DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BOOK!DANY AND SHOW!DANY — The freedmen's perception of Dany
On HBO: Dany decides to execute Mossador for killing a hostage suspected of being a Harpy’s Son, which leads the former slaves to turn against her. After she departs Meereen with Drogon, it's revealed that they started to see Dany as a master herself.
In the books: Dany never executes Mossador (his book equivalent is murdered by the Sons of the Harpy). After Dany flies away on Drogon’s back, the freedmen still call her their mother, want her to return and refuse to acknowledge Hizdahr as their king. The slaves in the Yunkish camps want Dany to defeat the Yunkai'i and to free them. Barristan Selmy rides Dany’s silver because he expects the sight of it will give heart to the former slaves fighting for her. The widow of the waterfront tells Tyrion that she and the slaves of Volantis want Dany to come soon.
Making the freedmen become hostile to Dany in season five was a show departure that (along with others) helped to spread the misconception that Dany made things “worse” for the slaves (which ignores her efforts to rebuild Meereen’s economy) and shouldn’t have tried to abolish slavery (even though, as shown above, freedmen and slaves all over the world continue to support her throughout all of ADWD).
George R. R. Martin to the New York Times: By Season 5 and 6, and certainly 7 and 8, I was pretty much out of the loop. [...] So I think what you’re going to find is, when “Winds of Winter” and then, hopefully, “Dream of Spring” come out, that my ending will be very different.
