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Is Jon and Dany's blood relationship supposed to be a problem?


Ser Petyr Parker

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57 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Didn't Taylor say a "converge". I may be misremembering that, however, since when does converge mean hook up? 

Daenerys and Jon are supposed to converge in the books on the Trident as Dany's prophetic dreams tell her. That is the convergence.

 

Yeah, what is the original quote?

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3 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

The point is that there was trouble, and for once it turned all right, just before the endgame starts. There's been loads of trouble season after season, and most of the time it ended badly.

Sure, he might marry her for honor's sake. But he won't wave the complications off. They won't be happy together, because of this. There's no Disney ending for them.

Sounds like a bittersweet ending to me.

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37 minutes ago, Faint said:

That's the thing, once we acknowledge that genetics do not function at all how they do in our world, that removes one of the reasons we oppose incest in real life. The other, intimate relations with a familial member, does not apply in this case because Jon and Daenerys were not raised together, much less had anything like an aunt and nephew relationship. They are not "family." 

They might not function equally the same, but if incest was not a problem, people would be inbreeding more often for power issues and the faiths would not formid any type of incest.

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12 minutes ago, Commander Jon Snow said:

^ Exactly. The very fact that these families have supposedly been around for thousands of years and marrying each other for that long by itself is not very good for the genetic diversity for nobles in Westeros. So we have to assume that genetics just work differently.

You do know that George talked about the Karstarks and the author doesn't even see them as being related because they are too far removed, right? There is a Stark family tree online and in the World book. Incest and even closely related happened almost never, except the control exception mentioned earlier. 

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17 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

Because they were tormented because as half-siblings it was more incestuous, and it ended up being less incestuous.

With JOn/Dany is the contrary to no incest at all, to a thing which is more incestuous than Jon/Arya's general outline.

They HAVE to be tormented even if they love eachother.

Well, this way it is actually more relatable to RL. In one of the many past threads on the topic, someone linked an article on the Genetic Sexual Attraction. It had interviews by people that unbeknownst to themselves fell in love with a close relative. Guess what, these people were repulsed at the idea of thinking romantically of their adoptive families, but they couldn't bring themselves to feel the same way about their incestous romantic partner.

Also note that avuncular incest is conveniently acceptable in the ASoIaF universe.

Frankly, I fail to see what the moral of the story is supposed to be according to you. Don't dare to fall in love without a DNA test? Can't say I find it a deep or useful moral lesson.

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22 minutes ago, Newstar said:

Oh, for crying out loud. It's a fact that GRRM has chosen to build the world of Westeros around a dynasty that regularly practices incest and has several incestuous relationship. It's a fact that the most prominent romantic relationship in ASOIAF so far is between a brother/sister pair. It's a fact that two of the three lead characters in ASOIAF are descended from incestuous lines (three if you buy A+J=T). It's also a fact that GRRM has written hundreds of thousands of words about this incestuous dynasty and their incestuous romances. Finally, given what we know of the Targ histories, it's safe to say that the most prosperous reign and happiest king/queen marriage in ASOIAF history belonged to a brother/sister Targ pair (Jaehaerys/Alysanne). 

Wow. Nope. Look at the results of Alysanne and Jaehaerys. Not good. 

22 minutes ago, Newstar said:

It's reasonable to conclude that GRRM doesn't share your concerns about conveying that Incest is Bad, and therefore any arguments saying that Jon/Dany will end in tears because GRRM is determined to send a Message about incest are doomed to failure. GRRM doesn't care about your pearl-clutching, and again, if fictional incest bothers you so much, why not check out one of the many, many fantasy series that don't feature it? GRRM has never made any secret of how fictional incest is a big part of the ASOIAF universe, and Jon/Dany was telegraphed from the very beginning with ASOIAF. 

 

You should read the Alan Taylor interview I linked. He said when asked about whether GRRM had talked about a romantic relationship that he couldn't get into it because it was getting into S8 territory.

Saying Jon and Dany's meeting and subsequent relationship is the point of the series is anything but vague, IMO.

Sorry Newstar, but I'm not sure how to follow along with your comments anymore because you change your position so often. It gets confusing. 

22 minutes ago, Newstar said:

The juxtaposition of Bran's Rhaegar/Lyanna voiceover "He loved her" on Jon and "She loved him" on Dany couldn't be clearer.

First off, this relationship is a show invention. And then the show had the wall fall. How romantic. 

 

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9 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

No. One should read the author's work to find out how the author repeatedly handles incest in his fantasy worlds. GRRM is not using real world rules to incest at all so real world rules do not apply. He has incest always fail, which means, if Dany and Jon do hook up in the books, then it will be a sign of the end times and we should be rooting for the Orhers because that is what the author tends to do with it. Read his work. 

Who cares about what George does in other stories? Those stories are not ASoIaF, and don't enable you to predict the ending of that story. And it is pretty obvious that the Dany-Jon plot in the show is perhaps the only thing from the books that the show still (sort of adequately) adapts. They took their time with that and tried to make it some sort of real romance. It isn't very convincing but a hundred times better than that ridiculous Winterfell plot.

10 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I do realize that, but even if their parents were not related, those same people that you listed still came from a long line of inbreeding, which is bound to effect future generations of the family tree, as opposed to just direct offspring.

Still, there are other people much worse than even Aerion or Maegor - creatures like Ramsay, Gregor, Rorge, Biter, etc. - and they are - as far as we know - not exactly abominations born of incest. In fact, Craster's daughter-wives and son don't show any signs of being twisted and sickly or mad despite the fact that especially young Gilly and her son should be the 3-4th generation offspring of parent-child incest. If George tried to send us the message that incest is very bad why didn't he made Gilly or her son ugly freaks, suffering from a variety of hereditary diseases? And Craster's other wives also seem to be quite normal, both mentally and physically.

Instead, I daresay that George sends us the message that the children are always innocent, never mind what their parents did.

There are a lot of ways of actually sending the message that incest is very bad. A rather simply way would have been to actually have the Targaryens suffer from a number of real world hereditary diseases - haemophilia, perhaps, or a similar thing, that routinely causes the (early) death of many members of the family. Instead we just have some of them going mad and an even smaller number having health problems - and it is still not clear whether the incest in itself is the root of the problem or rather than 'the blood of the dragon'. We know you can bred the Valyrian looks out of a bloodline but if they really have 'the blood of the dragon' that might be a taint that never really goes away, and if you keep it sufficiently pure for the dragonriding thing it comes with the price of decreased fertility, problems giving birth, and a large number of unviable hybrid children.

32 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

We have their family tree going back a few hundred years. It branches. 

And for the third time, what George described in that case with the uncles was a "one time" event that promptly ended and was the same scenario that he describes as an anjust move for control, because no, not all Starks are perfect. 

Now. I have to drive. 

It isn't a one-time event since there are actually two uncle-niece marriages and two other cousin marriages. And that's only the cousin marriages we know about. We have no idea how closely related the Stark brides were whose name wasn't Stark by birth but who had a Stark mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother.

The idea that the Starks do not marry their own when they can or feel they should is simply wrong. They do just that. Repeatedly.

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6 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

You do know that George talked about the Karstarks and the author doesn't even see them as being related because they are too far removed, right? There is a Stark family tree online and in the World book. Incest and even closely related happened almost never, except the control exception mentioned earlier. 

Thing is we are talking about the same genetic pool going back thousands of years. This never happened in the real world. It's even crazier when you consider that most families didn't marry outside their kingdom/region. What you have is cousins banging each other going back thousand of years. Real life genetics just can't be used anymore. 

Now that I mention it, didn't George say that genetics don't work the same in Westeros or did I imagine that? I believe he said that in response to someone asking about the Baratheon 'seed is strong' proof with all children having dark hair. Anyone who's taken a basic biology class knows why that's bogus and makes no sense in reality. So again, we have to conclude that Westerosi genetics just don't work the same as they do in our world

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1 minute ago, Commander Jon Snow said:

Thing is we are talking about the same genetic pool going back thousands of years. This never happened in the real world. It's even crazier when you consider that most families didn't marry outside their kingdom/region. What you have is cousins banging each other going back thousand of years. Real life genetics just can't be used anymore. 

Now that I mention it, didn't George say that genetics don't work the same in Westeros or did I imagine that? I believe he said that in response to someone asking about the Baratheon 'seed is strong' proof with all children having dark hair. Anyone who's taken a basic biology class knows why that's bogus and makes no sense in reality. So again, we have to conclude that Westerosi genetics just don't work the same as they do in our world

Exactly as noted above. Most Targs would

look awful. But they don't. George is using his own fantasy genetics he has used in many of his older stories. But the physical repercussions are not the issue because they don't seem to exist. Claiming that closely related incest is prevelant in the north when the stories, lore, and family trees say otherwise is blatantly skewing the information to support a favorite "ship" and hand waving the world away. I don't think George is going to hand wave 6-7 books worth of information to pull a fast one on the readers in a "gotcha" moment. He doesn't do That. Just ask the maid. (He talks about it there) 

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38 minutes ago, Newstar said:

Oh, for crying out loud. It's a fact that GRRM has chosen to build the world of Westeros around a dynasty that regularly practices incest and has several incestuous relationship. It's a fact that the most prominent romantic relationship in ASOIAF so far is between a brother/sister pair. It's a fact that two of the three lead characters in ASOIAF are descended from incestuous lines (three if you buy A+J=T). It's also a fact that GRRM has written hundreds of thousands of words about this incestuous dynasty and their incestuous romances. Finally, given what we know of the Targ histories, it's safe to say that the most prosperous reign and happiest king/queen marriage in ASOIAF history belonged to a brother/sister Targ pair (Jaehaerys/Alysanne). 

It's reasonable to conclude that GRRM doesn't share your concerns about conveying that Incest is Bad, and therefore any arguments saying that Jon/Dany will end in tears because GRRM is determined to send a Message about incest are doomed to failure. GRRM doesn't care about your pearl-clutching, and again, if fictional incest bothers you so much, why not check out one of the many, many fantasy series that don't feature it? GRRM has never made any secret of how fictional incest is a big part of the ASOIAF universe, and Jon/Dany was telegraphed from the very beginning with ASOIAF. 

 

You should read the Alan Taylor interview I linked. He said when asked about whether GRRM had talked about a romantic relationship that he couldn't get into it because it was getting into S8 territory.

Saying Jon and Dany's meeting and subsequent relationship is the point of the series is anything but vague, IMO.

 

The juxtaposition of Bran's Rhaegar/Lyanna voiceover "He loved her" on Jon and "She loved him" on Dany couldn't be clearer. Jon and Dany are canonically in love in the show. Now, whether the writers, directors and cast succeeded in conveying that love is another question, but the characters are deeply in love.

"deeply in love" :lol:

 

you don't know what love is. Lust isn't love 

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16 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Who cares about what George does in other stories?

:lmao:So you, as in you LV, can go on and on about George is basically ripping off other authors, Tolkien for one, even though George says he is writing a very different type and style of story that Tolkien writes, but how dare anyone use George's work to show his own themes and method of thought. Clutch your pearls! Sorry, but if you want to see how the author uses his inspiration and mixes into his own words, read his work. He has his own literary voice down pat. You just need to listen. 

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3 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

 

Not according to what the maesters have written down. 

And the old gods. 

Oh really?

I hate to break it to you, but the old gods are no true gods but a band of creepy Elven creatures that occasionally drink up blood from a human sacrifice. Plus Bloodraven that did incest personally. I doubt they care great deal about human marriage practises. To all these ancient Children, humans are most likely vermin that sadly infested their land and brought demise to all its original inhabitants. They won't care to send a divine punishment on some folks because they're uncle and niece or even brother and sister. They won't bother to curse their children. And surely as hell aren't able to make them suffer in afterlife (if there's any in the books; there's none in the show). Most humans and their believes are probably quite irrelevant to them.

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19 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I would also caution against glorifying the avuncular marriages within the Stark family tree. Rickon Stark was Cregan's oldest son and heir, and by the traditional inheritance system in Westeros, his daughters would both be ahead of Cregan's other sons in succession (we see this with Alys Karstark in ADWD). Seeing as Rickon apparently predeceased his father, I think it's quite likely that the Stark sisters' marriages to their uncles was used as a way to rob them of their birthright. Both Serena and Sansa should have inherited Winterfell before their uncle Jonnel, and yet they clearly did not. 

Well, actually, it is the other way around. There was never Queen Regnant or Ruling Lady of Winterfell in the North which means that Sansa and Serena Stark had little to no claim to Winterfell as per ancient Stark tradition. If there were people arguing in their favor it would have been modernists following the unification of the laws done by the Old King.

If an uncle truly came after a daughter there would be precedent for that in the Stark history. But there is none.

That means that Cregan may actually have been forced to marry his daughters to his true heirs - his sons by his third wife, Lynara Stark - to prevent them from making trouble. Back in the good old days before the Conquest it should have been much more easier to push such women aside. The Northmen only follow strength, and women usually aren't seen as being strong.

How it came to be that Edric and Serena's sons Cregard and Torrhen did not inherit Winterfell is a huge mystery - and may be the seed for the struggle George intends to tell in the Winterfell Dunk & Egg story. Serena would only be in her sixties in that story, and she might have nurtured more than a few grudges throughout her life.

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33 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

They might not function equally the same, but if incest was not a problem, people would be inbreeding more often for power issues and the faiths would not formid any type of incest.

Right, which I acknowledged. There are two aspects to the opposition to incest but neither apply in the case of Daenerys and Jon. The genetics do not work like they do in the real world and the two of them have never had a familial relationship. 

This would be much different if was Jon and Sansa because they were raised as brother and sister and have always regarded themselves that way. 

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1 hour ago, Newstar said:

Oh, for crying out loud. It's a fact that GRRM has chosen to build the world of Westeros around a dynasty that regularly practices incest and has several incestuous relationship. It's a fact that the most prominent romantic relationship in ASOIAF so far is between a brother/sister pair. It's a fact that two of the three lead characters in ASOIAF are descended from incestuous lines (three if you buy A+J=T). It's also a fact that GRRM has written hundreds of thousands of words about this incestuous dynasty and their incestuous romances.

It would be quite silly, and very ineffective to attempt to portray a message in regards to the implications of incest, in a story that didn't prominently feature incest. I'm not sure how you pointing out the obvious inclusion of this aspect, in any way supports your stance.

Or are you implying that he also endorses/sees nothing wrong with feudalism, murder, rape, torture etc.?

 

 

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Does the show intend it to be a problem? In that it'll probably be yet another in an ever-growing list of artificial conflicts, then yes. Setting it up is fairly easy. Executing it though is complicated in that it involves politics, relationship development and character development, and we've seen the writers evade these more complicated issues this season in the cheapest of ways with so many important scenes happening off-screen.

It'll be hand-waved off. The NK will attack, Jon and Dany won't be able to further their relationship because of war and problems, one or both will die, and it'll no longer be an issue. But we'll sure talk about it a lot in the off-season which is the intent.

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Well, actually, the story does feature incest prominently but most readers are simply choosing to ignore it, apparently. Most of the great houses of each of the kingdoms have been marrying within a handful of families for centuries and centuries. Like I have repeated ad nauseam, Martin has chosen to wave away the genetic implications of incest. 

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7 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

:lmao:So you, as in you LV, can go on and on about George is basically ripping off other authors, Tolkien for one, even though George says he is writing a very different type and style of story that Tolkien writes, but how dare anyone use George's work to show his own themes and method of thought. Clutch your pearls! Sorry, but if you want to see how the author uses his inspiration and mixes into his own words, read his work. He has his own literary voice down pat. You just need to listen. 

You are not saying anything there. An author does write different stories, not the same story again and again. Parallels are parallels and not the same stories again and again.

The idea that you can predict or tell what an unfinished story just because you have read other stories of the same author is simply wrong.

Not to mention, you know, that context matters. What is bad in one story might not be bad in another.

31 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

You do know that George talked about the Karstarks and the author doesn't even see them as being related because they are too far removed, right? There is a Stark family tree online and in the World book. Incest and even closely related happened almost never, except the control exception mentioned earlier. 

That is just crap. You do know that there are Stark-Karstark marriages all over the place. True, in the direct line the last Karstark marriage is between Ned's great-great-great-grandfather Brandon and Alys Karstark, but Ned's great-granduncle Artos was married to Lysara Karstark. They are kin, never mind what George said in a nonchalant manner. And you twisting the meaning there - what he does say is that the Karstarks are not particularly closely related to the Starks in comparison to the other Northern houses, not that there is no kinship at all. They are all related to each other.

The Starks went to a strong bottleneck thanks to their cousin marriages and their recent tragedies. Marrying Branda Stark and Jocelyn Stark to men outside the North separated the Northern houses from the main branch of House Stark. That's why the next in line to Winterfell are in the Vale not in the North. But this doesn't mean they are all cousins to various degrees up there. The Starks also must be kin of the Boltons, never mind that they never intermarry with them directly in the family tree.

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