谁是《权力的游戏》真正的主角？数据分析告诉你

There’s a zillion characters in Game of Thrones, even after a bunch of them have been brutally bumped off. But among the likes of Tyrion, Bran, Dany, and pals, who’s really the main character? A team of mathematicians used a power far beyond Melisandre’s shadow magics to find out: the power of cold hard graphs.

尽管有些人已经被残忍地干掉了，《权力的游戏》里的人物还是多得难以计数。但是在提利昂、布兰、丹妮以及其他人物中，谁才是真正的主角呢？一个数学家团队施展魔力，寻找答案，这个魔力可比梅丽珊卓的阴影魔法还强大——那就是客观实在的图表。

Macalester College associate professor of mathematics Andrew J. Beveridge and undergraduate student Jie Shan approached George R. R. Martin’s book series with a set of scientific approaches dubbed “Network Science.” It uses graph theory, economics, math, sociology, and a plethora of other disciplines to map out a vast, interconnected network between the characters that spread all over Westeros and Essos.

麦卡利斯特学院数学系副教授安德鲁•J•贝弗里奇和本科生单杰用一套名为“网络科学”的方法分析了乔治•R•R•马丁的这一系列书籍。这套方法运用了图论、经济学、数学、社会学和其它许多学科的知识，描绘了一幅遍及维斯特洛和厄索斯的巨大人物关系网。

Using the third book in Martin’s saga, A Storm of Swords, and Shan created a huge character network, linking characters every time they appeared within 15 words of each other, weighted on whether or not said characters were in the same scene together. Nearly a thousand pages later, they had a map:

根据马丁这一传奇巨作的第三卷《冰雨的风暴》，贝弗里奇和单杰制作了一幅巨大的人物关系网。只要两个人物出现的间隔在15个词之内，就把他们连在一起，看看他们是不是出现在同一个场景。这样分析了大概一千页之后，他们得出了这张图：

Unsurprisingly, the network spread the influence of characters pretty much where they were based in the books—Daenerys, isolated off in the East, Sansa and Tyrion down in the south in Kings Landing (among the likes of Cersei, Jamie, and Tywin), Jon Snow far to the north, and the then-alive Catelyn and Robb in the Western reaches of the Riverlands.

不出所料，人物在这个网络中的影响力与书中体现的几乎一模一样。丹妮莉丝独霸东方，珊莎和提利昂与瑟曦、詹姆、泰温等人在君临城南端，琼恩•雪诺远在北方，那时还活着的凯特琳和罗伯处于河间地西部。

After ranking the characters through various methods, the three most common characters that could be perceived as the “main” stars of the series emerged: Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, and—at the top in pretty much every measured regard—Tyrion Lannister.

在用几种方法为人物排序之后，三个出现次数最多、可被视作主角的人物就浮出了水面：珊莎•史塔克、琼恩•雪诺，以及在各种测量方法中排名都最高的提利昂•兰尼斯特。

It’s not really that surprising—each chapter of a book in the series is told from the perspective of a different character, and Tyrion has the most chapters to his name across the whole saga. And of course, the data doesn’t really weigh in importance to the overall story. Speaking to Quartz, Beveridge noted that because Daenerys is so isolated in Essos, she doesn’t have as many connections as the characters based in Westeros, despite playing a huge role in the future of A Song of Ice and Fire’s main arc:

其实也没有那么出乎意料——因为每一卷的每一章都是从不同角色的视角叙述的，而在整部小说中以提利昂作为叙事视角的章节最多。当然了，在整个故事中，数据并不足以说明一切。在接受Quartz杂志的采访时，贝弗里奇提到，尽管丹妮莉丝在《冰与火之歌》未来的主线中扮演着非常重要的角色，但因为她身处偏僻的厄索斯，构建的关系就没有维斯特洛人的那么多：

Daenerys really represents the future—you can see what’s about to happen based on the people she’s linked with.

丹妮莉丝确实代表着未来——你可以根据那些跟她有关系的人推断故事发展。

Still, it’s a pretty fascinating insight into the focal points that the book series concentrates on—and it’s always cool when these analytical concepts are turned towards our favorite fictional universes.

但仍然，用这种方法来洞察这部书的焦点非常吸引人，并且这些分析概念可以用来解释我们最喜欢的虚构世界，真是太酷了。