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

5. Tywin And Arya

A fairly simple change, this, yet an incredibly effective one. In the books, Arya goes to Harrenhal and serves as a cupbearer, but it's to the man who'd later be killing her brother and sending Jaime Lannister's regards, Roose Bolton.

In the show, Arya instead worked for the man right at the very top of the food chain, Tywin Lannister. It was, quite simply, a stroke of genius that did wonders for both characters and Season 2 as a whole.

Charles Dance and Maisie Williams made for a shockingly good pairing as they engaged in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse, her spying on him, he almost but never quite learning her true identity.

There was distrust on both sides, and a hatred at least on Arya's part, that made every moment they shared incredibly tense, and yet they were perfectly balanced by the surprisingly mutual admiration on display: Arya learned a lot from Tywin, and he showed more humanity too, and they remain one of the show's strongest character pairings to date.