Risk Factors Associated with Mortality in Game of Thrones: A Longitudinal Cohort Study

TL;DR

This study analyzes mortality risk factors among Game of Thrones characters, revealing high death rates and highlighting age, location, and allegiance as influential factors using a fictional cohort.

Contribution

It introduces a novel longitudinal analysis of character mortality in Game of Thrones, applying survival models to fictional data.

Findings

Age increases risk of death among characters.

Characters in the North have lower mortality risk.

House Stark allegiance trends toward lower mortality.

Abstract

Objective: To assess mortality, and identify the risk factors associated with mortality in Game of Thrones (GoT). Design and Setting: A longitudinal cohort study in the fictional kingdom of Westeros and Essos. Participants: All the characters appearing in the GoT since airing of its first episode with screen time of greater than or equal to 5 minutes. Main Outcome Measures: All-cause mortality. Multivariate Cox proportional hazard model was used to assess the risk factors associated with mortality, represented by hazard ratios, with episodes as the unit of time. Results: Of the 132 characters, followed up for a median time of 32 episodes, a total 89 (67.4%) characters died; with external invasive injury as the most common cause of death, attributing to 42.4% of the total deaths. Age (in decades) was a significant risk factor for death [HR, 1.24 (95% CI, 1.08-1.43), P=0.0001]. Although statistically non-significant, allegiance to house Targaryen [HR, 1.10 (95% CI, 0.32-3.77)] was associated with a higher risk for mortality per episode than house Stark. Characters residing in South were less likely to die than characters residing in North [HR, 0.58 (95% CI, 0.29-1.16), P=0.12]. Advisors showed a lower risk of mortality than the members of houses, with some statistical significance [HR, 0.39 (95% CI, 0.14-1.08), P=0.07]. Conclusions: There is a high mortality rate among the characters in GoT. Residing in the North and being a member of a house is very dangerous in GoT. Allegiance to house Stark trended to be safer than house Targaryen.