Analysis

 Riley Beard 

Professor Whaley 

ENGL 3460

28 November 2023

She’s Your Fantasy

Some of the most popular shows on television are adaptations of epic fantasy novels. Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, and The Witcher bring in millions of viewers to their respective streaming services. Like any adaptation, these shows make changes from their source material. Some changes rile more feathers than others. Changes that appear to consistently upset audience members are changes of characters' race. These four shows all have something in common. They have either cast a black actor or actress to play a character who was white in the books or consistently disregarded black characters and used their suffering to further the storylines of white characters. “Morality (bondage and freedom), religion and the supernatural, and the human condition (healing and metamorphosis) have long been themes of African-American literature. The burgeoning presence of Blacks in Futuristic fiction and fantasy has strengthened these elements” (Rutledge, 2001). Black fantasy is out there, so why aren’t we getting it?

Netflix’s The Witcher, based on a Polish book series, is heavily Euro-centric. The novels have a severe lack of diversity, with a fantasy world featuring “narratives that allow European nations to transcend the history of racial violence, and that connect Eastern and Western European manifestations of white innocence” (Imre, 2023). With the books and video games featuring exclusively white characters, many fans were surprised by the television series casting actors of color. The character change that upset fans the most was Triss Merigold. Triss is a white redhead in the books and games but is portrayed by black actress Anna Shaffer in the show. Fans were outraged that Triss didn’t look more like her literary counterpart, stating that the character’s missing red hair was their biggest problem with her. This claim rings hollow when looking at other changes in the show. One character, King Foltest, is described as being young and handsome in the books but is played by a graying overweight man in the show. Other characters who were white in the books but played by black actors include Istredd and Dara, played by Royce Pierreson and Wilson Mbomio respectively. None of these changes have garnered half of the backlash that Triss’s character has received. Because Triss is a woman, audiences feel they have more of a voyeuristic right to her. Triss is a beautiful love interest in the books, someone to be desired. Changing Triss’s race challenges what audiences find pleasurable. She no longer fits into their racist fantasies and so they rebel against her. “The Witcher involves multiple crossings where Eastern European national fantasies and global corporate fantasies of diversity and democracy converge in white innocence” (Imre, 2023). Triss shatters the fantasy. 

HBO’s Game of Thrones and The House of the Dragon are two other fantasy shows that have difficult relationships with race. The Game of Thrones books do not have the same issues as The Witcher novels. Game of Thrones features a sprawling fantasy world with varying cultures and races. This added diversity to the show including characters like Grey Worm, Khal Drogo, Missandei, and Oberyn Martell. Something else that these characters have in common, besides being racially diverse, is the fact that almost all of them are brutally murdered to further the storylines of white characters. Especially Missandei, an extremely beloved character who was viciously beheaded in the final season, whose death is only used as a means to an end. Missandei’s death is what pushed Daenerys Targaryen into madness. Missandei had her own arc and love interest, but all of that was thrown away to further a white character’s arc. “Is Game of Thrones presenting a feminist statement? Or just pandering to men with its degraded, undressed prostitutes in increasingly sensationalized scenes?” (Frankel, 2014). This question is further complicated when looking at Missandei’s character. In the books, she is a child, barely 12, but in the show, she is a full-grown woman with a love interest. Missandei and Grey Worm’s sex scene features nudity, nothing new for HBO, but it complicates the characters' relationship. Both were former slaves, who now serve the white Daenerys. What free will, what choices do these characters have, when their entire lives bend to the will of someone else? 

The House of the Dragon falls into the same issues as Game of Thrones. While the show has only aired one season, it’s already falling into the same traps as its predecessor. Laena Velaryon is an important character in the show, described as being white in the book; she is played by black actress Nanna Blondell. The entire Velaryon family’s race has been changed for the show, something that has garnered nowhere near the amount of backlash that The Witcher’s Triss has. “The science fiction and fantasy genres are heavily permeated by issues such as homophobia, racism, and misogyny. The fight for the representation of respectable female leading characters equipped with a strong sense of individuality is ongoing and it is questionable whether this controversy has realized any significant progress in the past fifteen years” (Becker, 2017). While the added diversity is great, the show deals with its black female characters in poor ways. Laena Velaryon commits suicide by forcing her own dragon to set her ablaze once she realizes she is going to die in childbirth, leaving her white husband free to pursue his ultimate bride, his own niece. Her death is more gruesome in the show, in the book she simply dies after birthing a stillborn. The show’s added violence exposes Laena’s death for what it really is: gratuitous and unnecessary. Laena’s character is almost a child bride at 12 and a mother to two before she’s 22. Her only purpose in the show is to give a white character heirs. She has no path of her own, which sets her apart from other characters who are mothers, but in control of their destinies like Princess Rhaenyra or Queen Alicent. Leana’s children Baela and Rhaena are given little character development, their only use in the narrative is who they will marry and who they will provide heirs for. Alicent’s daughter Helaena is given her own storyline and characteristics, which include being a suspected psychic. Why the difference between Baela, Rhaena, and Helaena? Is it simply because Helaena is white? 

Looking at these shows, and the many other fantasy adaptations shows a bleak and sadly not surprising trend. When shows add more diversity, fans will revolt if the character no longer looks like their wet dream. If the fans don’t throw a fit at added diversity, then the show itself will brutally kill off black characters. "From the Black Arts in the sixties, we have moved therefore to a splendid outpouring of Afro-American women's writing. [...] Such writing is currently the most resonate manifestation of Afro-American spirit at work in the United States" (Pough, 2005). This quote from Houston Baker highlights the best solution to this problem in the fantasy genre. To get better diversity and representation shows need to be adapted from source material written by people of color, especially black women. The lack of diversity is not shocking taking into consideration that all of these shows are based on books written by old white men. 

Many fans of The Witcher have complained that the actress who plays Triss Merigold in the TV show looks nothing like her video game counterpart 

“What’s Your Take on the Portrayal of Triss in the Witcher Netflix TV Series?” Quora, 

www.quora.com/Whats-your-take-on-the-portrayal-of-Triss-in-the-Witcher-Netflix-TV-se

ries. Accessed 29 Nov. 2023. 

Witcher fans have been much quieter about other drastic character changes in the adaptation, like that of King Foltest above. With so many changes, why is Triss’s character causing the most outrage? 

Harte, Fergal. “The Witcher Characters: Books vs. Games vs. Netflix Show.” WhatCulture.Com, 

WhatCulture.com, 30 Jan. 2020, 

whatculture.com/gaming/the-witcher-characters-books-vs-games-vs-netflix-show?page=

9. 

Missandei was a popular character in the Game of Thrones TV show adaptation. Her character was viciously murdered in the final season of the show, an act that was highly criticized as a waste of her character. 

“Missandei.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Oct. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missandei. 

Laena Velaryon is an important character in HBO’s newest Game of Thrones spinoff, House of the Dragon. Laena is described as white in the books. This character is also met with an untimely death that is only used to progress the story of white characters. 

Westeros, Contributors to Wiki of. “Laena Velaryon.” Wiki of Westeros, Fandom, Inc., 

gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Laena_Velaryon. Accessed 28 Nov. 2023. 

Other characters in the show dismiss Leana’s children Baela and Rhaena, their only use in the narrative is who they marry. 

Leigh, Janet  A. “House of the Dragon Star Bethany Antonia Teases Season Two - Digital Spy.” 

Digital Spy, 25 Oct. 2022, 

www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a41755137/house-of-the-dragon-baela-bethany-antonia/. 

Works Cited

Becker, Dakota. "Analysis of the Progression of the Representation of Female Protagonists in the 

Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Shows Orphan Black and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Girl Power, 

Appropriated “Masculinity” in Conjunction with Femininity, Empowered Sexuality, and 

the Heterosexual Script." (2017).

Frankel, Valerie Estelle. Women in Game of Thrones: Power, conformity and resistance. 

McFarland, 2014.

Imre, Anikó. "Illiberal white fantasies and Netflix’s The Witcher." Journal of Ethnic and 

Migration Studies 49.6 (2023): 1570-1587.

Pough, Gwendolyn D., and Yolanda Hood. "Speculative black women: Magic, fantasy, and the 

supernatural." Femspec 6.1 (2005): ix.

Rutledge, Gregory E. “Futurist Fiction & Fantasy: The ‘Racial’ Establishment.” Callaloo, vol. 

24, no. 1, 2001, pp. 236–52. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3300498. Accessed 25 

Oct. 2023.