Apparently Sam didn’t “consciously plagiarize” Gilly on “Game of Thrones,” but he should still give credit where credit is due
In one of the biggest “oh he did not” moments of the seventh season of Game of Thrones — and there were many — former maester-in-training Samwell Tarly took credit for Gilly’s big discovery. You know, the discovery about Rhaegar Targaryen’s annulment to Elia Martell, and subsequent secret marriage to Lyanna Stark.
When Gilly first broke the bombshell news after reading it in High Septon Maynard’s personal diary, Sam brushed her off and continued complaining about his slow progress as a maester. Game of Thrones fans all over the world couldn’t believe that this *massive* reveal was shrugged off in passing.
BUT IT GETS WORSE.
In the final few moments of the season, Sam found himself at Winterfell chatting with Bran Stark, the monotone Three-Eyed Raven, who revealed that Jon Snow is the bastard son of Rhaegar and Lyanna. But Sam corrects Bran — and we still can’t believe that the all-knowing Bran missed that piece of the puzzle — with intel about the secret wedding ceremony.
While we were very much unimpressed with Sam taking credit from Gilly, John Bradley recently defended his character’s actions in an interview with HuffPost.
"Sam hasn’t consciously plagiarized Gilly’s idea there. He’s not giving her the elbow," Bradley said. "He’s not [necessarily] taking credit for someone else’s work because...Sam heard that, [and] he’s so good at processing information now. "He can take information in, almost subconsciously, and almost without thinking about it. His eyes and his ears are constantly attuned to absorbing information, so he’s able to absorb that without even necessarily thinking about it. Sam is like a radio, and if there’s information in the air, he will pick it up, and he will store it whenever he needs it."
He added, “It’s not about him…taking credit for her idea. He probably wasn’t even aware of where he heard that information. He just knows he heard it somewhere in the air, and he was able to pick it up and process it.”
Okay, fine, but as a research assistant at the biggest research facility in all of Westeros, you’d think Sam would have learned how to cite his sources (and why that’s important). Gilly certainly did when she revealed the information in the first place — and she used a primary source.
Bradley went on to defend his character by pointing out that Sam didn’t get any credit from Jorah for curing him of greyscale.
“What I will say that in fairness, Gilly did tell Sam that, and Sam didn’t necessarily say that Gilly was the one who started that, but Jorah Mormont didn’t go back to Daenerys saying Samwell Tarly cured him of greyscale,” he reasoned. “He’s not gone back there name-checking Sam for saving his life. He’s not mentioned the name Samwell Tarly to Jon Snow or Daenerys, so Sam’s not getting his credit there for something he actually did.”
