G.R.R. Martin on which character changed most in TV Series

Last night, George R.R. Martin appeared on a BBC One documentary to discuss the 500th anniversary of Machiavelli’s notorious book The Prince, which he said had a profound influence on numerous characters in his A Song of Ice & Fire series. For those unfamiliar with the book it is famous for lines such as: ‘It is better to be feared than loved’ and has served as a manual for tyrants from Napoleon to Stalin.

For me, the most interesting part of the show was Martin’s opinion on which character differed the most from how he originally imagined and wrote about them in the books compared to HBO’s reinterpretation of them. That character was the Machiavellian styled Petyr Baelish (Littlefinger) and when you consider the differences they are actually extremely palpable. Here’s what Martin had to say:

“Book Littlefinger and television show Littlefinger are very different characters. They’re probably the character that’s most different from the book to the television show. There was a a line in a recent episode of the show where, he’s not even present, but two people are talking about him and someone says ‘Well, no one trusts Littlefinger’ and ‘Littlefinger has no friends.’ And that’s true of television show Littlefinger, but it’s certainly not true of book Littlefinger. Book Littlefinger, in the book, everybody trusts him. Everybody trusts him because he seems powerless, and he’s very friendly, and he’s very helpful. He helps Ned Stark when he comes to town, he helps Tyrion, you know, he helps the Lannisters. He’s always ready to help, to raise money. He helps Robert, Robert depends on him to finance all of his banquets and tournaments and his other follies, because Littelfinger can always raise money. So, he’s everybody’s friend. But of course there’s the Machiavellian thing. He’s, you know, everybody trusts him, everybody depends on him. He’s not a threat. He’s just this helpful, funny guy, who you can call upon to do whatever you want, and to raise money, and he ingratiaties himself with people and rises higher and higher as a result.”

As well as talking about Littlefinger, Martin spoke about how he used much of real English and Scottish history to create the dark, atmospheric world of Westeros and sprinkled in the kind of plotting and intrigue that one would have found in Machiavelli’s era during the Italian renaissance.

Thank you to the BBC for giving us permission to share with you the following clip from the show (Note: if you are in the USA it is likely you will be unable to watch it – I’ll try and get a transcription of anything that follows the above):