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Entertainment July 24, 2017
The Sand Snakes' fate comes with little pomp and circumstance.
The much-hated Sand Snakes in the show “Game of Thrones” met their demise this Sunday.
I was sad to see Nymeria (Jessica Henwick) and Obara (Keisha Castle-Hughes) go. But to be honest, the Sand Snakes never met their potential. They complained a lot, killed without any real semblance of strategy and died without as much as a word.
For all of the their demonstration of prowess in battle, Euron made quick work of them. The fans had been asking for them to be improved or dispatched with pretty much since they showed up. And now that they’re gone, it seems like all the more proof that the “GoT” Showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, are trying to please the fans.
The “Game of Thrones” Sand Snakes had nothing on the Sand Snakes of “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Here are some of the differences that made the Sand Snakes MUCH cooler in the books.
In the books, there are eight Sand Snakes, all the daughters of Oberyn Martell. Which may be one of the reasons that Nymeria, Obara and Tyene Sand were so confusing. The show tried to push eight personalities into three.
Most of them are the younger daughters of Ellaria, leaving four older ones as the main players. Some use weapons like the whip and others use their sharp wit to get over, which leads me to number two on the list.
Dorne is one of two places in the Seven Kingdoms without patrilineal succession. (The Mormonts of Bear Island don’t have it because there are no men to inherit the Lordship. The nature of women warriors there is a separate issue.) In Dorne, however, it is a culture of acceptance for both male and female rulers.
Which is why in the books instead of killing Myrcella, they conspire to crown her Queen of Westeros and put her in direct competition with Tommen. The Sand Snakes on the show going against everything their father stood for was another sticking point for fans of the books.
Prince Doran Martell of Dorne is a complete waste of time in the show. He’s a complete bumbling fool with an incompetent security team. The “Game of Thrones” Sand Snakes get over on him at every turn.
In the books, granted, he’s still not as entertaining as a Lannister or a Stark, but he’s also not as much of an idiot. Prince Doran has the Sand Snakes under control at the moment. But he’s likely to fall apart when he learns his son Quentyn was roasted by one of Dany’s dragons. You win some, you lose some.
Maybe if “Game of Thrones” had taken just a few more pages out of George R.R. Martin’s book, the audiences wouldn’t have said “meh” when the Sand Snakes died. They could’ve been so much better. Now Dorne is just a land without a ruler.
