The Explainer Notebook can found here or here.

This website is a product of the final assignment in the DTU course: 02806 Social Data Analysis and Visualization. The project deals with the fantasy book series “A Song of Ice and Fire” (by George RR Martin) which TV-show (Game of Thrones) has taken the world by storm. The primary dataset originates from Kaggle and consist of 38 battle/rows with 25 attributes for each. We match it with a dataset of the Game of Thrones map, which also includes information about landmark names, and which territories are claimed by who.

The primary dataset is a collection of the battles from the first part of the series (a span of the years 298-300). It contains simple information like name, year, location, but also who attacks and defends, as well as the type and outcome of the battles.

The dataset is small and incomplete, hence we will try to accommodate to our best abilities. Additionally, it has required some corrections of inaccurate values, which have also been pointed out in the Kaggle discussion forum.

It should also be made clear that we obviously can not do a typical social data analysis on the data, as the ground truth is inherently fictitious, and does not reflect anything from the real world. Despite this limitation, we will still have to imagine that it is true, and then reference the series as if it were the real world.

The Game of Thrones world primarily takes place in the continent of Westoros, which consists of 7 once independent kingdoms:

Since then, they have been unified under Targaryen rule. The death of Robert Baratheon, king of the 7 kingdoms, leads to the War of the Five Kings, which is a war between those kings who find themselves to be the rightful heir of the Iron Throne. This position is currently being held by the eldest son of Robert, Joffrey Baratheon, who is also affiliated with the Lannister house from his mother’s side. As Joffrey eventually dies from poisoning, his innocent brother Tommen takes his spot as king.

This war sparks a lot of conflict. Battles are fought, trust is broken, and people will meet their demise. We will rely on data from the battles during the war to reflect this. Hopefully, this will give us enough insight to answer 3 important questions:

Westoros has many great houses; but in times of war, it is imperative to find the right allies. By inspecting who attacks and defends together, we can establish an overview of which alliances have been formed:

The Starks have a strong reputation of honor, and have allied with the neighboring houses Blackwood, Darry, Tully, and Frey, led by Robb Stark - “King of the North”. We see that the Freys have both attacked for the Starks, and against them. They betrayed the Starks during a wedding, in favor of Joffrey Baratheon of the Lannisters, who gladly supported the idea of an ambush. The Lannisters have also become allies with Bolton, Tyrell, Bracken and even during a single instance, the Greyjoys. Balon, and later Euron Greyjoy - “King of the Iron Islands” usually work alone. They are a proud people, who have a strong navy. They abuse the absence of Robb Stark to attack his home, Winterfell, which further complicates their relationship. The brother of the now dead Robert Baratheon, Stannis Baratheon has trouble gathering big armies and allies, and often uses dark magic, which he even uses to kill his brother Renly Baratheon very early in the war. He has also once aided the North against the primal tribes who attacked the Wall, but still has not gained their alliance.

To get an idea of the geography of the world, consider this map of Westeros, where we can inspect each Kingdom, and the battles during the war. The markers are colored wrt. the winner of the war. Other information is available upon clicking or hovering as well. Feel free to explore:

By landmass alone, it would seem obvious that the Starks should easily outnumber the other kingdoms:

The reason for its huge area is mainly due to the cold climate. The Starks have learned to live under these conditions, and naturally rule The North as it’s called. On the other hand, we see that the Lannisters and Baratheons are practically tied wrt. area. Then we have the Greyjoys, who are situated on a single archipelago, The Iron Islands. Even with their superior navy, it would seem optimistic for them to claim the Iron Throne, given their lack of people and resources.

If we instead consider the joint area of each alliance (see figure above), Joffrey quickly catches up on Robb. Given that he officially is the current king of the 7 kingdoms, he has gathered the strong allies, the Tyrells. On top of that, the Iron Throne is located in the city King’s Landing on Targaryen soil, which the King automatically owns, as the Targaryens are essentially extinct. It might actually seem like Joffrey has a more effective amount of landmass, while Stannis and the Greyjoys seem even smaller now in comparison.

It is now more clear who has a winning chance in this war. Robb Stark and Joffrey Baratheon both seem to own much land, which should be equivalent to more resources and military power. Alliances have evened out the playing field for these two kings, while Stannis and the Greyjoys still seem to lack in numbers. That being said, it’s not certain that more land equals more greatness or military prowess. Instead, this should be assessed on the battlefield. Let us now have an overview of the battles throughout this war.

To start out, we can observe the distribution of wins and losses among the kings:

To our surprise, Robb has lost many of his battles, despite his seemingly advantageous size. Even the small Greyjoy forces have a good battle history, which must be a sign that the Greyjoys are better at picking their battles. It could also be argued that Robb’s army is more scattered, leaving the strength of the army unevenly distributed across the continent. Both Stannis and Renly don’t seem to perform so well either. They are not as good at utilizing their small forces as the Greyjoys are. It would seem that the Lannisters are superior in battle, but that the Greyjoys are also very effective. In terms of winning-rate, the Greyjoys actually exceed the Lannisters:

There are several types of battles being fought throughout the series, namely: