George R.R. Martin Didn’t Write Game of Thrones’ Most Controversial Sexual Assault Scene — HBO Made It Worse

Game of Thrones built its legend on brutal shocks, but one of its darkest turns wasn’t George R.R. Martin’s doing. The Sansa Stark assault by Ramsay Bolton was a TV-only twist, never part of the author’s plan.

Game of Thrones has never been shy about going for the jugular, but one of its most controversial choices was never in George R.R. Martin's playbook. If you watched Sansa Stark's wedding night with Ramsay Bolton and thought, Wait, what?, you were not alone — including Martin himself.

What the show changed — and why it blew up

In Season 5, Episode 6 — 'Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken' — Littlefinger hands Sansa over to the Boltons. She marries Ramsay, and he assaults her on their wedding night while Theon is forced to watch. None of that happens to Sansa in the books. The episode drew immediate backlash for how it handled a deeply sensitive storyline and for using it to push a character arc.

The showrunners' reasoning (and the character swap)

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss told Entertainment Weekly they wanted Sansa to be a major part of that season, and sticking strictly to the books made that tough. They loved a specific subplot from the novels, but it centered on someone the show had not really introduced.

• In the books: Jeyne Poole (Sansa's friend) is married off to Ramsay while being passed off as Arya Stark; meanwhile, Littlefinger takes Sansa to the Eyrie after she leaves King's Landing.
• On the show: Rather than bring in Jeyne, they moved that storyline onto Sansa to keep her front and center.

Producer Bryan Cogman was blunt about the calculus behind that decision:

"You use the character the audience is invested in."

The result? A traumatic, shocking sequence that played as pure gut punch. Using rape as a plot device to spur character development is a long-running flashpoint in TV writing, and this became a prime example of why.

What Martin actually said

After the episode aired, Martin got flooded with messages and posted on his LiveJournal to draw a line between his books and the series.

"Two different tellings of the same story."

He praised the show for being largely faithful early on, but warned that the longer an adaptation runs, the more the differences compound — small changes start to cause big storms down the line.

Later, in James Hibberd's book 'Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon', Martin went further on one specific point: he said Littlefinger would never have turned Sansa over to Ramsay. Not ever. In his view, that character simply would not risk her safety like that.

The bottom line

The Sansa-Ramsay wedding night was a behind-the-scenes adaptation choice: the show condensed a book subplot, swapped in a character viewers already knew, and lit a fuse. Whether that choice was effective storytelling or a misstep is still debated. For what it's worth, the show sits at 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the showrunners were David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

Was that scene unnecessary? I have thoughts, but I want yours — drop them in the comments.

Game of Thrones is currently available to watch on HBO Max.