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

6. Catelyn's Relationship With Jon

Catelyn Stark is a strong character in both show and books, written as someone who'll do whatever it takes to protect her family, but the TV series does more to make her a likeable, sympathetic figure.

Not only do they have her ask Ned to stay in Winterfell, rather than push him to go to King's Landing as she does in the books, but even better they change her loathing of Jon. Removing the line about her wishing he had fell from the tower makes her less vengeful, and the best comes in her conversation with Talisa:

"When my husband brought that baby home from the war, I couldn't bear to look at him. Didn't want to see those brown stranger's eyes staring at me. So I prayed to the gods "Take him away, make him die." He got the pox and I knew I was the worst woman who ever lived. A murderer. I'd condemned this poor, innocent child to a horrible death all because I was jealous of his mother, a woman he didn't even know!

"So I prayed to all Seven Gods, "Let the boy live. Let him live and I'll love him. I'll be a mother to him. I'll beg my husband to give him a true name, to call him Stark and be done with it, to make him one of us... And he lived. And I couldn't keep my promise. And everything that's happened since then, all this horror that's come to my family, it's all because I couldn't love a motherless child."

It's arguable whether Talisa was a change wholly for the good - it changes Robb's character negatively, making him less like Ned - but this helps swallow her inclusion over Jeyne Westerling, giving Cat a moment of grief and sorrow that endears her to the audience and makes her eventual death all the more painful. Whether or not she should've returned is another matter.