turtle-paced:
Got this message from @mabbon:
“I don’t necessarily think the show should be forgiven for every failing that is also in the books, but in the case of the ‘smallfolk’ I’d argue that occasionally giving lip service to the smallfolk but otherwise putting highborns front and center fits right in with the books. Just look at the POV characters. All the major ones are highborns (the fact that someone has been elevated to the nobility before he appears is the closest to giving the peasantry an actual voice says something). The less important POVs are either also highborn, exist as cameras to develop highborn characters, or are otherwise high-ranking (Melisandre is in the same boat as Davos, with her humble origins downplayed due to her current status). Even Gendry, a major link to ordinary Westerosi, is in fact the son of a king. The fact that the fandom (myself included) often generalises the peasants as ‘smallfolk’ without referencing individuals illustrates the point. Without inventing a bunch of entirely new characters and plotlines, D&D would have been hopelessly constrained by the books even if they cared about the non-nobles.”
Response time!
Sure, GRRM’s not perfect, I think we can all agree on that one. Goodness knows I keep going “so where are those merchants, hey?” every time we’re not in Braavos or Tyrion chapters in ACoK. (Much like I ask “so where are those ladies-in-waiting again?” but that’s a different complaint.) We know they exist because occasionally they sell Littlefinger stuff, but otherwise…
With the PoV issue, GRRM’s choices about the kind of story he’s telling often does prevent him from using non-nobles as PoVs. He’s centred a lot of the story around high politics in a stratified society, heavy on the genre deconstruction - to write that story from the perspective of whoever’s emptying the chamberpots would make for a very different tale, and not one I think GRRM wanted to tell. He’s also written a lot of his story around certain family relationships; that almost always means writing about sets of people who share social class. Those are legitimate dramatic choices. I can respect those.
I think the difference I see, compared to what you’ve described, is largely in the nature of “lip service.” When I say lip service, I mean the tendency to mention something because it sounds nice, and drop it when it becomes too much of an inconvenience, or insufficiently “cool.”
So. Even though he’s largely prevented himself from writing key decisions from the perspective of Daisy the maid or Wat who works in the stables, or battles from the perspective of Pate from Nowhere’s Field, GRRM’s storytelling is aware that there are maids and stableworkers and farmers et cetera et cetera all through the background of his story, that they outnumber the protagonists, and even if very few individuals of that social class have the chance to influence the course of history in the same way the privileged PoV characters do, that there is still power in the collective. The individuals we see are a mixture of good and bad, and helpful or hindering to the protagonists, because even if they have collective power the group is still made up of individuals.
Collective power and influence is most clearly seen with the people of King’s Landing - a minor blip aside when they’re all for executing Ned Stark in a holy place, the anti-Lannister sentiment of the city’s population has been developing since book one (Sansa’s final chapter in AGoT, for instance, mentions a tavern singer arrested and mutilated for performing an anti-Lannister song), and the increasing religiosity of the city’s population isn’t far behind that. It’s mentioned several times here and there that what the people of King’s Landing hold specifically against the Lannisters is the Sack, showing that there’s a collective memory there. The development of a populist movement over the course of the story, with its good points (wanting the war to stop) and its bad points (the overt misogyny), from a few people singing unflattering songs about Cersei in the pub to a movement that can have her marched naked through the streets, is to me the very opposite of lip service to the existence and concerns of the Crownlands/Riverlands lower classes.
There are similar glimpses in the North - indications that the Northern peasantry is further mythologising the Starks, and from what we see in ADWD the rank and file Northmen are as hostile to the Boltons and Freys as their highborn counterparts. Where GRRM does fall down in his incidental depictions of agency for those without economic privilege is over in Dany’s storyline, where the Qartheen lower class doesn’t seem to exist much, and the cities of Slaver’s Bay have a remarkably revolt-free history from what little we’ve heard. Even now I’m somewhat optimistic as far as seeing Essosi lower classes exert more influence over events; ADWD makes clear that the slaves of Volantis are increasingly motivated to fight their enslavers. We’ll see what happens in TWoW, and to what extent it is all about Dany.
I also disagree that Davos’ lower class origins are downplayed. It is a constant in Davos chapters, how insecure he is in his various promotions because of his low birth, and the discrimination he faces from other nobles. When other (highborn) characters mention Davos, there will almost certainly be a reference to onions or smuggling. Same with Jon Snow, whose privileged upbringing made him aware of the real restrictions of his bastardy. The tension there is never long out of sight, either. Class issues are a major part of both their characters. Again, this isn’t lip service, but a driver of drama.
Then there are the storylines that revolve around interacting with non-nobles: Arya’s and Brienne’s. Again, the choice of PoV constrains GRRM somewhat here - the demands of their storylines mean that he can’t have them sit in town and really get to know Lum the baker and Jenny the sharecropper, and has to introduce people for a few lines and then move on instead. (Contrast with Jon Snow, again, who stays in more or less the same place with smallfolk characters over multiple books, and as a result we know far more about Pyp and Grenn and Dolorous Edd than we do about most of the people Arya or Brienne have met.) Arya’s ACoK and ASoS storylines in particular are devoted to chronicling the ground-level effects of decisions made in Tyrion’s chapters, Catelyn’s chapters, Davos’ chapters. The existence of this storyline alone tells us that GRRM feels the effects of the high-level decisions are worth depicting. As for Brienne’s storyline, with its discussion of what it means to be a true knight - what that storyline tells us is that the life of someone Brienne knows mostly as War Orphan #57 is just as important as the life of Sansa Stark, and just as worthy of her protection.
This is where comparison to the show comes in. GRRM isn’t perfect, but he’s tried to ameliorate the effect of having 95% highborn PoV characters in a variety of ways. The show cut Brienne’s storyline, and seems to think that the point of Arya’s storyline is her increasing ability to kill people. It’s not a matter of inventing new storylines, it’s a matter of focusing the ones they’ve kept - they did a better job of this in earlier seasons, when there was obvious space for smallfolk in Arya’s travels and Tyrion’s stint as Hand. The more recent seasons, in particular, have a nasty habit of treating smallfolk as plot points to be put on or taken off the shelf at need, rather than as capable of collective political action, if not individual character development. That’s not just the deaths of Grenn and Pyp so there would be “shock deaths” at the end of season four, where in the books they’re alive and well and showing their hurt feelings at Jon Snow’s political decisions. It’s a smallfolk woman showing up to say “the North remembers,” followed by nobody remembering anything, and being informed that Ramsay’s men don’t want to fight for him followed by Ramsay’s men never showing the slightest hint of disloyalty. It’s the bizarre non-reaction to Cersei blowing up the Sept of Baelor. That would be a plot hole even without books to compare it to.
To me, this goes beyond condensing for adaptation, and into ignoring the points GRRM was trying to make with whatever degree of success.