The battle for the top spot is a bit closer. Weighted degree corresponds to the number of interactions with other characters. The well-travelled Daenerys only ranks 11 th in this category, showing that she remains relatively isolated in spite of her expansive journeys through Essos. With so many point-of-view characters, the Starks and Lannisters dominate this centrality measure. The rest of the top 20 characters contain most of the other point-of-view characters, as well as the KingвЂ™s Landing royalty: Joffrey, Theon, Robert, Bran, Tywin, Petyr, Brienne, Samwell, and Barristan Selmy. Next, there is a cluster of characters with about 75 connections each: Catelyn, Sansa, Ned, Robb and Daenerys. So Tyrion wins this measure, with some room to spare. Degree CentralityДЇirst, we consider degree centrality, which counts the number of distinct connections to other characters. LetвЂ™s deal with the centrality measures, one at a time. It is finally time to answer the question: who is the most important character in вЂњA Song of Ice and Fire?вЂќ There are still two volumes to go, but we can answer this question for the saga to date, and try to make some predictions given the trends that we see.

The Game: (7.2%): Eddard, Robert, Petyr.

The Baratheon Host (8.3%): Stannis, Davos, Renly.

The Ironborn (10.4%): Theon, Victarion, Asha, Ramsay.

Essos (10.9%): Daenerys, Barristan, Jorah.

The Starks (12.1%): Catelyn, Robb, Bran.

The Far North (14.3%): Jon Snow, Samwell, Mance.

KingвЂ™s Landing (25.8%): Tyrion, Jaime, Cersei, Sansa, Joffrey, Tywin.

We list the percentage of the network contained in each community, along with their most prominent characters according to PageRank: Ordered by size, here are the 10 main communities. The thickness of an edge corresponds to its weight.

In this graphic, character names are sized by PageRank centrality and nodes are sized by betweenness centrality. We limit ourselves to labeling the top 90 characters, but this is more than enough to get a sense of the network structure.

The вЂњA Song of Ice and FireвЂќ network for the first five books has 796 nodes (characters) and 2823 weighted edges (relationships), accounting for a staggering 32,629 interactions. What do we learn about the saga as a whole? How do the communities and centralities for this massive network compare to the networks for individual books? LetвЂ™s find out. 'I cannot think of a more horrible ending than this,' laments Robb, in a nod to the infamous Red Wedding from season three.LetвЂ™s collect together all five books into one network. In a nail-biting twist, Grover is hailed as King and immediately requests a cushion for the uncomfy throne and a sweater, because вЂњwinter is comingвЂќ. 'I'm telling my brother!' Cersei shouts when she loses, while Joffrey 'chokes' in a reference to the so-called Purple Wedding of season four when he drank poisoned wine and died. Naturally, she swiftly exacts her revenge, with her dragon baby breathing fire over Grover. Muppet versions of major characters Cersei Lannister, Joffrey Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen and Robb Stark all take part, with Daenerys the first to miss out on a chair. 'It was really hard getting over that Wall over there,' Grover says as an excuse for being late, in the first of many Thrones references. Three mini replica thrones - a copper one made from ping-pong bats, a silver one made from golf clubs and a gold one from baseball bats - are used for a game of musical chairs led by Grover Bluejoy and Ned Stark to find the next King of Queen of 'Jesteros'. With just one week to go until Game of Thrones blasts back into our living rooms, Sesame Street has parodied the race for the Iron Throne in an entertaining short film that sees four major characters compete to be ruler of Jesteros.

Race for the iron throne