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  ===Fandom===
  In this manipulated image published by the White House in 2014, US president Barack Obama (a fan of the series) sits on the Iron Throne in the Oval Office with the king's crown on his lap.
  The popularity of the show in the country, coupled with its filming locations in Northern Ireland, led to the creation of a show-specific exhibit in the National Wax Museum Plus in Dublin.
  ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' and ''Game of Thrones'' have a broad, active international fan base. In 2012 ''Vulture.com'' ranked the series' fans as the most devoted in popular culture, more so than Lady Gaga's, Justin Bieber's, ''Harry Potter''s or ''Star Wars''. Fans include political leaders such as former US president Barack Obama, former British prime minister David Cameron, former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard and Dutch foreign minister Frans Timmermans, who framed European politics in quotes from Martin's novels in a 2013 speech.
  BBC News said in 2013 that "the passion and the extreme devotion of fans" had created a phenomenon unlike anything related to other popular TV series, manifesting itself in fan fiction, ''Game of Thrones''-themed burlesque routines and parents naming their children after series characters; writers quoted attributed this success to the rich detail, moral ambiguity, sexual explicitness and epic scale of the series and novels. The previous year, "Arya" was the fastest-rising girl's name in the US after it jumped in popularity from 711th to 413th place.
  , about 58 percent of series viewers were male and 42 percent female, and the average male viewer was 41 years old. According to SBS Broadcasting Group marketing director Helen Kellie, ''Game of Thrones'' has a high fan-engagement rate; 5.5 percent of the series' 2.9million Facebook fans talked online about the series in 2012, compared to 1.8percent of the more than ten million fans of ''True Blood'' (HBO's other fantasy series). Vulture.com cited Westeros.org and WinterIsComing.net (news and discussion forums), ToweroftheHand.com (which organizes communal readings of the novels) and Podcastoficeandfire.com as fan sites dedicated to the TV and novel series; and podcasts cover ''Game of Thrones''.