Some Thoughts on Feature Preservation

[Corvo the Crow]

We are told that families have certain looks and these are mostly, if not entirely, preserved throughout generations. How does that happen? I am here to suggest a two part solution for this mystery, with examples provided.

But first, here is the link to the other thread

and a list of some features preserved within certain houses that define them (still a WIP)

 

 

Part I: Genetics

In another thread people have tried to apply Mendelian genetics to this with not much success. While Mendelian genetics doesn't apply to most traits discussed there (if it applies to any at all) in our world
I think it may yet apply in the world of ASOIAF, albeit in a different way than "traditional" "Black/Brown is dominant and blond recessive"

Below will be an example where it fails to deliver

Whenever a Baratheon marries a Lannister, their offspring always have the coal of Baratheon and not gold of Lannister.

This applies to Baratheon-Targaryen offspring too with Orys not having the Targaryen coloring and also possibly Steffon having black hair of his paternal side, though this isn't certain with his maternal grand mother being a Blackwood

In Lannister-Baratheon marriages dominant black (B) and recessive blonde (b) gives us BB x bb = Bb, so Black haired Baratheons.

All seems alright, right? Well it's not.

Lanna is the daughter of Sailor's Wife

From all we are know, Sailor's Wife is Tysha, and Lanna her daughter through Tyrion.

Tysha was dark haired, which I'll take as brown since only time dark hair is given a color, it is brown.

Tyrion (bb) x Tysha (BB) = Lanna (bb) as you can see, it didn't work here.

Since we don't know who her parents are, Lanna could very well be bb but then surfaces this problem; we don't know who those Baratheons' parents were either and since black hair isn't so common ammong Westerosi (smallfolk mostly have brown hair and only a few noble houses have black hair, with the rest having brown, blond or red), some of their offspring should have ended up with colors lighter than black as they would be carrying not Black alleles too.

Anyway, going onwards, here is a solution to this, again using Mendelian genetics, but in a slightly different way.

There will be dominant and recessive alleles in my solution too, but instead of seperating them as dominant B(lack) and recessive b(londe), I will group them further like dominant B(rown) which the Starks and many noble families with brown hair as an established trait have and recessive b(rown) which Tysha has and yielded to Tyrion's dominant blond hair.

 

I am suggesting 2 (for the moment) "alleles" for same color, for example Brown 1 and Brown 2, 1 being recessive form and 2 being the dominant one, which is also a selfish gene carried by houses throughout generations. Starks, for example have Brown 2, so they have preserved their brown hair both in their phenotype and genotype but Tysha had Brown 1, so her children with Tyrion having Blond 2 and Brown 1 has the Blonde look. This is just for starters and to give some idea and it's, subject to change since there are instances of two families with preserved features mixing and having offspring that has the phenotype of either the mother, or the father when their preserved features are for the same area, like Catelyn-Eddard marriage. There's also instances (or maybe just one) of two families with preserved features only having offspring with one parent's features of the same area.

 

Part II: Eugenetics

This is the part where "unsuitable" offspring are ultimately prevented from becoming ancestors to the main line, either through peaceful solutions like Duncan abdicating as Prince of Dragonstone, or through more violent ones like Robb with the Tully look getting killed.

I'll elaborate this when I have time and add more examples, like Targaryens with their mother's looks not being able to carry it on forward or Joffrey non-Baratheon's death.

[Lady Dacey]

2 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

 

We are told that families have certain looks and these are mostly, if not entirely, preserved throughout generations

 

I'm not sure this is true, not more than it is in real life. The only exception seems to be the black Baratheon hair. 

[Lady Dacey]

Just one example: Catelyn says her children have a "Tully look" because they look like her. We know she and her children have auburn hair - she got that hair color from her Whent mom, and she still call it "Tully look" just because her children have more of her look than Ned's look. Doesn't mean auburn has been "Tully look" for generations. It's just her hair color and her sibilings. It's very mundane. 

[Megorova]

5 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

All seems alright, right? Well it's not.

Lanna is the daughter of Sailor's Wife

From all we are know, Sailor's Wife is Tysha, and Lanna her daughter through Tyrion.

Tysha was dark haired, which I'll take as brown since only time dark hair is given a color, it is brown.

Tyrion (bb) x Tysha (BB) = Lanna (bb) as you can see, it didn't work here.

This is where you're wrong - Tysha can be dark-haired and be a carrier of Bb alleles. Thus -

Tyrion (b1b2) x Tysha (B3b4) = b1B3 or b1b4 or b2B3 or b2b4 - 50% possibility for their child to be light-haired, and 50% to be dark-haired.

 

People with dark hair could be carriers of b - light color alleles.

People with dark hair could also be carriers of one R allele (red hair alleles), but to have a red hair, a person has to have double RR. There is not one pair of alleles, there are two - first is BB or Bb or bb, while second is RR or Rr or rr.

I didn't included second pair of alleles in my modeling in thread about genetics, because all those people were not red-haired, thus in their second pair they had rr or Rr alleles, and non of their children had red hair, thus there was no cases when two parents with Rr alleles in second pair, both passed to their children R allele. Thus there was no need to include in modeling both pairs of alleles, and we used only first with B and b, dark hair or light hair. 

BBRr or BBrr or BbRr or Bbrr - dark hair; bbRr or bbrr - light hair; and if person recieves one R from one parent and one R from the other parent, then it doesn't matter what alleles he/she received in first pair from his/her parents, whether it's BB or Bb or bb, because if the person has RR in second pair, then it blocks production of melanin in first pair, and thus this person will have red hair. People with red hair could have this models - (BB)RR or (Bb)RR or (bb)RR.  RR alleles block coloring in first pair of alleles.

 

Also about dark eyes - person with dark eyes can be carrier of blue or green allele, thus person with brown or even black eyes, can have blue-eyed or green-eyed children. Like this:

BrownGreen - brown eyes, BrownBlue - brown eyes. GreenBlue - green eyes. BlueBlue - blue eyes.

People with black eyes and grey eyes are carriers of Brown allele, they just have bigger or smaller amount of coloring pigment than in brown color. Same with different shades of blue eyes, such as lilac, purple, violet, indigo, midnight blue, or sky blue.

[Corvo the Crow]

3 hours ago, Lady Dacey said:

I'm not sure this is true, not more than it is in real life. The only exception seems to be the black Baratheon hair. 

Actually there are plenty of examples. We see members of the same house sharing their features generations apart (Dondarrions as one of my favorite examples) you can check this thread where I have compiled features from many houses.

 

3 hours ago, Lady Dacey said:

Just one example: Catelyn says her children have a "Tully look" because they look like her. We know she and her children have auburn hair - she got that hair color from her Whent mom, and she still call it "Tully look" just because her children have more of her look than Ned's look. Doesn't mean auburn has been "Tully look" for generations. It's just her hair color and her sibilings. It's very mundane. 

I have already given the list above and I'm sure you'll be intrigued and check it, but for other peoples' convenience: We never get to know what color was Minisa's hair. But we do know that while Hoster was brown haired, Brynden had auburn hair. Hoster having brown hair may be an oversight from GRRM. It is her jaw and high cheekbones Catelyn gets from her mother, the cheekbones she then passes on to Sansa, but are never described as Tully features.

 

[Corvo the Crow]

@Megorova

 

5 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Since we don't know who her parents are, Lanna could very well be bb but then surfaces this problem we don't know who those Baratheons' parents were either and since black hair isn't so common ammong Westerosi (smallfolk mostly have brown hair and only a few noble houses have black hair, with the rest having brown, blond or red),

Unless you suggest Baratheons went Targaryen with their marriages, then they too must have carried light hair alleles but all Baratheon-Lannister offspring are coal haired.

[Megorova]

3 hours ago, Lady Dacey said:

Just one example: Catelyn says her children have a "Tully look" because they look like her. We know she and her children have auburn hair - she got that hair color from her Whent mom, and she still call it "Tully look" just because her children have more of her look than Ned's look. Doesn't mean auburn has been "Tully look" for generations. It's just her hair color and her sibilings. It's very mundane. 

To have auburn hair Catelyn and her siblings were supposed to get one R from BOTH parents.

Hoster Tully had brown hair and blue eyes, and his brother Brynden had auburn hair and blue eyes. Thus auburn hair wasn't genetic trait that Cat got solely from her Whent mother, her uncle Brynden who was Tully from previous generation, also had auburn hair.

It's actually isn't known whether Minisa had auburn hair. What is known about her looks, is that she had soft hands and a warm smile, and that Catelyn resembles Minisa in her cheekbones and jaw, NOTHING about her hair color.

Thus even though Cat's father had brown hair, Cat inherited red hair from her father, from Tully's side, and from her mother from Whent's side, even though it's possible that neither of her parents actually had auburn hair, what matters is that each of them were a carrier of at least one R allele, and passed it to all three of their children.

Hoster with his brown hair was carrier of either BbRr or BBRr, and his R passed to his children.

Then Catelyn, that was carrier of (BB)RR or (Bb)RR or maybe even (bb)RR passed her R to her children, along with one allele from her first pair. And second R her children got from Ned, who was probably BBRr. And he probably got his R from his great grandmother Melantha Blackwood. Probably, like majority of Blackwoods, she was dark-haired, but there was always a lot of red-heads in Riverlands (where Blackwoods lived). So probably Melantha was a carrier of one R allele, and passed it to her offsprings, including Ned, and from him to his children, that also got one R from their mother Cat, and thus they were carrier of RR and had auburn hair.

From Tully's looks Cat's children inherited not only auburn hair color, but also blue eyes (which is genetic trait of Tullys), and Cat's high cheekbones (Sansa), Tullys stocky build (Robb), Tullys hair and eyes color (Bran and Rickon). 

 

There are also other families that for many generations had their brand look: Lannisters with various shades of blond hair and green eyes, Conningtons with their red hair, Dondarrions with their golden-red hair, Targaryens with their various shades of light hair and blue eyes.

[Darion Storm]

It could be a case of gene dominance, perhaps the black Baratheon hair is a particularly dominant one. I doubt it is a 100% thing throughout history, there’s bound to be some outliers we don’t know about.

The Targaryen thing is more a purposeful effort to keep the bloodline pure. Though there does seem to be a theme of Targs with non-Valyrian wives having non-Valyrian firstborns.