# Interconnected Kingdoms: Comparing 'A Song of Ice and Fire' Adaptations Across Media Using Complex Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.05453 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05453/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 50 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Graph Matching: Relax at Your Own Risk](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.3133/) (2014)
- [Extraction and Analysis of Fictional Character Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02704/) (2019)
- [Matched Filters for Noisy Induced Subgraph Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.02423/) (2018)
- [GNAT: A General Narrative Alignment Tool](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.03627/) (2023)
- [Analyzing Film Adaptation through Narrative Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04020/) (2023)
- [Balance of thrones: a network study on Game of Thrones](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.05213/) (2017)
- [Complicating the Social Networks for Better Storytelling: An Empirical Study of Chinese Historical Text and Novel](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.10835/) (2020)
- [Predicting kills in Game of Thrones using network properties](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.09468/) (2019)
- [Complex Network Analysis of a Graphic Novel: The Case of the Bande Dessin'ee Thorgal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10162/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Taggus: An Automated Pipeline for the Extraction of Characters' Social Networks from Portuguese Fiction Literature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03358/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this article, we propose and apply a method to compare adaptations of the same story across different media. We tackle this task by modelling such adaptations through character networks. We compare them by leveraging two concepts at the core of storytelling: the characters involved, and the dynamics of the story. We propose several methods to match characters between media and compare their position in the networks; and perform narrative matching, i.e. match the sequences of narrative units that constitute the plots. We apply these methods to the novel series textitA Song of Ice and Fire, by G.R.R. Martin, and its comics and TV show adaptations. Our results show that interactions between characters are not sufficient to properly match individual characters between adaptations, but that using some additional information such as character affiliation or gender significantly improves the performance. On the contrary, character interactions convey enough information to perform narrative matching, and allow us to detect the divergence between the original novels and its TV show adaptation.