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How much "blood of the dragon" does Dany really have?

Magic 8 Ball

By Magic 8 Ball,
in General (ASoIaF)

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Theda Baratheon Council Member

Theda Baratheon

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I really respect your work on the genetics about the targs and their procentual "Targyness" buuuut…If those maniacs really have actual Dragons in their familytree then there is something going on that you can only answer with "magic, thats why!".

Seriously, what sort of morals did the Valyrians had when incest and sex with magical lizards than brings viable offspring was totally okay?? Actually that could answer this "he looked like a scaly human dragon" thing about Rhaego. (Disclaimer: This post is based on things in Rans post about dragons in the Targ Background and should be ignored if we all misunderstood it.)

they had ACTUAL DRAGONS in their FAMILY TREE?

jesus fuck

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Ser Ennepe Council Member

Ser Ennepe

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they had ACTUAL DRAGONS in their FAMILY TREE?

jesus fuck

Only If I understood this correctly :lol:

I give some credence to the idea that there's some dragon in the Targaryen background. Something very odd was going on, anyways.

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boojam Council Member

boojam

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I'm generally skeptical of the accuracy of family trees, and realizing that surnames often have little to do with heritage, I decided to look into Dany's family tree to determine just how Targ she really is from a biological perspective.

I've done this before with Ottoman Sultans, tracing descendency down from Mehmet II, and it was surprising to find that after a few centuries, most of the Sultans had barely a drop of Turkic blood. (and that's assuming family pedigrees are accurate, which studies suggest are generally wrong 30% of the time, fairly consistently, when identifying the bio father)

So we know that Dany's parents were siblings, right? (or should I say 70% certain?)

Well, go back a little farther and we see that Jahaerys II married for love, rather than a traditional Targ coupling. One might assume this was a non-targ. Whoops, there goes half the "blood of the dragon".

I can't find who Egg and Maekar married. now she's at either 50% or 12.5%.

Maekar's mom was Dornish. Now we're between 25% or 6.25%

Aegon before him coupled with his sister, among many others. Way to preserve that Dragon blood, oh unworthy one!

But his father was a hand of the King who was never expected to rule. Perhaps we might assume he didn't marry a sister when the lineage of the dynasty was not thought to be at stake? - Targ blood is now 12.5% - 3.125%

We don't know who Rhaenyra coupled with - I'll be generous and accuse her of incest.

But her dad married an Arryn - now we're at 6.25%- 1.5%

We don't even have any information on the preceding generation.

In other words, it is difficult to assume that despite the best intentions of Targ incest, that Dany has any more than 5% "blood of the dragon". She's more likely sitting around 1 or 2 percent. Heck, one of her ancestors could have had an affair, and she could in reality be 0%.

This isn't meant to bash Dany - rather I see it as a way of viewing ancestry as irrelevant and pointless. It is something endemic to her character and her own positive traits that make her special, all the talk of "Dragon's Blood" is just silly.

Well George sure didn't think it thru , several people noted long ago that the Valyrian custom of incestuous politics had bad genetic consequences ... an analog for the Ptolemaic Kingdom ~ 304 BC.

Tho there , there there was joint brother - sister rule (if one sibling did not kill the other!).

Still this kind of incest did not usually lead to psychological problems, but it sure did , and could lead to bad physiological ones.

So it's been postulated that Martin's World genetics work different.

I don't think GRRM ever thought about it, except to imply it leading to madness which is not exactly a common outcome in this world.

I don't know where Geroge's genealogy for the Targs comes from. I just don't read the books closely enough.

What the charts show are a surprise to me.

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Magic 8 Ball Noble

Magic 8 Ball

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I think he meant "they had non turkic wifes"

The issue with the Ottoman pedigree brings up relevant comparisons to the Targs, and I think answers a few of the objections people are raising to the notion that Dany can't possibly have that miniscule of an amount of Valyrian blood.

To answer the earlier questions : The 30% rule wasn't in reference to the Ottomans, it is to the population in general, and fairly consistent across cultures and geography. That was to illustrate the silliness of assuming your family surname has much to do with your actual biology.

With regards to the Ottomans, it really raises some fascinating parallels to the Targs -

People have been referencing the Hapsburgs producing idiots and mutants - I think I already addressed that hemophilia has nothing to do with inbreeding - but look at the Ottomans, who were the least inbred royal house of Europe by far, yet they produced plenty of idiots on their own. Inbreeding and it's relation to idiocy is vastly overrated in the popular imagination.

Perhaps most relevant is the way the Sultans actually LOOKED - very early on in Ottoman history, you found several Sultans who were fair skinned, red haired, blue eyed - as you might expect given their lack of Turkic blood.

Now, go and look at a photo of the very last Sultan - despite having barely a drop of Turkic blood, you know what he looked like? A Turk. This shows even in real life you can have phenotypic traits re-emerge strongly generations later despite the dilution of the genes with regards to those traits.

With Dany, you have dark haired Targs thru the years, and generations later still have the Valyrian traits emerge. It is plausible.

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Theda Baratheon Council Member

Theda Baratheon

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But it's not really plausible because the universe of ASOIAF is not this Universe. Blood and genetics are completely different. It's a really interesting thread and I respect that you've put a lot of effort into it but at the end of the day, it's all rather irrelevant.

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Magic 8 Ball Noble

Magic 8 Ball

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My point in this thread wasn't to prove any agenda with regards to Dany/great vs. Dany/evil.

I had just noted a lot of people in threads talking about her like she had some super-concentrated Valyrian blood "due to all that incest" - it just chapped my hide as a physician, I just wanted to demonstrate that

1. She ain't all that Valyrian

2. Incest doesn't make you "more" anything. If I'm 75% Irish and so is my sister, we don't have 150% Irish babies.

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The Red Pope Council Member

The Red Pope

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I'm generally skeptical of the accuracy of family trees, and realizing that surnames often have little to do with heritage, I decided to look into Dany's family tree to determine just how Targ she really is from a biological perspective.

I've done this before with Ottoman Sultans, tracing descendency down from Mehmet II, and it was surprising to find that after a few centuries, most of the Sultans had barely a drop of Turkic blood. (and that's assuming family pedigrees are accurate, which studies suggest are generally wrong 30% of the time, fairly consistently, when identifying the bio father)

So we know that Dany's parents were siblings, right? (or should I say 70% certain?)

Well, go back a little farther and we see that Jahaerys II married for love, rather than a traditional Targ coupling. One might assume this was a non-targ. Whoops, there goes half the "blood of the dragon".

I can't find who Egg and Maekar married. now she's at either 50% or 12.5%.

Maekar's mom was Dornish. Now we're between 25% or 6.25%

Aegon before him coupled with his sister, among many others. Way to preserve that Dragon blood, oh unworthy one!

But his father was a hand of the King who was never expected to rule. Perhaps we might assume he didn't marry a sister when the lineage of the dynasty was not thought to be at stake? - Targ blood is now 12.5% - 3.125%

We don't know who Rhaenyra coupled with - I'll be generous and accuse her of incest.

But her dad married an Arryn - now we're at 6.25%- 1.5%

We don't even have any information on the preceding generation.

In other words, it is difficult to assume that despite the best intentions of Targ incest, that Dany has any more than 5% "blood of the dragon". She's more likely sitting around 1 or 2 percent. Heck, one of her ancestors could have had an affair, and she could in reality be 0%.

This isn't meant to bash Dany - rather I see it as a way of viewing ancestry as irrelevant and pointless. It is something endemic to her character and her own positive traits that make her special, all the talk of "Dragon's Blood" is just silly.

The effect could be reduced a bit by the sons by the "outside marriages" marrying "full Targ" cousins rather than "half Targ" sisters. If this was done on all occasions Daenerys would have twice as much Valyrian blood as in your scenario. Am I right?

No Avatar- that movie suck

Thou shalt not commit blasphemy!

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Magic 8 Ball Noble

Magic 8 Ball

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Red Pope - yes, the only real wiggle room I can see for upping the Valyrian content of Dany's genome comes by two ways -

The purported "out marriages" were to someone who had some degree of Valyrian blood - in the case of the Arryn marriage, I find this unlikely due to it's occurrence not too long after the conquest, in the first Martell marriage, it is unlikely because the Targs and Martells had previously been at war. I can't really speak for the marriage to House Strong, I suppose this one is tenuous due to my now realizing the source for this one was an RPG. With regards to the second Martell marriage, yes she did pick up some Valyrian blood from this, but this could be either very miniscule, or perhaps a greater source of Valyrian blood than through the line of succession proper, we don't have enough Martell history to say for sure.

With regards to the Velaryon cousin marriage, that would be another potential source that I have already touched upon, but to interpret every "marriage for love" as being to a cousin from a reproductively isolated population of Valyrians, well... That is sort of stretching things, I think.

Best case reasonable scenario, we could stretch from the 1-3% level - probably add that up to 3-8ish percent depending on the Martell family tree, with extremely generous assumptions of marriages to reproductively isolated cousins, you could get much higher but to nowhere near 40-50%, and it really stretches credibility.

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Magic 8 Ball Noble

Magic 8 Ball

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BTW Red Pope, when I get the time I'll do the calculations on an absolute best case scenario for Dany, however unlikely it may be, and get back to you on just how high I can pump the Targness by making borderline ridiculous but still technically plausible assumptions. I'll try to have to figure the genome on Danaerys - the first one, and then plug in full blooded Valyrians into every gap, there will still be wiggle room due to the unknown generation, though.

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