How Game of Thrones Season 5 Has Readied Us For Dorne 

Over the last few weeks there has been an onslaught of

 news, starting around the time the second trailer dropped during the surprise HBO Now announcement a few weeks ago. When you’re drinking from a fire hose like this, it’s hard to catch everything as it whizzes by your head, let alone think too deeply about the things people are saying about the show.

deluge stuck with me. It’s something I haven’t been able to shake since I first read it: the news that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss nearly cut Dorne completely from Season 5.

This news was tucked away in the middle of a wide-ranging interview with Benioff and Weiss, plus producer Bryan Cogman, in which they talked about where all the characters we knew and loved stood on the cusp of Season 5. I pulled it out at the time because it seemed like a crazy idea: “How could you cut Dorne?”

was released back in 2005. It had been five long years since we’d last left the world of Westeros (Though not that long since my last reread. Years of exposure to the

fandom had trained me to always marathon the previous novels just before the new one arrived.) Much had happened in my life since

had come home with me in 2000, when I experienced the Red Wedding, Joffrey’s death, Tyrion’s revenge, and that second-to-last page reveal where Lysa desperately reminded Littlefinger that it was she who had written that letter to Catelyn all the way back in the first book AT HIS BEHEST. Since then, I’d gotten married, divorced, moved from major city to major city, and was deep into a career that had nothing to do with writing. In short, I was ready to find out what the next stage was for everyone—especially for Jon Snow, Dany, Tyrion, and Bran.

And then they weren’t there. There was no warning.

Instead, I was rudely shoved into a desert world, a hot and hazy place where the only relief was the Water Gardens, where naked children ran about in pools and an old man named Doran sat in a chair and did nothing. I found myself confusedly wandering about Sunspear, and put up with Doran’s oddly ditzy daughter Arienne’s plotting and planning, which anyone in their right mind could tell would end in disaster. Likewise, by the halfway point I began asking myself why was I reading about these Ironborn when it was clear this was a family that would never rule, and were basically dithering about while dragons grew and winter came. And while I certainly got a whole dose of Cersei—plus Jaime, Brienne, and Sam—the characters I had bought the book for were gone. My resentment of these two new worlds only grew when I reached the end of the book and realized that this was all there was.

If someone had told that Ani that Dorne was cut from the

TV show, she’d have said, “Thank the gods, old and new.” And she wasn’t alone. This may not be a view shared by the readers around here, but the book-reading friends I had back then were just as irritated as I was by these characters from another series who came in and squatted on chapters that should have belonged by rights to Tyrion, Dany, and the dragons. We referred to these interlopers as The Damn Dornishmen and The Idiot Ironborn, and we wanted them to leave. I’ll bet that Benioff and Weiss knew this. So it should come as no surprise that, when it came time for them to streamline Books 4 and 5, one of their first thoughts was to remove the Dornish and Ironborn plotlines altogether, and to stick to the characters we knew and loved.

Why and when they changed their mind concerning Dorne is something I would dearly love to learn in a future interview. (And why they didn’t on the Ironborn is another one.) Because although they included Oberyn in Season 4 (there was no way around that—he was too integral to the plot), there was a sense that they didn’t realize just what a popular character he would end up being. And although the show spotlighted the marquee fight between The Mountain and The Viper in episode 8, it didn’t actually take up that much of the episode’s time. This was not Joffrey’s wedding, where the full back half of the episode was dedicated to a single death. This was not the shocking deaths visited upon us in the ninth episodes of Seasons 1 and 3. This was more about Tyrion and his ill luck than it was about Oberyn.

Except, as it turned out, it wasn’t. Oberyn’s death didn’t just deliver Red Wedding-level shock and horror to the unspoiled fans; it eclipsed the big episode that followed at Castle Black, which was clearly supposed to be a “Blackwater”/Red Wedding-level event. By that time, it must have been obvious to the producers that there was no way to do Season 5 without Dorne.

My calendar of events from last year starts the clock on May 23rd, 2014. That was when it was first leaked that producers were going to cast Dornish characters. From there it was All Dorne, All The Time until the San Diego Comic Con casting announcement. All the filming news seemed to be about the new Spanish locations being added for Dorne. And though the Alcazar of Seville, a Spanish palace, was easier to lock down as a filming location than Fort Knox, the show not only made sure to release pictures that showed Jaime in Dornish attire, but video as well. For a show that works hard to keep spoilers under wraps, this amounted to a deliberate stoking of fans’ interest in the new storyline. (Did you know anything about Hardhome before the

special? No, you did not.) The extra exposure to Dorne filled us book-readers in on a huge deviation from the books, and it prepared the Unsullied for a new location and an entirely new set of characters. It was a deliberate choice to keep us excited and interested, and it worked.

If only book readers had been given the same warning back in 2005.

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Dorne’s story line has not started in the book does not mean it will not play a big role in book 6 & 7. There is a reason why Targaryens never able to conquer Dorne (implying Dorne may hold the key on taming the Dragons)

Besides, Dany needs more than her Dragons, Unsully and Second Sons when she faces the army of dead and White Walkers.

Ironborne and Dorneborne. They are distractions as you mention from the North Remembering and Dany’s dragon conquest.

Could they be trimmed or excised completely? From what we know so far yes. It seems in Winds that the Ironborn will bring a Dragon Horn to the story. Could a lot of stuff be cut and they just show up with the Horn? Yes.

As far as Dorne goes, I’ve no idea how important if at all they will end up being. It seems as if “not very important” is the level we’re headed to since Myrcella is not Jon or Dany she isn’t the future queen or something is she? So she’s destined to be completely set aside at some point one would think.

Isn’t Dorne the most likely place for Dany to land in Westeros? She will need to gather support from the south. That’s why the Dorne build up is necessary.

Dany could land anywhere 10 miles away from Kings landing and gather support.

plan to bring Viserys (and Dany, later) to Westeros to reclaim Iron Throne. And is good to remember that Prince Aegon is coming to Dorne (at least ath the point of the book tha i’m currently on) and that will probably be very important. I loved Doran, Arianne and Areo Hotah as characters. It’s great to see them on the show I hope that the Ironborn are cut out. Useless and extremely boring subplot. “We’re Iron, we like fighting but we lose ever damn war”. We don’t need them. But most of all i would like to see Lady Stoneheart cut out. Most stupid plot twist I’ve ever seen.

I think you missed a crucial reason as to why Dorne was included. It was because they decided to send Jamie there. Now it suddenly doesn’t feel like some totally isolated set of events happening with characters we don’t care about. Now it’s integrated into the main plot with characters we already know.

My guess as to why Ironborn aren’t in this season is for exactly that reason – they as yet have no way to integrate them other well-known characters into that storyline. I hope next season this will change, with Theon/Asha/Yara, and Euron/Victarion/Dany.

What I’m curious to see see is how Dorne will look like in the intro and how the camera will pan towards it.

I hope it’s executed in a way that’s easy for non-readers to know where Dorne exactly is on the map.

The TV show is fast becoming it’s own beast, set to diverge from the books in all but the story’s intended broad strokes.

Whether readers liked or disliked GRRM’s chapters for Dorne and the Iron Islands is trivial at this point, for much of that dislike it seems to me is due to the fact that late in the series introduction chapters to new plot lines have not yet gained full momentum. This is understandable since there are still two books coming where undoubtedly the reasons for their presence will come to light. D&D’s choices are difficult to comment on at this point due to the fact that the story is still unfolding and the implications of plot exclusions can only be theorized. If Sullied are to fully enjoy the coming seasons of GOT I believe we must accept the show on it’s own terms. In any case, soon we will all be Unsullied.

Dorne couldn’t be conquered due to the terrain, alternately arid and mountainous. A disaster for an oncoming army. All the dragons could do was torch castles from the sky, so the people just hid while others tried to bring the dragons down, which they did once successfully by killing Meraxes.

In a way, the North and Dorne are equal and opposite, the same reasons that the North can’t be conquered because of climate and terrain are the same reasons Dorne cant. The North maybe more so because of its size and they have the moat. There is a reason GRRM had the North surrender to Aegon in the story, so we do not know what is coming.

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