Game of Thrones fans go to a lot of extents when it comes to proving how dedicated we are to the books and the show. George R.R Martin‘s book series A Song of Ice and Fire gave birth to the television phenomenon that is Game of Thrones, and since then it has been gaining immense popularity with time. Fans of the books are familiar with characters and concepts that many show fans aren’t aware of, since the book universe is far too extensive to be incorporated entirely onto the show.
There’s a ridiculous amount of characters on the show, and more than those appear in the books, which means that keeping track of all of them is nearly impossible. But we’re fans, and we go to great lengths ensuring our knowledge of the books. A Redditor, after two and a half years of effort, compiled the list of a total of 1599 characters from the book series, and created a spreadsheet that explains their family, sigil, what house they serve, who killed them etc. Though it might seem to be intimidating when you hear about it, it’s quite simple to read when you take a closer look.
To all those who have difficulty remembering characters on the show and books, this spreadsheet is pretty informative. Though the Redditor says that not all characters have been incorporated, since there are a lot of nameless ones as well but sometimes they serve an important purpose. Here’s what the Redditor Confused-Shelf had to say about it:
“I only add named characters. For example “Lord Somebody and his wife came to dinner.” That is only one character as far as the spreadsheet is concerned. His wife is descriptive text about him (he has a wife). “Lord and Lady Somebody came to dinner.” That is now two characters. My reasoning for this is that there are so many “and they had two daughters” or “his brothers” that it would be impossible to keep track of who’s who. Additionally, characters known only by their occupation are not on the list for similar reasons. For example “the captain of Boaty McBoatface came aboard” does not count as a character, even if he has dialogue. That means there are a couple prominent people missing (namely, the High Septons) from the list. Characters known only by their nicknames are added too. I see no reason to omit them. For that reason the High Sparrow is the only High Septon that makes the list. Gods are not included, are they the same god with different names? Who knows? Named animals (like the dragons and direwolves) are on the list.”
With the large number of named characters, there’s still a lot of nameless ones to be taken in, but the spreadsheet gives a very good idea of it. You can check it out here.
