History Recap / GameOfThronesS4E10TheChildren

* SacredHospitality: When Jon enters his tent, Mance offers this to him, offering him drink and food. This was a GenreSavvy move on his part as when he catches Jon looking at a butcher's knife, he invokes this to him. Jon, being the son of HonorBeforeReason, whose own brother was murdered in a violation of the same ritual, would never be able to break hospitality to kill Mance. He later cites Mance's commitment to the same as reasons for sparing him to Stannis.

* YouWouldntShootMe: Tywin doesn't believe that Tyrion would shoot his own father in the privy. [[WrongGenreSavvy He's wrong.]]

** In the books, Melisandre takes an active role in the battle beyond the wall and Stannis has a third column that gets battered by the giants and their mammoths.

** In the book, Jaime has to hold Varys at knifepoint to convince him to free Tyrion. With no mention of that incident, it seems more like Varys genuinely wants to save the man whose great potential and competence he recognized some time ago. [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished However,]] his helpful act does end up costing him, as he realizes he's likely be found guilty of freeing a condemned man, which allowed him to murder the Hand of the King. As a result he hops on the boat with Tyrion and has to flee King's Landing.

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Jaime Lannister broke a vow to save thousands from the Mad King's atrocities. He now breaks his vows to free an innocent man from prison and a death sentence and defending his beleaguered little brother. His reward; said brother decides to murder their father and a woman, only to hightail it out of there with the Master of Whispers.

* AdaptationalModesty: In the book, Shae is only wearing a golden necklace when Tyrion finds her in Tywin's bedchamber. In the show, she's wearing a nightgown.

* WhamEpisode: Unlike the usual tradition of having the 9th episode as the most shocking one, most of the most surprising and important twist happened in the final episode. Stannis is back, the wildling is defeated, the hound probably die, and the biggest of them all is [[BigBad Tywin Lannister]] is dead...

** In the books Varys simply disappears after helping Jaime to get Tyrion out of prison, and it's left unclear where he goes, whether he went to Essos or whether he was just hiding in King's Landing. In the show, likely because they need a reason to keep Conleth Hill on screen - he escapes alongside Tyrion.

* WeCanRebuildHim: Qyburn wants to perform questionable experiments on the Mountain to see if he can save his body. It's implied that the process will change him monstrously, but will make him even ''more'' powerful than before.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: For all his lecherousness and brown-nosing, Pycelle at least has the decency to insist on a less unpleasant death for The Mountain.

Back in '''King's Landing''', Tyrion, awaiting execution in the Black Cells, receives an unexpected visitor: Jaime, who has killed the guards and swiftly breaks him out to put him on a path toward Varys, his co-conspirator. They've arranged for a ship to take Tyrion away to the Free Cities. After a bittersweet goodbye between the two brothers, Tyrion changes paths and makes for a different destination.

''*Twang*'' Tyrion pulls the trigger and shoots his father in the bowels, just as promised. Tywin is slammed back against the wall, unable to believe that his youngest child has mortally wounded him. Tyrion calmly and slowly recharges the crossbow.

** The {{Patricide}} is incredibly different. When freeing Tyrion, Jaime confesses that Tysha, the prostitute that he claimed to have hired to fake a RescueRomance for Tyrion, was no such thing, but rather exactly what she said she was: a crofter's daughter who really did love him. Tyrion brings this up when he confronts Tywin, and it's Tysha that Tywin refers to as a whore one too many times. This also has the added side effect of completely changing their parting words: in the books, Tyrion, headlong over the DespairEventHorizon, lies to Jaime that he did indeed kill Joffrey, hurting the one person who still loves him simply because he himself is in too much pain to be civil. He regrets it almost immediately, but it's clear the damage is done. ...[[TearJerker Maybe it's just as well they cut this out.]]

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Jaime retroactively did this in "Oathkeeper" when he outfitted Brienne with a fine suit of armor and a Valyrian steel sword bearing the mark of the lion. Arya and Sandor distrust her and a fight breaks out because from all appearances, she looks like she's in league with the Lannisters.

** In the books, Mance threatens to use the Horn of Winter, which can bring the Wall down according to a legend. In the show, no such horn is mentioned, and Mance simply threatens to kill all members of the Night's Watch. (The Horn of Joramun is also either a bluff or a TakingYouWithMe, since Mance needs the Wall to stop the White Walkers. Mance, to his credit, fully admits this, justifying it as CrazyEnoughToWork.)

-->'''Tyrion:''' [[WhamLine I murdered her.]] With, my own hands.

* BaseBreaker: Book readers were specially angered by the omission of Jaime confessing the truth about Tysha, specially after the show devoting a long time on Tyrion's speech about cousin Orson, who [[CanonForeigner doesn't even exist in the books]].
** And let's not even get started on the reactions [[spoiler:towards the omission of Lady Stoneheart.]]

** OutGambitted: Sadly, he couldn't anticipate Qyburn's interference.

** Brienne defeats Sandor in both the swordfighting and brawling portion of their duel. In the books, they never fight, and no one defeats Sandor.

** In the books, Brienne's quest is a great deal longer and she never gets anywhere close to finding Sansa or Arya. Here, she gets put in the right direction fairly quickly. This is likely an intentional choice on the writers' part, since several parts of Brienne's journey turn out to be fruitless and don't serve to advance the plot much further, so it would be a waste of screentime to show them.

* FromBadToWorse: Tywin is dead, meaning the real political power behind the Iron Throne is in utter disarray, more than likely to be filled by [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Cersei]].
** Even worse, the only other competent small council members are both on a ship to Essos.

** The circumstances of Tyrion's killing spree in the Tower of the Hand are completely altered from the books, to say the least.
*** As has been mentioned elsewhere, the televised version of Shae is a whore through and through, OnlyInItForTheMoney and having no real feelings for her employer (though she does fake it well enough). When Tyrion stumbles upon her in his father's bed, she essentially tries to seduce him, calling him "my giant of Lannister" / "my lion"--what she had once said (pseudo)lovingly but also humiliated him with at the trial. She also doesn't attack him, making the TV encounter an unintended example of AdaptationalHeroism: in the books, Tyrion is simply fed up with her betrayal and strangles her without (physical) provocation.
*** The {{Patricide}} is also incredibly different. When freeing Tyrion, Jaime confesses that Tysha, the prostitute that he claimed to have hired to fake a RescueRomance for Tyrion, was no such thing, but rather exactly what she said she was: a crofter's daughter who really did love him. Tyrion brings this up when he confronts Tywin, and it's Tysha that Tywin refers to as a whore one too many times. This also has the added side effect of completely changing their parting words: in the books, Tyrion, headlong over the DespairEventHorizon, lies to Jaime that he did indeed kill Joffrey, hurting the one person who still loves him simply because he himself is in too much pain to be civil. He regrets it almost immediately, but it's clear the damage is done. ...[[TearJerker Maybe it's just as well they cut this out.]]