whats the significance of 1 out of 5 stark children looking like Ned?

[Pod The Rod]

I agree with the others saying that it's a plot devise to bring the reader to draw upon the hints that Jon Snow looks only like Arya out of his "siblings" and she looks like Lyanna. Leading to the R+L=J theory.

Now to the physical reason why Arya does not look like her other four sibilings. I am no geneticist and there are no solid facts on hair color in genetics but GRRM is also not a geneticist so lets assume he went with the more err, traditional modern theories on hair color genes. I believe there's the idea that black/brunette hair is a dominate gene over blonde in the passages with the whole "the seed is strong" thing with King Robert and his bastards. However, Red hair is believed to be a mutation (though a recessive one) and less controlled in where it pops up if the genes are there for it. Truthfully though, it comes down to melanin colors. Sansa, Robb, Rickon and Bran have more pheomelanin and Jon and Arya have more eumelanin. Not much of a mystery. Though not very common two brunette parents can produce a blonde child.

I agree. Parental hair color doesn't at all dictate child hair color. My dad had black hair, and my mother has brown hair, and my sister is a golden blonde.

[Lointain]

I think that can be something like this:

Catelyn dead -> 1 Stark with Tully looks dead: Robb.

Eddard dead -> 1 Stark with Stark looks dead in the future: Arya (living with a death cult of brainwashed assassins is quite risky...).

[Queen Sansa Stark]

That the Tully blood is stronger than the Stark one.

[David Selig]

No. Cat is not that dutiful. If we are going to talk about duties, Ned trumps her. Catelyn proved that she can stir the boat when she wants and she doesn't easily abide to all the rules, something like Arya. No, Sansa is Ned 2.0, and funnily, there is so little of Cat in her.

Well, Catelyn herself disagrees with that.

“Our duty.” Catelyn’s face was drawn as she started across the yard. I have always done my duty, she thought. Perhaps that was why her lord father had always cherished her best of all his children. Her two older brothers had both died in infancy, so she had been son as well as daughter to Lord Hoster until Edmure was born. Then her mother had died and her father had told her that she must be the lady of Riverrun now, and she had done that too. And when Lord Hoster promised her to Brandon Stark, she had thanked him for making her such a splendid match.

I gave Brandon my favor to wear, and never comforted Petyr once after he was wounded, nor bid him farewell when Father sent him off. And when Brandon was murdered and Father told me I must wed his brother, I did so gladly, though I never saw Ned’s face until our wedding day. I gave my maidenhood to this solemn stranger and sent him off to his war and his king and the woman who bore him his bastard, because I always did my duty."

[Lilulay]

As a first time reader I sussed R+L = J from the constant reminders that Arya looked like Lyanna and Jon looked like Arya but none of the other children favored them. I do honestly believe that was the intention.

[Ziggy Targdust]

I think It's that Jon looks the most like Ned and Arya favors Ned's sister. Not that the others have no resemblance to Ned or stark whatsoever.

[Mladen]

Well, Catelyn herself disagrees with that.

I am not saying that Catelyn isn't dutiful, I am saying it is not determining her. It's just that she also knows how to flip a table from time to time when the cause is right. Freeing Jaime and capturing Tyrion are two examples of that.

[ladysnowheart]

this could only mean they're edmure's bastard children, while arya is the only stark!

:lmao:

[Errant Bard]

One good thing about ASOIAF characters is that they are not one-trick ponies, and although they can share traits from their ascendants, they also have their own personality. Arya can be not dutiful while Catelyn is and both of them can still share significant character traits, gee.

[ARYa_Nym]

I am not saying that Catelyn isn't dutiful, I am saying it is not determining her. It's just that she also knows how to flip a table from time to time when the cause is right. Freeing Jaime and capturing Tyrion are two examples of that.

But those weren't even out of personal wants but out of a sense of obligation to protect her family so I think it can still be argued she was being dutiful. Freeing Jamie was something she wasn't supposed to do but it was in service to her family still. We later see the girls were important but she had already tried to convince Robb of that.

Her entire life was defined by her doing her duty. Learning to be heir and then being the Lady of WF, having heirs, and protecting those heirs.

[The Fresh PtwP]

I'm rereading the earlier books and i notice that while the kiddos have Tully coloring we don't really know about facial features.

Cat constantly compares the faces Robb makes to Ned. Bran does the same thing when he separates Lord Robb and Robb in his mind.

Also I've been mulling around this idea that Bran looks like Brandon and that is why he is Cat's fave.

I always took it that Arya looks most like Ned, Sansa looks most like Cat and the boys fall in varying parts of the spectrum.

[The King of the Night]

The first book was like a murder mystery and there were different plot points that gave clues to the death of jon arryn and the secret of the jaime cersei incest.

one of the big clues was genetics so George had to pick and choose whose family traits would be prominent/dominant. In the real world i think that Red hair is a recessive trait and dark hair and eyes is typicaly dominant. (i may be wrong, not gregor mendel over here.) But in ASOIAF he chose to make the Tully look dominant over the Stark look. This explains why only 1/5 have the stark look. It also gives hints to who Jon's mother was or father.

[Stormland's Fury]

I wouldn't take genetics too serious in the series.

There are also "special" traits like the Bolton's icy eyes and the Baratheons dark blue ones. Yet they seem to prevail even if it shouldn't make any difference what shade of blue they have, in most cases once they mingle with a dark eyed partner it should be recessive, yet their looks are around for centuries.

I assume in the Baratheon case they are supposed to be dominant because they are darker then regular blue eyes. Or at lest that's how I understood it.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

I wouldn't take genetics too serious in the series.

There are also "special" traits like the Bolton's icy eyes and the Baratheons dark blue ones. Yet they seem to prevail even if it shouldn't make any difference what shade of blue they have, in most cases once they mingle with a dark eyed partner it should be recessive, yet their looks are around for centuries.

I assume in the Baratheon case they are supposed to be dominant because they are darker then regular blue eyes. Or at lest that's how I understood it.

Might be they are supposed to be dominant and (partially) on the Y-chromosome. Which would mean they'd stay in the male line indefinitely.

[Stormland's Fury]

Might be they are supposed to be dominant and (partially) on the Y-chromosome. Which would mean they'd stay in the male line indefinitely.

Which would fit, since another trait of the Baratheons seems to be that they produce just few legitimate children and often males (yes some females), but I think it's also more symbolic. The whole theme of the Baratheons as a family seems to be "confrontation", like their sigil, lands, temper, genes etc.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

You're a secret Targeryen.

It's because when I lose at Monopoly I kick the board and make others to pick up the pieces?

[Jack's Smirking Revenge]

I'm rereading the earlier books and i notice that while the kiddos have Tully coloring we don't really know about facial features.

Cat constantly compares the faces Robb makes to Ned. Bran does the same thing when he separates Lord Robb and Robb in his mind.

Also I've been mulling around this idea that Bran looks like Brandon and that is why he is Cat's fave.

I always took it that Arya looks most like Ned, Sansa looks most like Cat and the boys fall in varying parts of the spectrum.

It's stated repeatedly that Arya has the Starks (Ned's) long face and that Jon is the only son of Ned's who looks like him. Robb may make similar facial expressions (whether that be pursing his lips or whatever it is that Robb does that reminds Cat of Ned) but that doesn't mean that he looks like Ned.

I guess I always took those lines in the book to mean that Arya and Jon have the traditional Stark traits while the rest of the kids take after their mother in looks.

[A Man Reads]

It could be genetics. Maybe more of the Stark children look like their mother because the Tullys are Andals while the Starks are/were First Men. The Andal genes could be dominant. This might help explain why there are fewer First Men in Westeros than there are Andals (one possible reason of many, to be sure). The books make a point to contrast the Stark children's looks against those of the Northerners in ASOIF.

[Stormland's Fury]

It could be genetics. Maybe more of the Stark children look like their mother because the Tullys are Andals while the Starks are/were First Men. The Andal genes could be dominant. This might help explain why there are fewer First Men in Westeros than there are Andals (one possible reason of many, to be sure). The books make a point to contrast the Stark children's looks against those of the Northerners in ASOIF.

Weren't the Stark children one of the few that come from a major house and had mixed traits? I mean, most other families had their "typical" looks. This could also simply tie in with the Riverland-Northern Union among others and that both Bran and Bloodraven are half-Riverlanders...

[Annara Snow]

This.

As far as I can tell, the whole point of reiterating constantly that Arya looks like Lyanna and Jon looks like Arya is to reiterate Lyanna = Jon. Further reiterated by Ned's line in the first episode: "you may not have my name, but you have my blood" (was that in the book? Can't remember). They're family but not necessarily in the father/son sense.

It is in the book, but he doesn't say it to Jon, he said it to Cat years ago when she asked him about who Jon's mother was and if it was Ashara. He told her not to ask him again: "He has my blood, that's all you need to know".

I agree with the others saying that it's a plot device to bring the reader to draw upon the hints that Jon Snow looks only like Arya out of his "siblings" and she looks like Lyanna. Leading to the R+L=J theory.

Now to the physical reason why Arya does not look like her other four sibilings. I am no geneticist and there are no solid facts on hair color in genetics but GRRM is also not a geneticist so lets assume he went with the more err, traditional modern theories on hair color genes. I believe there's the idea that black/brunette hair is a dominate gene over blonde in the passages with the whole "the seed is strong" thing with King Robert and his bastards. However, Red hair is believed to be a mutation (though a recessive one) and less controlled in where it pops up if the genes are there for it. Truthfully though, it comes down to melanin colors. Sansa, Robb, Rickon and Bran have more pheomelanin and Jon and Arya have more eumelanin. Not much of a mystery. Though not very common two brunette parents can produce a blonde child.

No, actually red hair gene is not a mutation, it is a recessive gene. There are two different pigments that determine hair color: eumelanin (whose amount determines if the hair is darker or lighter) and pheomelanin (whose presence makes the hair red/reddish). The non-red hair gene is dominant, the red hair gene is recessive.

BTW if GRRM was using the real world genetics as a basis for "the seed is strong", he got it all wrong. There's a popular misconception that "dark hair is dominant" means that dark haired person + blonde person = dark haired child. That couldn't be more wrong. Since dark hair gene is dominant, a dark haired person may very well have a recessive blonde gene, so dark haired person + blonde person can produce blonde children just as likely as dark haired children, and even two dark haired people can realistically produce blonde children if they both have recessive genes. Now, maybe Robert had two dominant genes, so all his kids had dark hair; however, the idea that Baratheons always produce black haired children in every generation makes no sense at all, if we go by real world genetics. They married blonde and red haired women and probably silver haired women too (Robert's grandma was a Targ, so she may have been silver haired), so they should have had lots of recessive genes in the family line.

But GRRM gives us no other example of "seed is strong" (the Martells, for instance, have dark hair, but they produced silver haired children as well as dark haired when they married the Targaryens), I assume that the Baratheon gene is just "magical" somehow.

Sansa didn't die in KL because LF took her out after the PW. Otherwise her head would have been on the chopping block, same as her father's because she trusted the wrong people.

That's incorrect. Sansa's head was in danger only because LF (through Dontos) framed her for the PW, and he framed her for PW only so he could get her out after PW (also through Dontos) and make her dependent on himself. Furthermore, without LF's influence and his spying (through Dontos again), Sansa would have married Willas Tyrell and gone to Highgarden. Even if that had fallen through, Sansa would have remained in KL but her head wouldn't have been in danger - she wouldn't have been framed for PW, and she was too valuable a pawn with her claim to Winterfell. LF only 'saved' her from a pickle he put her into in the first place so he could swoop in and get her out.

I can definitely see the parallels for Rickon+Brandon and Lyanna+Arya. I can also see the similarities between Sansa and Ned, but I think she's more of a Cat, in that they're both very dutiful (a pretty defining trait for both Sansa and Cat).

No. Cat is not that dutiful. If we are going to talk about duties, Ned trumps her. Catelyn proved that she can stir the boat when she wants and she doesn't easily abide to all the rules, something like Arya. No, Sansa is Ned 2.0, and funnily, there is so little of Cat in her.

I would say dutiful is Catelyn's defining trait. She said she always did what her father expected of her. She was the obedient child.

She married Ned gladly and without complaint even though she had no personal interest in him-that's dutiful.

When Ned told her to do something she did it-not questioning him about Jon and she really didn't rebel about Jon. Cersei for example would have reacted differently.

She does abide by the rules. She always dressed her part and was disturbed by the unconventional women she was around but gradually came to like them anyways.

She did do things like releasing Jamie and kidnapping Tyrion but that was out of obligation to protect her family so it's still out of dutifulness.

Being Robb's counselor was out of duty. She felt weary and was not fond of war but served Robb because she felt he needed her counsel. That's dutiful.

Both Ned and Catelyn are dutiful actually.

I have to agree with Arya_nym here. Catelyn was very dutiful; she was more dedicated to family than to duty, but duty comes right after that. Her motivations were very much like the Tully words: family, duty, honor, in the exact same order. Catelyn wasn't forced to marry Ned or did it because she felt she had no choice - she thinks to herself that she did it out of duty to her father, because she was a dutiful daughter. That's very different from how Cersei thinks about her marriage to Robert, or Lysa about her marriage to Jon (and I don't think Hoster would put such a pressure on Cat as he did on Lysa - Cat wasn't a "soiled" bride and would be very sought after by other suitors, and Ned would hardly insist on the marriage as the only way to form an alliance).

But I also disagree with all of you: Sansa is not dutiful. I see people call her that, and maybe it's because other characters in the story (Tyrion, LF) do the same - but it's just a sign that those characters don't understand her personality and misinterpret her behavior. I find it ironic that the word is used so much in her chapters - by other people, because we have her internal thoughts and we can see that Sansa is really not motivated by duty at all. Jon is motivated by duty; Dany is motivated by duty a lot of times (as during the Meereen storyline when she feels she must remain in Meereen, marry Hizdahr and make peace out of duty to her people). Ned and Cat are motivated by duty. But Sansa is no more dutiful than Arya. Sansa is courteous, which is very different. She uses courtesy as her armor - often to keep people at arm's length (as in her marriage to Tyrion and generally in KL). She is often, but not always, obedient, which is a different thing, too - because it's not motivated by a sense of duty. Sansa had a very conventional outlook on the world in the beginning, but that, again, was not because she felt it was her duty to marry, have babies and be a lady even if she disliked it. No: she genuinely enjoyed the 'ladylike' pursuits (knitting, singing, poetry, dancing, nice clothes, looking pretty) and she was also really good at them and got a lot of praise, while neither of these was true of Arya; and she was also always eager to please, as Cat notes. But the reason she was eager to please is because 1) Sansa wants to be liked/loved and 2) Sansa wanted everything to be nice and everyone to be happy. She also bought the idea that her marriage would be full of love and happiness, and thought Joffrey was her prince charming. She never thought for a moment: "Ugh, I don't want to marry this boy, but I will do it because it's my duty to my father".

In fact, when Ned tried to deny Sansa something she really wanted at the time, or thoughts she wanted - to marry Joffrey, who she was infatuated with, to stay in KL and enjoy the tournaments and the court life and be a queen - she proved that she's not dutiful, disobeying her father and going to her in-laws (it was Cersei because she was scared of Robert) as only other adults who could overrule her father's decision and get her what she wanted. She didn't seem any more dutiful than Lyanna was.

Ever since, Sansa has been someone's captive - first the Lannisters, then Littlefinger's - and she had to be obedient or appear obedient when she was not (such as trying secretly to escape) in order to survive. She didn't feel any duty to the Lannisters (naturally); she wanted to marry Willas in order to get away from KL and the Lannisters and because she believed she would be happy in Highgarden with the Tyrells; contrary to what some fans argue, she felt no duty to her "husband" (Tyrion was the one who said: "Come on Sansa, we must do our duty"; Sansa just thought she had no choice and that she had to obey to survive or avoid even worse punishments - and choose not to ever have sex with him the moment she was given a choice) and felt zero obligation to that marriage once she got away from KL; she is obeying LF because she has no choice and is trying hard to act the part of his daughter to, again, survive. She feels a strong connection to Winterfell, but she never thinks that it's her "duty" to rebuild it, she simply wants to go home.

Sansa is motivated, at various points, by: a wish to please people and be liked/loved, by her dreams and desires, by love, by compassion, by love for her family and a desire for home, and, due to her circumstances most often of all, by fear and survival instinct. I can't think of any instance where her POV chapters show her being motivated by duty.

I think the difference between Cat and Sansa/Arya in that regard could perhaps largely be explained by upbringing rather than temperament or genetics: Cat's mother died early and Cat had to become the lady of the house at a very young age, taking care of her younger siblings and running the household. Sansa and Arya both were growing up in a happy family with no such obligations, and one may say they were spoiled (as were all the Stark kids) and naive in the ways of the world, until they lost their family and had to survive on their own.