On one hand it makes sense that medieval european social relations imply, well, medieval european social relations and it makes sense to use your novel (or your show) to examine those.
On the other I can relate to many people wanting to see women in medieval fantasy to be represented in some other way than constant misery porn.
like i said i haven't read or watched anything to do with the franchise, but that is the vibe i get from seeing all the discourse.
i've heard hbo sometimes mandates that a sex scene be added to their shows, and even if that isn't the case it's a lot easier to make "sex sells" an important part of your tv show than your doorstopper fantasy even if there's a perfectly equal amount of sexual content between the two.
Yes for the first 3 seasons they were almost identical to the book except for a bunch of added sexposition scenes with prostitutes. Oh yeah and they made the gay characters Loras and Renly into a shallow easily seduced slutty stereotype instead of the loyal, ambitious and complex knights they were in the books.
Then as time went on the show got more and more detached and eventually ran out of content. Then they went off the rails.
What they did with Loras and Renly immediately made me hate the show, because i loved the portrayal of those characters in the books. And the sexpostion scenes always seemed so forced and silly. Didn't make it past the first season.
sounds about right.