Friday, July 26, 2013

Some random statistics about POV in A Song of Ice and Fire

I used the wiki to assemble some random facts about POV in this series. Enjoy.

Note: this does not include the sample chapters from The Winds of Winter that GRRM has either posted online or read at conventions.

  • Tyrion Lannister is the king of POV with 47 chapters. Jon Snow has 42. Eighteen characters - Wil, Cressen, Chett, Merrett Frey, Pate, Brienne of Tarth, Asha Greyjoy, Victarion Greyjoy, Aeron Greyjoy, Areo Hotah, Arys Oakheart, Arianne Martell, Quentyn Martell, Ser Barristan, Jon Connington, Melisandre, Varamyr Sixskins, and Kevan Lannister - have 41 chapters combined
  • Despite the fact that she died in the third book, Catelyn Stark has more POV chapters (25) than any other character except Tyrion, Jon, Arya (33) and Daenerys (31).
  • Catelyn also has more POV chapters than the entire Greyjoy family put together (23).
  • With fifteen chapters in A Game of Thrones, Ned Stark is tied with Tyrion (15 in Clash) for most POV chapters in a single volume.
  • Arya has five chapters in A Game of Thrones and Daenerys 10. These numbers are reversed for the second book.
  • With 17 chapters, Jaime Lannister has more chapters than any other character who did not have chapters in the first book.
  • Theon Greyjoy and Davos Seaworth both became POV characters in A Clash of Kings. To date, they both have had 13 POV chapters.
  • 118 of the 344 chapters belong to members of House Stark. That's 4 more than Houses Lannister and Targaryen combined. (And that's counting both Ser Barristan and Jon Connington as Targaryen POVs.)
  • Despite being a "minor" POV character, Ser Barristan has more chapters (4) in his first book than Davos did (3).
  • Of the 31 POV characters in the series, 10 are dead (including Catelyn, but not including any of the Dance cliffhangers). They account for 48 of the 344 chapters. If we expand the "dead" category to include cliffhangers and theories (or to put it another way, Jon, Brienne and Melisandre), it becomes 13 characters and 99 chapters. Either way, there are at least eighteen POV characters still alive.
  • There are six POV characters whose first names start with the letter "A." All but one of them (Asha) have an "r" in their first name as well.
  • Thanks largely to Jon Snow, the Night's Watch has more chapters than Houses Baratheon, Martell and Greyjoy combined.
  • Daenerys is the only Royal POV character. None of the Five Kings or their successors are POV characters.
  • A Game of Thrones averages 8.1 chapters per character. As the character count increases, this number decreases. A Feast For Crows averages 3.5 chapters per character. Despite having more characters, A Dance With Dragons reverses this trend with an average of 4.1 chapters per character.
  • A Feast For Crows has only 46 chapters. No other book has fewer than 70.

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