Jump to content

So, P+L=R? (TWOW spoilers?)


juanml82

Recommended Posts

Now that we have a description of Jon Arryn, ie blond, it does seem the Robert Arryn is indeed Petyr and Lysa's bastard. Even without ASOIAF genetics, how can a blond man and a red haired woman produce a black haired child?



I don't think we have a precise date on when did Littlefinger join the Small Council, but Robert Arryn was born after the Greyjoy Rebellion, and if the realm didn't need a good Master of Coin before it already, it certainly needed after the looses from that campaign as well as the Lannisters need to rebuild after the damage they took. So I think it's reasonable to believe Littlefinger was at King's Landing by the time Robert was conceived. On top, Robert also has Littlefinger's built.



And there is also the question of whether Littlefinger believes him to be his son - is he honest when he believes Robert is doomed? If so, does that affect him? Could it be fueling his vengeance as it's possible he believes Lysa's forced abortion caused his son to be born epileptic? Or he doesn't care?


Or he is misdirecting Sansa? Is he expecting Robert to live? May Robert be one of his motivations, as in, avenge those who wronged him and seat his son in the Iron Throne by the simple method of having any other pretender killed, as Jaime in that original outline? Petyr Baelish can never be King. Robert Arryn, on the other hand, could be a possible candidate if there is no royal family.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

My brother and his wife just had a very dark haired child, my brother has light brown hair and his wife, mid brown. Now, there was no monkey business here, but I have very dark hair and so does my father and my mother, so it's in our family, Martin just plays with genetics a bit, but really our DNA allows for a lot of different variations in any given generation and the possibility of mutation.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

I definitely think families like the Lannisters have strong genes for blonde hair and green eyes. Arryn should have strong genes for blonde hair and blue eyes, but Jon married a Tully of Riverrun, with brown/auburn hair. The Arryn genes seem to be on the brink of extinction in ASOIAF.



Surely, though, there have been Arryn lords who married brunette ladies. We know for a certain that Lord Jon Arryn's second wife was a Royce; they have dark hair. While Jon had no heirs until Lysa, the precedence of his marriage to a Royce definitely shows that their have been blonde-brunette matches farther back in the Arryn line. Someone who owns a copy of TWoIaF can probably actually corroborate that; I've heard there are wonderful family trees in the book.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

You have some good points, but i am not sure you are rigth, as there are the posebilety of black hair gens being dormant in both Jon and Lysa or just one of them and that could have given Robert His black

hair

If I remember genetics right, isn't black hair dominant instead of recessive? IIRC, if Jon had sandy blond hair, then he can't have recessive dark hair genes because those genes aren't recessive. Kind of the same applies to Lysa, I think. I guess I child of brown hair is still possible, but dark hair should require one parent with, well, dark hair.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If I remember genetics right, isn't black hair dominant instead of recessive? IIRC, if Jon had sandy blond hair, then he can't have recessive dark hair genes because those genes aren't recessive. Kind of the same applies to Lysa, I think. I guess I child of brown hair is still possible, but dark hair should require one parent with, well, dark hair.

Yes, i think this is the norm, but there are always exeptions and there could be difrent rules in Asoiaf, as there are exstrimly unlikely that A famely can have blond hair for tousands of years.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, recessive genes IRL: I'm going to use eye colour cause it makes more sense in my head for personal reasons.

Blue eyes are recessive so, if I have blue eyes then both of my parents have the recessive gene for blue eyes. My mothers eyes are blue, so all she can pass on to me is the recessive blue eye gene. My father has brown eyes, but I have blue. Brown eyes are a dominant gene. So in order for me to have blue eyes, my father has one brown eye gene (Dom) and one blue eye gene (rec).

Egg and sperm only have one half of the gene sequence, when they meet and make a zygote, it has 1/2 of mom and 1/2 of dad. Some of my dad's sperm had the brown eye gene, some had the blue eye gene. All of my mom's eggs have the blue eye gene, because her eyes are blue. If the brown eye sperm had met the egg, I'd have brown eyes because the brown eye gene would override the blue eye gene.

And before anyone asks, my 'dad' is my bio father. His mother had blue eyes, his father had brown. My dad got the Dom brown eye gene from his dad, but the recessive blue eye gene came from his mother.

Both my husband and I have blue eyes. Nothing but recessive genes there! So, naturally, our daughter has blue eyes. If she had come out with brown eyes, then some extracurricular activities could be deduced from that....

As for how well that applies to ASOIAF, I'm not going to try cause we all know that genetics don't work the same!

Although isn't Lysa's uncle Brynden dark haired? Since there doesn't appear to be "dominant" or "recessive" genes, just....magical genes, I guess (I don't mean a gene for magic, but the genes themselves are magical/fantastical). So it's not completely out of the realm of possibility that Robin looks like his great-uncle, just scrawnier and sicker, right?

Edit: spelling

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Juanm182, you are right about blonde being recessive and black being dominant, however I am not sure GRRM uses those genetics, otherwise Targ traits would always be recessive and they are not.



That being said, given that he wrote that description years and years after he did the thing with Roberts bastards, he probably looked a little more into genetics since then and I now believe this theory to be true.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that this theory has a good chance of being correct. The only descriptions of Arryn's we have are Robert, Harrold, and Jon Arryn. From the excerpt we know that Harrold resembles JA. This makes Robert's appearance standout as 'suspicious'.

To answer your question on whether LF knows:

This quote by Lysa suggests that she believes Robert to be JA's son - “I’ve always loved you. I’ve proved it, haven’t I? Tears ran down her aunt’s puffy red face. “I gave you my maiden’s gift. I would have given you a son too, but they murdered him with moon tea, with tansy and mint and wormwood, a spoon of honey and a drop of pennyroyal. It wasn’t me, I never knew, I only drank what Father gave me . . .”

So if this theory is true then I think that LF knows, or at least suspects, and he is misdirecting Sansa with his plans regarding her and Harrold. I'm always suspicious when a character lays out their plans in the manner in which Petyr did to Sansa. Invariably things don't work out that way or there is more to it. If LF does not know then I don't see how this info will be revealed or be relevant.

Although isn't Lysa's uncle Brynden dark haired?

Brynden had auburn hair.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The whole show is based on the idea that Baratheon has not only dark hair, but likely 2 black hair genes, thus a dominant gene, and a black haired child every time. No matter what the female contriutes, the Baratheon males seem to be Bl/Bl all the time. Or at least as far back as the book goes.



But by our genetics, Lysa and Arryn having a dark-haired son is impossible, I think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now that we have a description of Jon Arryn, ie blond, it does seem the Robert Arryn is indeed Petyr and Lysa's bastard. Even without ASOIAF genetics, how can a blond man and a red haired woman produce a black haired child?

What black haired child would you be talking about? Robert's hair are "brown", Lysa's were "auburn". Doesn't look like that huge a difference.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is great irony that the guy who uncovered the king getting cuckolded was actually in the same boat himself. By the rules of ASOIAF genetics, it would seem to indicate young Lord Robert is Petyr's child. I don't think real world science applies here, anymore than it does to the melting point of gold or for using orbital mechanics to explain multi-year long winters and summers. (How do they define a year then, anyways!!!?!!?) We already had the line from Lysa about never letting Robert Arryn have a child by her.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What black haired child would you be talking about? Robert's hair are "brown", Lysa's were "auburn". Doesn't look like that huge a difference.

Mmm... true. But can blonde and auburn produce brown hair? Or shouldn't that take a shade of darker hair from one of the parents?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, here's a real world "calculator". GRRM may or may not have used real world genetics, but I don't think it will be far of the mark.


Blond father and Red/Strawberry Blond haired mother will not produce a brown haired kid.


Blond father and brown haired mother have a 50% chance of producing a brown haired kid - but Lysa doesn't have brown hair.



Black haired father and Red/Strawberry blond/blond haired mother have a 100% possibility of producing a brown haired child



EDIT: Forgot the link :blushing:


http://dna.frieger.com/calc-quick.php


Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is funny, I was only thinking about this a couple of hours ago.



Did Littlefinger want Ned dead for another reason? Was he concerned that Ned would work out that Robert was his child?



Why did Lysa really kill Jon? Had he guessed from the book?



It was the Alayne chapter that made me think about it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think its possible. I think the evidence that Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen were not Bob's based on haircolor was more circumstantial than anything. (I mean the show even cast a dirty blonde Shireen and didn't have her wear a black wig.) But it provoked Cersei's confession and that is solid proof. So, I think since the haircolor-marker of paternity has been telling so far, it could work with Sweetrobin as well. I'm not a big fan of the idea, but I certainly agree it could be valid. :)


Link to comment
Share on other sites

Though it is plausible, it's unlikely for Lysa & Jon to produce a child with SR's coloring. A lot of emphasis is being put on Sweetrobin's hair, so there's definitely something there. It would be pretty ironic that Jon figured out that Joff-Myrcella-Tommen aren't Robert's kids thanks to their hair color while not catching on to his own kid's parentage.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

The description of Jon Arryn is the first bit of evidence for this theory that I thought held any water, but I still don't believe it, for the simple reason that Lysa seems quite certain that Robert is Jon's son, and if there was any possibility that Littlefinger could be the father, I believe she would have latched onto that.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

The description of Jon Arryn is the first bit of evidence for this theory that I thought held any water, but I still don't believe it, for the simple reason that Lysa seems quite certain that Robert is Jon's son, and if there was any possibility that Littlefinger could be the father, I believe she would have latched onto that.

True, I would've expected her to blurt something out on the subject right before being sent down the moon door. She admitted to poisoning Jon then, why not mention anything about SR?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

True, I would've expected her to blurt something out on the subject right before being sent down the moon door. She admitted to poisoning Jon then, why not mention anything about SR?

When she talks about she "would have given him a son too", she seems quite convinced that she hasn't. It's a point of sorrow for her.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...