Warrior women: Brienne of Tarth, left, and Arya Stark sparring.
©2017 Home Box Office, Inc.
The young assassin and wannabe knight stand in the background but if their medieval influences are anything to go by, they could end up leading the final battle.
Brandon Stark’s story extends far beyond the world of Westeros.
HBO/Helen Sloan
The original origins of some key characters names might give hints to their fates in Game of Thrones.
Hell hath no fury…. Maisie Williams as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones.
Helen Sloan/HBO
We’ve watched the youngest Stark daughter grow from a tomboy to a trained killer. Now she’s come into her own.
© Home Box Office
For HBO, online piracy is not the huge issue it represents for the platforms that screen its content.
HBO
Human civilisation is threatened by long-dead organisms, whether as White Walkers or petrol.
Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in season 8 of Game of Thrones.
HBO/Helen Sloan
For all its queer characters, Westeros is a gender binary world.
‘Game of Thrones’ has taught audiences to never get too attached to any one character.
HBO
The vast majority of stories told in movies, in books and on television conclude with happy endings – and this has real-world political consequences.
Maisie Williams plays Arya Stark in Game of Thrones and is one of the actors whose face is part of a new test of face recognition skills.
AAP
Facial recognition is a crucial skill, but difficult to test accurately. Researchers are taking advantage of the popularity of Game of Thrones to test the limits of our ability to identify a familiar face.
Genealogy is the second most popular hobby in the United States.
Steve Allen/Shutterstock.com
Before you attribute a trait to a famous ancestor like George Washington or Marie Antoinette, you might want to see how much DNA you actually share with these people. It’s not what you thought.
An early comics book writer inspired today’s TV writing. The Umbrella Academy (Netflix), based on the comic book by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, tops binge-worthy TV lists this month. Mary J. Blige plays Cha-Cha, an assassin that can travel through time.
Christos Kalohoridis / Netflix
Our current golden age of TV storytelling is influenced by comic books, in particular, one writer: Chris Claremont pushed boundaries and gave audiences strong female leads and deeply involved dramas.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo talks to IMF managing director Christine Lagarde during the plenary session at the IMF and World Bank annual meeting in Nusadua, Bali, Indonesia recently.
Made Nagi/EPA
Films can be used to help understand international relations concepts.
HBO
The HBO series can tell us a lot about how we view the Medieval world.
Netflix
Expectations were high for the latest project from the creator of The Simpsons.
I am robot.
HBO
It is time we talked about one of the most unsung motifs in American fiction.
Paul Harvey/Flickr
Cloud services became popular due to the benefits they can offer to users, but their adoption can be opposed by IT departments.
Georgian alphabet.
rocketfall via Wikimedia Commons
Linguist Alison Long helped translate a best-selling novel into the latest BBC television drama.
DaGaAl/Shutterstock.com
Ursula le Guin gave us an anarchist society on another world; we brought it back to Earth.
Breaking Bad/AMC
Busloads of people rubber-necking their favourite movie location can be a pest, but fan tourism is a growing business.
What makes ‘Game of Thrones’ so popular?
Helen Sloan/HBO
A scholar argues that like many sacred books, the popular television show encourages men and women to reflect on their lives and choices.
Sky Atlantic/©2017 Home Box Office, Inc
All men must die, so the young women have grown up to take control.
Sky Atlantic
They are too well-behaved on Westeros – real-life queens often resorted to tears, temper tantrums and toilet humour.
Plotting total victory: Cersei in the Lannister war room at King’s Landing.
Sky Atlantic
Who has the biggest map – and what are they plotting on it?
Sky Atlantic
Classic conflict analysis can tell us whether there’s a chance that the warring factions can reach a peaceful resolution. Probably not, is the answer.
Sky Atlantic
In history, as in historical fantasy, women have an uneasy and dangerous path to power.
Not everyone got to see Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey ) and Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in the opening season seven episode of Game of Thrones.
HBO
The problems some people had trying to watch Game of Thrones via the internet shows we still have a long way to go before we can live-stream major events to a mass online audience.