Is Tommen Roberts trueborn heir?

[danm_999]

Genes really don't work the same in Westeros, though. At this point in the legacy, Dany should be making Hodor look like Littlefinger. Instead, she's pretty normal in the biological sense, outside of the familial tendency toward insanity. In other words, you can't use real world genetics as a basis for arguments here.

You actually have to go quite a bit further than the Targaryens do to get to that sort of disfunction. They at least often marry the other great houses of Westeros to keep a modicrum of genetic diversity. If you look at dynasties like the Ptolemies, so long as you inject an outsider every generation or so, you're not going to get a crop of feeble mindeds.

To actually get to the point where inbreeding causes mental retardation consistently, you have to maintain Hapsburg dynasty style customs, where you literally only marry your cousins, brothers and sisters or aunts and uncles.

[Silver Spearwife]

Hm. All right, well, I'll concede. Still, it's long been noted that genes don't really work the same so *shrug*.

[LuisDantas]

Just to be specific: Daenerys is the granddaughter of Aegon V the Unlikely, who we know to have married for love (presumably with a non-Targaryen, although we don't know for sure). His own grandmother was a Dornish princess of House Martell. We don't know who his mother was, but Maekar I Targaryen doesn't look like the sort of person who would marry a close relative.

[jlk7e]

In terms of the hair genetics, the whole "Baratheons always have dark-haired children for hundreds of years!" thing is silly and doesn't make sense in terms of real world genetics. Any Baratheon who is the son of a blond-haired mother ought to have a gene for blond hair, so any of his children would have a 50% chance of blondness if he married a blond woman.

That being said, dark hair is dominant, and all of Robert's 16 bastards are dark-haired. That would mean that *Robert* almost certainly doesn't have a gene for blondness, and it would be impossible for him to have a blond son.

[danm_999]

In terms of the hair genetics, the whole "Baratheons always have dark-haired children for hundreds of years!" thing is silly and doesn't make sense in terms of real world genetics. Any Baratheon who is the son of a blond-haired mother ought to have a gene for blond hair, so any of his children would have a 50% chance of blondness if he married a blond woman.

The point wasn't the Baratheons were always having dark haired children, the point was that every time a Baratheon married a Lannister or someone with light hair, the immediate offspring was dark haired.

Obviously a recessive gene has the potential to kick in after a few generations, but that's not what was being looked at.

[jlk7e]

The point wasn't the Baratheons were always having dark haired children, the point was that every time a Baratheon married a Lannister or someone with light hair, the immediate offspring was dark haired.

Obviously a recessive gene has the potential to kick in after a few generations, but that's not what was being looked at.

Yes, but surely some of those Baratheons marrying blond people must have carried the light haired gene, if genetics works like it does in our world. Even if the dark-haired child of a Baratheon and a Lannister marries someone else with dark hair, there's a 50% chance that their kid would carry the blond gene. There should absolutely be examples of blond-haired Baratheons.

[danm_999]

Yes, but surely some of those Baratheons marrying blond people must have carried the light haired gene, if genetics works like it does in our world. Even if the dark-haired child of a Baratheon and a Lannister marries someone else with dark hair, there's a 50% chance that their kid would carry the blond gene. There should absolutely be examples of blond-haired Baratheons.

There probably are. There are just no examples of a blonde haired Baratheon marrying a Lannister or light haired noble and the child being of fair hair. That's the point of a recessive gene, it pops up eventually, not straight away.

[LuisDantas]

In the real world, we would need to know quite a bit more than we do about Robert's ancestors to say with any certainty that he can't have. For one thing, we haven't met much more than half of his alleged 16 children. All that we know of do indeed have black hair, but that is hardly conclusive.

Heck, what little we know about his own ancestors is that he, like Daenerys, is great-grandson of Aegon V (I said earlier that Daenerys is his granddaughter, my mistake). His grandmother was Aegon's and his mother was Cassandra Estermont.

We know that his male ancestors were consistently of black hair, but in the real world that would in no way imply that he can't have inherited recessive genes for blond hair from his mother and/or grandmother. Having blond children with Cersei would be definitely possible. In a fantasy world, the odds can't be exactly null either.

It all comes down to how much we can trust the conviction of Maggy, Jaime and Cersei herself that there is no way Robert can be their father. Jaime, obviously, wouldn't know for sure in the best of cases. Cersei doesn't strike me as the kind of person who can be trusted to her word on this matter even if she is sincere. As for Maggy, even taking for granted that her prophecies are 100% accurate, I don't think she ever stated that there would be no overlap between Robert's 16 and Cersei's three.

[Bayard]

Well, we kind of know how small a chance it is. Every time for thousands of years a Baratheon or Lannister has married, the immediate offspring has been black haired.

So if in 100% of cases we have evidence of, black dominates blonde genes. This gives us no reason to doubt Tommen is Jaime's son.

Are you making this stuff up??? The Baratheon family is only about 300 years old, just as the Targaryens. I don't know if there is any mention of a prior marriage between the two houses!!

[danm_999]

No, I'm not making it up. Here's an excerpt from Game of Thrones:

The seed is strong, Jon Arryn had cried on his deathbed, and so it was. All those bastards, all with hair as black as night. Grand Maester

Malleon recorded the last mating between stag and lion, some ninety years ago, when Tya Lannister wed Gowen Baratheon, third son of the

reigning lord. Their only issue, an unnamed boy described in Malleon’s tome as a large and lusty lad born with a full head of black hair, died

in infancy. Thirty years before that a male Lannister had taken a Baratheon maid to wife. She had given him three daughters and a son, each

black-haired. No matter how far back Ned searched in the brittle yellowed pages, always he found the gold yielding before the coal.

Additionally, while the Great House's male line has only existed for 300, the female line descended through Storm Kings has been around for thousands, and it explictly states Ned cannot find a precedent for a black haired and blonde haired coupling producing anything but a black haired child, looking as far back as the book goes (the Age of Heroes, because it mentions Lann the Clever).

The TV actually spells it out for you as well, Ned Stark reads the names of all the Baratheon's aloud and the repitition makes it obvious they're all black haired. I realize though the TV show can be considered dodgy canon.

[Hear Us Roar]

There were many morning after pill/abortion like drugs throughout history. I think they called it Moon Tea. Plus blonde hair is recessive if i call. Most of their kids would have to have been black haired

[Pellaeon]

There were many morning after pill/abortion like drugs throughout history. I think they called it Moon Tea. Plus blonde hair is recessive if i call. Most of their kids would have to have been black haired

Yes but not all would have black hair