Narrative Causal Impetus: Situational Governance in Game of Thrones

Abstract

As a story unfolds, it constructs a depiction of events, and at the same time, it also builds conceptual structure at a higher, interpretive level. This higher-level structure provides the terms for understanding the unfolding story, indicating what kinds of features and consequences characterize it – a story ontology. The process by which a tale constructs a story ontology is not straightforward, and in many ways is just as complex as the action at the event level. It involves an interaction between inferred situations and contexts, each with their own networks of terms and structures, which jostle for dominance. I refer to this interaction as governance. In this work, I demonstrate an example of governance at both levels, using a scene from the series Game of Thrones. When the interpretive terms of a story emerge, an understanding of what kinds of events might come next – the possible causal implications – are also conveyed, even if they are unexpected.