name is quite close to that of the Wildling Osha, so to avoid potential confusion she was renamed on the show as Yara who is played by Gemma Whelan, but that is not the only thing about her that was changed. In the books, she is defined as “lean and longlegged, with black hair cut short, wind-chafed skin, strong sure hands, a dirk at her belt. Her nose was too big and too sharp for her thin face, but her smile made up for it.” In the show, however, it is not her smile but her badassery that impresses everyone.
Ramsay Bolton
So Joffery seems like an infant if we consider the levels of Ramsay Bolton’s sadism and sheer lack of emotions. His treatment of Theon on the show has to be the part of the most disgusting and pitiable sequences. This Bastard of Bolton played amazingly by Iwan Rheon is unanimously one of the most hated GOT characters. But you believe when I tell you he is even eviler in the books and not quite as good looking as Rheon? In the books, he is described as “an ugly man, big-boned and slope-shouldered, with a fleshiness to him that suggested that in later life he would run to fat. His skin was pink and blotchy, his nose broad, his mouth small, his hair long and dark and dry. His lips were wide and meaty, but the thing men noticed first about him were his eyes” because they were “colorless, like two chips of dirty ice.”
Theon Greyjoy
We did not really like Theon, in the beginning, did we? But Ramsay did what he did, made Theon go through hell as his prisoner but on the show, Theon managed to escape with just a trauma but no other visible signs. You’ll be terrified if you get to know what Ramsay did with ‘Reek’ in the books was much worse and it all showed in his appearance which the show avoids. In the books, “his hair’s gone white and he is three stone thinner”, he lost quite a few of his teeth and “he had lost two fingers of his left hand and the pinky of his right, but only the little toe off his right foot against three from his left.” When Theon left Ramsay’s imprisonment, he seemed to have aged by 40 years.
Brandon Stark
Brandon Stark is the second youngest sibling of the Stark family and given his powerful role in the entire show one would have expected the showmakers to pay attentive details to his character’s appearance. In the show, Isaac Hempstead-Wright (who plays Bran) sports brown eyes and hair, whereas in the books he is described as having the same auburn tresses and liquid blue eye color like his mother’s side house Tully, bore. One of the sentences in the book affirms this, “Catelyn had always thought Robb looked like her; like Bran and Rickon and Sansa, he had the Tully coloring, the auburn hair, the blue eyes.” This comes to show that appearance of none of the Starks was 100% correct as only Sansa bears liking to Catelyn. Given the budget of the show, one would think they would have thought of buying a pair of blue contact lenses and a bottle of dye… apparently not.
Sandor ‘The Hound’ Clegane
The Hound first appeared as the even Joffrey’s bodyguard but he became a favorite of many when he was seen hanging around in Westeros with Arya Stark. The HBO make up team did a good job trying to mark the scars on his face but they went horribly wrong. According to the books, ” The left side of his face was a ruin. His ear had been burned away; there was nothing but a hole. His eye was still good, but all around it was a twisted mass of scar, slick black flesh hard as leather, pocked with craters and fissured by deep cracks that gleamed red and wet when he moved. Down by his jaw, you could see a hint of bone where the flesh had been seared away.” In the show, Rory McCann is clearly not as scary as this description, plus, the wrong side of his face is burnt. He is also not supposed to be so heavily built, that is why his face is thinned down in the picture.
Tywin Lannister
The father of the Lannisters and probably one of the wealthiest man in the Seven Kingdoms have been portrayed faithfully to his cruelty and imposing figure by Charles Dance but even so, his appearance is off. “The Lord of Casterly Rock was as lean as a man twenty years younger, even handsome in his austere way. Stiff blond whiskers covered his cheeks, framing a stern face, a bald head, a hard mouth.”- the required changes can be seen in the picture. It is not a lot but then what exactly was the problem in portraying him just like the books?