8 Missing Characters From A Song Of Ice And Fire That Should Have Appeared In Game Of Thrones

As alluded to earlier, the less said about the Sand Snakes and Game of Thrones' Dornish storyline in general, the better.

Following Pedro Pascal's critically acclaimed performance as Dornish prince Oberyn Martell in the fourth season, it was genuinely quite upsetting to witness what a disappointment his daughters, the Sand Snakes, were onscreen. Gone were the formidable, intriguing women from Martin's books, to be replaced with a dull, contrived storyline and absolutely woeful one liners.

All of this gives fans of the books the strong urge to scream into a pillow over the omission of Arianne Martell.

A fierce and beautiful woman, Arianne loathes her weak willed father Prince Doran. While she lacks the pugilistic skills of Oberyn's daughters, Arianne is a ruthless, cunning schemer cut from the same cloth as Cersei. She is willing to seduce and manipulate in order to achieve her lofty ambitions as a result of perceived slights from Doran and demonstrates this by exploiting the affections of the aforementioned Arys Oakheart; while he is in love with her, she sees him as little more than a plaything.

Arianne's character would have lent depth and interest to a narrative sorely lacking in it. The Sand Snakes likely would have been far more tolerable had they been balanced out with a show stealing, Machiavellian counterpart.

Ultimately, the reason for the Dornish disappointment lies with the discouraging manner in which these phenomenal characters from the book were written and portrayed.