Report: 24% of British people know the story of Game of Thrones better than the Nativity

It’s been said that the life of Jesus of Nazareth, as set down in the New Testament of the Bible, is the greatest story ever told. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it seems like a good segue into the revelation that, according to research performed by retailer EMP, 24% of British people are more familiar with the story of Game of Thrones than they are with the birth of Jesus Christ.

Now, admittedly, EMP looks like a far cry from the University of Oxford social science department, but that shouldn’t get in the way of a fun discussion. Their study yielded some other interesting results, too:

• 28% of Brits care more about who will sit the Iron Throne at the end of the Game of Thrones than who will succeed the actual Queen of England.
• When it comes to entertainment choices on Christmas day, 56% of Brits would rather watch an episode of Game of Thrones than listen to Queen Elizabeth II give her annual Christmas speech.

As Digital Spy points out, if you don’t mind which queen you’re watching, you can have your cake and eat it too by watching Game of Thrones, as some queen or another is bound to give a speech eventually.

But lest executives at HBO get too big a head for creating a show with such powerful appeal, other research concludes that, as firmly as the Game of Thrones has taken hold of the public consciousness, 50% of Brits have still never heard of it. So let’s not go nuts.

Of course, the 50% figure conflicts with the 56% of British people who would allegedly prefer watching an episode of Game of Thrones to watching Queen Elizabeth II talk about Christmas, but statistics are nothing if not flexible. Maybe we can just conclude that Game of Thrones is very popular in Britain and leave it there.

Next: Kit Harington: I’m 'more affected by the end of Game of Thrones than I thought I would be'

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h/t Metro