Ahead of this year’s Con of Thrones, fans were asked to take part in an extremely comprehensive survey all about Game of Thrones. The results were shared at the convention. Now, fansite Watchers on the Wall is writing a series of posts picking through the data. The latest has to do with how fans view the morality of the characters on the show. Do fans consider people like Jaime Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen and Stannis Baratheon to be good, evil, or somewhere in between?
Check out the two charts below, which track 20 characters from the show. The fans rated them on a five-point scale. Dark purple is “Very Good,” light purple is “Slight/Somewhat Good,” tan is “Neither Good nor Evil,” light green is “Slight/Somewhat Evil” and Dark Green is “Very Evil.”
Shireen, Sam, Hodor, Brienne, and Ned are the top 5 “good” characters, while Cersei, Littlefinger, Euron, Joffrey and Ramsay are considered the most evil.
It’s interesting that Daenerys, while still considered generally “good,” is ranked nearly 10 spots lower than Jon Snow, who’s just behind Ned for goodness. Meanwhile, Yara is ranked well above Theon, while Jaqen H’ghar is the most neutral character of the bunch.
The survey also asked book-readers to much more good or evil characters are on the show compared to their onscreen counterparts. The more purple they are, the more “good” they are. The more green, the more evil. If they’re tan, fans consider them about the same.
Tyrion and Sam are considered far more moral on the show than in the books, which checks out. On TV, Varys doesn’t send his army of child soldiers to kill poor Kevan Lannister, and Tyrion is on far better behavior when he visits that brothel in Volantis.
Meanwhile, fans consider Ellaria Sand and Stannis Baratheon to be quite a bit more evil on TV, probably because they both, y’know, kill children.
Relatedly, fans chose which versions of the characters the preferred: book or show. Dark blue is “Strongly prefer book version,” light blue is “Slightly/Somewhat prefer book version,” grey is “No real preference,” organge is “Slightly/Somewhat prefer show version” and brown is “Strongly prefer show version.” Check it out:
Unsurprisingly, fans wish the Dornish characters from the books had shown up onscreen. Poor Doran Martell…However, Margaery Tyrell got accolades for her much expanded role on TV. Fans also like TV Jorah a lot more than Book Jorah, although I didn’t see much different. He’s better looking on TV, I guess?
Next up: favorite characters! Every fan has a fav…and a least fav. Here’s ow the survey results broke down:
Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton run away with the titles of “Favorite Character” and “Least Favorite Character” respectively. But note that whether a character was deemed “good” doesn’t necessarily reflect whether they’re someone’s favorite character. (On the flip side, all the characters considered most “evil” show up on the Least Favorite collage.) Also, it’s interesting that Daenerys, Sansa and Cersei all show up on both lists. #Polarizing
Finally, which characters do fans want to have a happy ending? Roll the chart.
So fans want most of the characters to live happily ever after, Sam most of all. But do fans have something against Yara Greyjoy and Beric Dondarrion? I wouldn’t have thought they’d have done much to raise fan ire, but apparently less than half of the people sampled want them to have a happy ending.
To see more charts, including ones that break down the results by demographics, visit Watchers on the Wall!
Next: What is happening to the Red Keep? Does it foreshadow the ending of the series?
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