Main Character in Game of Thrones Determined by Graph Theory and Network Science
This past summer, everyone seemed to be talking about one thing: Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones has been gaining in popularity since I started college but the showing of the most recent season was the first time I really heard people raving about the show. People were constantly asking if I watch it, and they would always tell me I needed to when I would share that I’ve never seen it before. However, whenever I would ask someone to explain it, they couldn’t seem to give a simple answer. People would always mention how it is about different families and communities fighting to reign over everyone, but the description of the show always seemed vague and not centered on a specific person or group. Therefore, when I stumbled upon an article that stated that mathematicians had applied graph theory to Game of Thrones in order to determine the main character, I was interested in finally figuring out the central person of the show. The article explains that the books, which the show is based off of, are written in the point of view of different characters in different chapters, suggesting that there are multiple main characters with interconnections between communities.
Professor in mathematics Andrew J. Beveridge devised the network of all the characters based on their interactions in the third book, A Storm of Swords. Character interactions were defined as “whenever two characters appeared within 15 words of one another,” regardless of whether the two characters have a positive or negative relationship, and these interactions were displayed on the network as edges between characters (or nodes). The more interactions between two characters, the thicker the edge between them, and the more links to characters, the bigger a character’s node is. The network shared a few interesting things about the characters besides just who the main character, or person with the most interactions, is. It actually displayed who the communities consist of, and that although some characters had more POV chapters than others, which would suggest that they were more important and more of a main character, those characters didn’t necessarily have as many ties as characters with less chapters dedicated to them. Such was the case with Arya Stark, who has more POV chapters than Sansa but was ranked below her in importance of the show. The graph showed the overall main character was Tyrion, and that the community he is in seems to have the most weight or power because they have the most connections and nodes.
Another interesting piece of information shown by the graph was that a character’s geographical region of living can be a factor in character importance and connections. For example, Daenerys lives in a different region from any of the other main characters. She has strong ties with almost everyone in her region, but only has weak ties to people outside of her region. As weak ties often create an increased likelihood of things happening and future interactions, such as that an acquaintance is more likely to get you a job interview than a close friend because an acquaintance will know more people and have more broad connections than a close friend, it makes sense that Daenerys has a heavy importance on the show and thus a big node although she is in a separate region. In fact, Beveridge suggests that social networks can depict the future of a situation based on relationships by stating that Daenerys “represents the future…based on the people she’s linked with”, and this proposal is proved in the next two books as her importance supposedly increases a lot as her ties expand.
This article and its depiction of the Game of Thrones network is proof of certain properties in graph theory and social networks. For example, the network of characters satisfies the Strong Triadic Closure Property, as there are no characters A that have strong ties (heavily weighted lines) to two people B and C where B and C don’t also have a tie to each other. This property’s validity is important This proof is important in understanding networks and believing and understanding properties and theories in real life (or fictional TV shows). Seeing the show depicted on a graph helps to clear up who and what the show is about, and how different interactions cause certain things to happen. With this in mind, it may be interesting to start watching the show from the beginning and see how the network develops over time as it could be decently tracked, and maybe I could even predict future events in the show based off the connections between characters.