Fans are up in arms about HBO’s treatment of a side character on 'Game of Thrones'

Warning: There are spoilers ahead if you are not caught up with "Game of Thrones."

It's no secret "Game of Thrones" deviated many times from the text in season five. We've seen this with Sansa's character and the expansion of a fan favorite on screen. But there's one change from the text which has increasingly confused fans of the beloved book series this season.

Ser Loras Tyrell, the brother of Margaery and a popular side character in "Game of Thrones," has been increasingly reduced to a caricature of homosexuality — and no one is sure why.

Loras was very subtly alluded to as being gay in the book series, but it was so quietly done that George R.R. Martin had to confirm the speculation. On the HBO adaptation, Loras' homosexuality is his most obvious trait.

In season five episode four, we saw the Faith Militant, a military branch of the Faith of the Seven, exercise their recently granted power by aggressively stamping out “sinful” behavior. They concluded their raid on King’s Landing with the arrest of Ser Loras, on charges of “perversion” in the form of homosexuality. 

Let’s go back to see how Loras landed in a jail cell.

Loras was introduced back in season one during a jousting tournament, where he beat Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane (an impressive and rare feat). Afterward, it was quickly made apparent that he was not just a skilled fighter, but also Renly Baratheon’s lover.

The series took a lot of liberty almost immediately with Renly and Loras’ relationship. In the book series, each chapter is told from the point-of-view of a character, and Renly and Loras never have POV chapters. This means their relationship is only ever conveyed through the impressions that main characters have of it. There are no sex scenes between the two, or overt acknowledgments of either characters’ sexual orientation made in the books.

George R.R. Martin’s subtle references to Renly and Loras being gay were so minute that many overlooked it. He is referred to in the text once as "Renly's little rose" and the "Knight of Pansies," but this could be interpreted as rumor mongering.

Explore BI Games

Take a smarter break in your day - and see how far you get.

Play now

Want more Business Insider in your news feed?

Add BI in Google so our reporting is easier to find when you’re searching for what matters.

Add to Preferred Sources

The most obvious quip came from a scene between Jaime Lannister and Loras in the third book, A Storm of Swords. Jaime is frustrated with Loras, and snaps "Now sheath your bloody sword, or I'll take it from you and shove it up some place even Renly never found." This definitely implies a gay relationship between Renly and Loras, but it still could be chalked up to rumors. And among the thousands of pages of text, it was an easy inference to miss.

Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss decided to do away with the ambiguity, and take advantage of HBO’s allowance of nudity and adult material. Renly and Loras were immediately established as a gay couple in season one.

This is all fine and dandy for the first two seasons of “Game of Thrones” where we saw Loras do more than just dote on Renly. Loras had a great fight scene with Brienne of Tarth in season two, and was shown conspiring with his sister Margaery to keep Renly in power. He was one of the heroes at the Battle of Blackwater, saving King’s Landing from Stannis Baratheon’s attack.

But from season three onward, his role on the show became far less complex and his character development came to a grinding halt. After Renly’s death, it seemed every time Loras was shown on screen it was either in a sex scene with Olyvar or him complaining to Margaery about being in King’s Landing. 

There haven't been any more signs of him serving as a noble knight or crucial warrior the way he is in the books. Instead, his sexual orientation has become Loras’ defining characteristic.

Now, the show has created a narrative where Loras is arrested for being gay — a plot that does not exist in the written series. 

This is equally disappointing and confusing on several levels.

It seems anti-progressive to have a gay character who is overtly defined by the fact he is gay. One online user pointed out this difference by explaining that on HBO, Loras is “a gay character,” whereas in the book series Loras is “a knight and a son of House Tyrell, who happens to be gay.” There have been many outcries online about this treatment of Loras, especially in recent episodes where Loras is now being persecuted by the Faith for his sexual orientation.

One of George R.R. Martin’s book editors, Jane Johnson, has been very vocal on Twitter recently, referring to show-Loras as a "gay cartoon."