Game Of Thrones: 8 Changes To The Books That Were Completely Justified

8. Robert And Cersei's Marriage And Child

King Robert Baratheon is one of the few characters better on the screen than the page, thanks in no small part to Mark Addy's perfect performance. However, the writing also played its role here, with the writers deepening his love for Lyanna and adding a few more shades to his relationship with Cersei.

In both books and show their marriage is one of resentment - for her not being Lyanna, for him not being the King she expected - but the show goes to greater lengths to showcase that Cersei, at least, did once love Robert and hoped to make their marriage work. The scene the pair share, where they're away from the crowds and it just comes down to the two of them in a room (as so many of Thrones' best scenes do) is a low-key standout from Season 1, as Cersei tells Robert of her expectations and dreams and how they soured, and there's a real sense of sadness among the bitterness.

This is expanded upon further by the fact that Cersei had a trueborn son with Robert, who died shortly after she gave birth to him. Cersei's redeeming feature is the love she has for her children, and that's no different when it's Robert's child rather than Jaime's.

"I lost my first boy; a little black-haired beauty... The boy looked just like [Robert]. Such a little thing; a bird without feathers. They came to take his body away, and Robert held me. I screamed and I battled, but he held me. That little bundle; they took him away and I never saw him again. "

We learn that Cersei did fall pregnant to Robert in the books too, but there she didn't want to have his child and bid Jaime to find a woman to cleanse her. Here we get another layer to their marriage, one where there's actual compassion; it makes their relationship stronger, the destruction of it harsher, her eventual betrayal even more earned.