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


Ser Petyr Parker

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8 minutes ago, falcotron said:

I suspect the Martells might be the least inbred. The same Princess who managed to get one of her daughters married to Rhaegar let her heir marry a Norvosi lady and her other son bring home bastards from four foreign women before settling down with (but not marrying) the bastard daughter of one of their lesser vassal houses. And everyone in Dorne seems to take that as business as usual. (And the show seems to have exaggerated rather than downplayed these differences.)

Good point, although they probably ended up overcompensating on the inbred front by marrying into the Targaryen family, thereby bringing their genetics into the fold. 

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On 6/9/2017 at 4:04 PM, Lord Varys said:

And no - there is no reason to believe that the Starks or anyone in this world is aware of the bad effects of inbreeding. This is never discussed. Incest is a sin against the gods, not something that has bad effects and is best avoided for that reason. In that sense, there is no breeding program in place where people consciously arrange a cousin marriage every 2-3 generations and then introduce 'new blood' to mitigate those effects.

This exactly. As in real life history, european royal houses who practiced inbreeding for many generations weren't aware of it. The most representative of this were the Habsburg, whose last Spanish king, Charles II, noted  for his  physical, intellectual, and emotional disabilities, received the surname of The Bewitched (el Hechizado), and was believed of having been victim of a curse by his contemporaries, and as far as we know, that is what he himself believed. Things were so far that when he failed to produce an heir, was subjected to painful rituals of exorcism, which I suppose did not help at all with his mental stability. His sister, Margharet Theresa , a beautiful girl  (the princess in the Velazquez's famous painting Las Meninas) and "the joy" of her parents, married her uncle (who was also her first cousin once removed, since was her mother's brother and her father's first cousin). 

People who give a modern mindset to Planeto's characters, and think those characters would see things as we see them in 2017, just don't have a clue. 

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2 hours ago, UnmaskedLurker said:

But the point I was trying to make is that even if we give @Lollygag every benefit of the doubt possible -- that there is a pattern (I am not sure that there really is one -- but assume there is) and that there really is a marriage among close relatives only after truly "new blood" has been introduced (again, we cannot be sure of this given the limited family trees -- but assume it is true) -- it would not be meaningful evidence in support of the thesis being put forth. If such a "pattern" or "rule" existed in Westeros, someone in-universe would have hinted at it. Someone would have made some comment along the lines that their House only permits cousins to marry if some number of generations has passed between the last such intra-House marriage -- or some clue in the direction of such a rule.

Yeah, I'm in complete agreement there. That is mistaken (possible) correlation for causation.

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But the readers/viewers get nothing like that from any of the characters. The characters talk about the sins regarding incest. And the definition of incest (outside the Targs) seems to be limited in Westeros to parent/child and brother/sister relationships. Other than incest, there is no mention of any other restrictions on relationships (ignoring polygamy for this purpose, as that gets into a whole different discussion not relevant to this analysis). So any perceived pattern would simply be a correlation without any reason to believe causation. There are multiple reasons (many of which you put forth) to explain why bringing in brides from other Houses can be helpful to a ruling House. That benefit is more likely to be the "cause" of the correlation than some rule that is never mentioned in the text (or on the show) that Westeros has some elaborate notion of incest or permissible marriages among relatives that looks to how recently a similar marriage occurred. The way that all of the "rules" are expressed in Westeros simply are not consistent with such a nuanced rule -- and we never hear any discussion to support this theory. Noticing a presumed pattern (whether really a pattern or just the appearance of a pattern) and then constructing some "law" or "rule" that must have cause the pattern is simply faulty logical reasoning. Some other independent evidence for the existence of the "law" or "rule" to support the causation premise must be found -- and here no such evidence has been presented.

We actually have reason to assume that 'unusual marriages' like Brandon/Ned-Catelyn or Sansa-Joffrey are the exception, not the rule. Usually a Stark picks a bride from a very limited gene pool, the (higher) nobility of the North.

Marriages like Lord Lyonel Corbray marrying a merchant's daughter are exceedingly rare and looked down upon by the nobility while nobody ever says a bad word about cousin or avuncular marriages. With Joanna-Tywin we have a very prominent first cousin marriage outside the Targaryen framework that we knew about since the first book and nobody ever said anything bad about that. And neither was Sansa abhorred or irritated by the idea of marrying her own first cousin, Lord Robert Arryn (aside from him being a sickly prick, but that's his character).

If cousin marriages were something the nobility did only occasionally because there were actually theories floating around that too much of that are bad for the bloodline then we would expect this to be actually addressed in the books in some way. But it isn't. It isn't even for sibling incest.

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

I suspect the Martells might be the least inbred. The same Princess who managed to get one of her daughters married to Rhaegar let her heir marry a Norvosi lady and her other son bring home bastards from four foreign women before settling down with (but not marrying) the bastard daughter of one of their lesser vassal houses. And everyone in Dorne seems to take that as business as usual. (And the show seems to have exaggerated rather than downplayed these differences.)

We can ignore Oberyn there since his bastards are never going to marry back into the noble framework of Dorne. Things are different in Dorne but House Martell does not marry bastards nor the descendants of bastards. Arianne makes it quite clear that Daemon Sand can never hope to marry her because he was born a Sand. And there is most likely a very good (and quite obvious) reason why Oberyn Martell did not marry Ellaria Sand.

Doran madly fell in love with Mellario during his grand tour of the Free Cities and decided to marry her on a whim. It was the one rash decision in his life and it gave him great joy in his youth but didn't last. This is the kind of 'exotic marriage' that occasionally peppers the bloodline of one of the noble houses. Rohanne Webber is another such example. Gerold Lannister seems to have followed his heart there, too.

One could even assume that the Martells might have more use for cousin marriages than other Westerosi families considering that of their inheritance laws. A Princess of Dorne could easily enough be tempted to take a first or second Martell cousin as her consort to keep the family together.

And if we think of Arianne's secret passion for her uncle Oberyn one wonders what those hot-blooded, belligerent Martells did. Aliandra Martell and the Yellow Toad don't appear to be women you say 'no' to.

1 hour ago, LucyMormont said:

This exactly. As in real life history, european royal houses who practiced inbreeding for many generations weren't aware of it. The most representative of this were the Habsburg, whose last Spanish king, Charles II, noted  for his  physical, intellectual, and emotional disabilities, received the surname of The Bewitched (el Hechizado), and was believed of having been victim of a curse by his contemporaries, and as far as we know, that is what he himself believed. Things were so far that when he failed to produce an heir, was subjected to painful rituals of exorcism, which I suppose did not help at all with his mental stability. Her sister, Margharet Theresa , a beautiful girl  (the princess in the Velazquez's famous painting Las Meninas) and "the joy" of her parents, married her uncle (who was also her first cousin once removed, since was her mother's brother and her father's first cousin). 

People who give a modern mindset to Planeto's characters, and think those characters would see things as we see them in 2017, just don't have a clue. 

It is really not that difficult to figure that out. If people had known they were risking the lives of their children and the future of their dynasty (and kingdoms) they wouldn't have done that. They were thinking they were keeping the family and their property together, saving it for the next generation.

I've just read up a little bit on that thing in this article: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005174 and this whole thing is rather interesting in context what counts as incest today in out world:

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With respect to the high incidence of consanguineous marriages in the Spanish Habsburg dynasty it is necessary to take into account that, from a Western perspective, marriages between close biological relatives is generally regarded with suspicion and distaste, reflecting historical and religious prejudice. However, contrary to widespread opinion in Western countries, consanguinity is widely preferential in present large human populations of Asia and Africa where consanguineous marriages currently account for approximately 20–50% of all unions (in the computation of these percentages those unions contracted between individuals biologically related as second cousins or closer are categorized as consanguineous) [9][11]. The highest levels of inbreeding in major populations have been found in urban Pondicherry (South India) and among army families in Pakistan where 54.9% and 77.1% of marriages are consanguineous, respectively [12][13]. In Pondicherry 20.2% of marriages are uncle-niece and 31.3% first cousins, whereas in the Pakistan study 62.5% of marriages are between first cousins. Therefore, in the light of these data, the incidence of consanguineous marriages in the Spanish Habsburg dynasty does not seem so extreme when is considered in a general context of inbreeding in human populations.

From a European/American perspective this sounds pretty extreme and alien but it doesn't seem to kill the populations over there.

And it really shows that even today the (assumed) prevalence of hereditary diseases and higher child mortality, etc. among such populations does not exactly convince people or help them develop the idea that something is bad with their marriage habits. And that makes it actually very, very unlikely that cultural and religious incest taboos developed on the basis of actual empirical data.

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44 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

consanguinity is widely preferential in present large human populations of Asia and Africa

Asia is particularly interesting, because, particularly in southeast Asia, there are ethnic groups living right next to each other for centuries that have very different traditions.

My favorite theory is that this is a case of neighboring societies exaggerating their historical differences to differentiate themselves—like Jews not eating shellfish to differentiate themselves from the coastal Canaanites, the Lao go to an extreme in avoiding cousin marriages* to differentiate themselves from the Tai Dam and some other Tai ethnic groups. Of course there are other theories, but none of them seem very compelling to me.**

ETA: And, getting back to your point, there's no evidence of different rates of birth defects correlating with ethnicity once you control for socioeconomic level.

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* Until the 1970s diaspora, most Lao people avoided marrying anyone with the same last name, just in case. Which makes cousin marriages even rarer among the aristocracy than among the poor, because Lao women can freely choose to keep their father's name instead of their husband's, so the top families have become huge extended clans. And this taboo is especially unusual because it isn't traditional to ask someone's family name until you've gotten to the point of exchanging name cards (Victorian-England style), so there are many stories of men who've met the perfect woman, only to learn she's not available because they have the same name.

** For example, it's hard to make a case for the difference between the Lao and Tai being based on one having more Indian culture ancestry or later contact and the other Chinese, or caste systems vs. merit systems, or naming traditions, etc., because they're pretty much identical on all such measures. Religion does distinguish the Tai Dam from the Lao, but that doesn't work as soon as you include, e.g., the Tai Yo.

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I'd agree that the Martells might be one of the least inbred Houses Paramount, but not because of their relative cosmopolitanism.

Simply because they have First Men noble houses, Andal noble houses, and then Rhoynish noble houses in Dorne. Dorne has had two influxes of outside noble houses.

Actually, the least inbred noble houses are likely those of the Iron Islands, on account of their reaving practices and cultural traits that let anyone born on the Iron Islands become Ironborn.

 

As far as the rest of Houses Paramount, if we ignore the Targaryens, the Starks are most likely the most inbred - they never had the influx of Andal noble houses the rest of Westeros did. Plus the North is relatively isolationist, and has relatively little interaction with the rest of Westeros.

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On 9/2/2017 at 5:14 AM, BalerionTheCat said:

Yes, It could be plenty of things. But usually I take what feels for me the most straightforward interpretation of everything. And only if things start to mismatch, I try to interpret things differently, and with the minimum changes. And hold fast on things which seems to have multiple supportive facts. Otherwise, IMHO, we are just manufacturing evidences for our own fantasies. So far for me, the prince is one person.

 

Aegon. What better name for a king... He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire"; When Rhaegar's eyes meet Daenerys's, he says (either to her or Elia), "There must be one more. The dragon has three heads," and he picks up a silver harp and begins to play.

The actual quote is not clear its singular at all. There must be one more implies something potentially indicating Dany's role in the song.

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@UnmaskedLurker

More time now. At the bottom is the full quote from Barristan. He attributes madness to the blood, therefore strengthen the blood, strengthen the defect. Defects are often attributed to blood and blood defects are heightened by incest so yeah, tracking bloodlines is important if defects are perceived as bloodborn. More too...

ASOS Davos VI Tommen is not monstrous physically, so Stannis is saying that incest will manifest as psychological monstrosity in time. No one disagrees.

Stannis made a fist. "Tommen is gentler than Joffrey, but born of the same incest. Another monster in the making.

ADWD The Windblown If madness runs in the blood, then incest exacerbates it to the degree of the incest.

Wed her or fight her; either way, I will face her soon. The more Quentyn heard of Daenerys Targaryen, the more he feared that meeting. The Yunkai'i claimed that she fed her dragons on human flesh and bathed in the blood of virgins to keep her skin smooth and supple. Beans laughed at that but relished the tales of the silver queen's promiscuity. "One of her captains comes of a line where the men have foot-long members," he told them, "but even he's not big enough for her. She rode with the Dothraki and grew accustomed to being fucked by stallions, so now no man can fill her." And Books, the clever Volantene swordsman who always seemed to have his nose poked in some crumbly scroll, thought the dragon queen both murderous and mad. "Her khal killed her brother to make her queen. Then she killed her khal to make herself khaleesi. She practices blood sacrifice, lies as easily as she breathes, turns against her own on a whim. She's broken truces, tortured envoys … her father was mad too. It runs in the blood."

It runs in the blood. King Aerys II had been mad, all of Westeros knew that. He had exiled two of his Hands and burned a third. If Daenerys is as murdeous as her father, must I still marry her? Prince Doran had never spoken of that possibility.

 

ADWD Tyrion III

Psychological defect runs in the blood. Add incest and you heighten it.

"He sounds an utter fool."

"Viserys was Mad Aerys's son, just so. Daenerys … Daenerys is quite different."

 

ASOS Daenerys VI

Barristan attributes the cause of madness to blood. Again, strengthen the blood by incest, strengthen the defect…

"You helped win this city," she repeated stubbornly. "And you have served me well in the past. Ser Barristan saved me from the Titan's Bastard, and from the Sorrowful Man in Qarth. Ser Jorah saved me from the poisoner in Vaes Dothrak, and again from Drogo's bloodriders after my sun-and-stars had died." So many people wanted her dead, sometimes she lost count. "And yet you lied, deceived me, betrayed me." She turned to Ser Barristan. "You protected my father for many years, fought beside my brother on the Trident, but you abandoned Viserys in his exile and bent your knee to the Usurper instead. Why? And tell it true."

"Some truths are hard to hear. Robert was a . . . a good knight . . . chivalrous, brave . . . he spared my life, and the lives of many others . . . Prince Viserys was only a boy, it would have been years before he was fit to rule, and . . . forgive me, my queen, but you asked for truth . . . even as a child, your brother Viserys oft seemed to be his father's son, in ways that Rhaegar never did."

"His father's son?" Dany frowned. "What does that mean?"

The old knight did not blink. "Your father is called 'the Mad King' in Westeros. Has no one ever told you?"

"Viserys did." The Mad King. "The Usurper called him that, the Usurper and his dogs." The Mad King. "It was a lie."

"Why ask for truth," Ser Barristan said softly, "if you close your ears to it?" He hesitated, then continued. "I told you before that I used a false name so the Lannisters would not know that I'd joined you. That was less than half of it, Your Grace. The truth is, I wanted to watch you for a time before pledging you my sword. To make certain that you were not . . ."

". . . my father's daughter?" If she was not her father's daughter, who was she?

". . . mad," he finished. "But I see no taint in you."

"Taint?" Dany bristled.

"I am no maester to quote history at you, Your Grace. Swords have been my life, not books. But every child knows that the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness. Your father was not the first. King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land."

Jaehaerys. This old man knew my grandfather. The thought gave her pause. Most of what she knew of Westeros had come from her brother, and the rest from Ser Jorah. Ser Barristan would have forgotten more than the two of them had ever known. This man can tell me what I came from. "So I am a coin in the hands of some god, is that what you are saying, ser?"

Questions? She had a hundred questions, a thousand, ten thousand. Why couldn't she think of one? "Was my father truly mad?" she blurted out. Why do I ask that? "Viserys said this talk of madness was a ploy of the Usurper's . . ."

"Viserys was a child, and the queen sheltered him as much as she could. Your father always had a little madness in him, I now believe. Yet he was charming and generous as well, so his lapses were forgiven. His reign began with such promise . . . but as the years passed, the lapses grew more frequent, until . . ."

Dany stopped him. "Do I want to hear this now?"

Ser Barristan considered a moment. "Perhaps not. Not now."

 

ASOS Jon III

Wildlings keep no records of who was born to whom so Longspear or any in her village might be close kin.

"Longspear's not your brother."

"He's of my village. You know nothing, Jon Snow. A true man steals a woman from afar, t' strengthen the clan. Women who bed brothers or fathers or clan kin offend the gods, and are cursed with weak and sickly children. Even monsters."

 

 

 

 

 

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12 hours ago, UnmaskedLurker said:

Keep in mind that in the books at least, almost no one thinks it odd that all of Cersei's children with Robert have blonde hair (Ned needs to do extensive research to figure this out -- while in modern times, the issue would be obvious).

Dark-haired people have blonde kids in real life all of the time when they have a recessive gene for it.

12 hours ago, UnmaskedLurker said:

Yes, I agree that GRRM is careful. But I think that proves the opposite of what you think it proves. Sure, a marriage between uncle(aunt) and niece(nephew) might not be that common in Westeros. But GRRM would not include such marriages in the Stark family tree for no reason at all. He included them to show that they were not prohibited. He does not want Jon to have a crisis regarding "incest" with Dany. There are many other issues to be addressed in terms of Jon's identity as a Targ that will be front and center. Adding the "ick" factor for Jon to have to get over that he is committing incest with his aunt simply is not part of GRRM's plan. How do we know? Well, we don't "know" but his inclusion of these types of marriages in the Stark family tree is huge clue.

This argument assumes its own conclusion. It will work fine for anyone who thinks Jon/Dany is inevitable in the books, but for anyone who thinks it won't happen or are on the fence or just want want to wait and see, it's not a sufficient explanation for its inclusion. If Jon isn't supposed to have a problem with incest, then having him spend so much time with the wildlings who have the most hostile and rigid view of incest after the radicalized Faith was a big screw up. Ygritte specifically ties incest to weakening of the blood as quoted above.

12 hours ago, UnmaskedLurker said:

In this society, either a type of relationship is permitted or not permitted. In the Stark family tree -- they were permitted. They cannot be "sort of" permitted. We have no evidence that some special dispensation was needed to permit these marriages (and there were at least two). Your notion of complex rules involving "new blood" being added or being discouraged (but not prohibited) are just too complicated and legalistic for this type of society.

I never asserted that it was legalistic or entailed complex rules. Every child knows... is what Barristan said. If you've had a recent close relative marriage in your family, you rule out those options for a generation or two or three for damage control.

Targ brother/sister incest was only “sort of” permitted. The Faith hated it, but the Targs had dragons so they tolerated very reluctantly. That parent-child is all around rejected as incest, Targs accepts brother/sister unions which the rest of the Westeros rejects often violently, and then the rarity of uncle/niece and aunt/nephew unions does indicate that Westeros views incest in terms of a sliding scale taking into account the number of bloodlines as the indicator of acceptability or not.  The World of Ice and Fire also states that the Targs viewed incest as a sliding scale based on the number of outside bloodlines.

The World of Ice and Fire

The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin. Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal. Failing that, a girl might wed an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew; a boy, a cousin, aunt, or niece. This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and rode dragons. "The blood of the dragon must remain pure," the wisdom went. Some of the sorcerer princes also took more than one wife when it pleased them, though this was less common than incestuous marriage. In Valryia before the Doom, wise men wrote, a thousand gods were honored, but none were feared, so few dared to speak against these customs.

This was not true in Westeros, where the power of the Faith went unquestioned. Incest was denounced as vile sin, whether between father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister, and the fruits of such unions were considered abominations in the sight of gods and men. With hindsight, it can be seen that conflict between the Faith and House Targaryen was inevitable.

 

 

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10 hours ago, Kytheros said:

The Aunt/Nephew and Uncle/Niece relationships are relatively uncommon because normally there'd be enough of an age gap for the Aunt or Uncle to have married someone else, and instead there would be a first cousin marriage.

If a woman has her first child at 15 and has children until say, 35, and she has siblings with a similar age gap, then the ages will align fairly often. Also as we saw with Tyrion and Sansa and Tyrek and Lady E....whatever her name was who happened to be an infant, Westeros has no problem with age gaps. Rickon could have easily been betrothed to Robb's daughter.

Yet these marriages are still extraordinarily rare.

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10 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

There is just no pattern. And even if there were - you do not know that there is a pattern. You don't have enough data to establish such a pattern.

It's what GRRM is showing. Yes, it may be incomplete for whatever reasons there may be for that, but it's all we've been given and I assert that the limited amount we've received up to this point was by choice, not accident. There's also not enough data to say that uncle/niece and aunt/nephew or consecutive strings of first cousin marriages are always 100% a-ok since those matches are so rare despite advantages to a feudal society.

I'm open to an alternate explanation for the rarity of uncle/niece, aunt/nephew and consecutive strings of close cousin marriages, but that ages don't line up (they do sometimes, not that Westeros has a problem with age differences), or that GRRM just forgot to lay out the rest of genealogies, or he forgot over 5000+ pages of book to lay this out for reader just doesn't cut it.

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If they make a big deal out of this it will be very unusual, inconsistent with the show itself.  Ned Stark's mother and father are cousins.  Tywin and Joanna are cousins.  Daenerys when she was young  thought she'd marry her brother.   Valyrian dragonlords married aunts to nephews, etc.  Incest in the show means immediate family, brother, sister, parents, and that's not the case here.  It would be very inconsistent to make a big deal out of it.  it would be more consistent with the show if the two actually celebrated the fact that they are related.

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2 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Dark-haired people have blonde kids in real life all of the time when they have a recessive gene for it.

This argument assumes its own conclusion. It will work fine for anyone who thinks Jon/Dany is inevitable in the books, but for anyone who thinks it won't happen or are on the fence or just want want to wait and see, it's not a sufficient explanation for its inclusion. If Jon isn't supposed to have a problem with incest, then having him spend so much time with the wildlings who have the most hostile and rigid view of incest after the radicalized Faith was a big screw up. Ygritte specifically ties incest to weakening of the blood as quoted above.

 

Do you also believe that Jon adopted from Ygritte the belief that kidnapping and raping a woman is okay and that it's the fault of the woman in question because she's not capable of defending herself? Or that the entire feudal system of the Seven Kingdoms is some "kneeler" nonsense and only pure strength matters? Stealing the fruit of the hard work of the defenceless is okay for him now too, I assume? And he agrees with Val that "unclean" little girls like Shireen ought to be killed?

That's all the sort of stuff wildlings believe and Jon was exposed to it. If he's supposed to believe any of that any in future, he certainly does not believe it now.

Anyway, your argument that the mariagge customs of the Westerosi are driven by some rational breeding programme lacks basis in text. We never see anyone reject a marriage between cousins on the pretext that they are already related.

Anyway, GRRM has been pretty clear about what the Westerosi believe:

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"The evil is in his blood," said Robett Glover. "He is a bastard born of rape. A Snow, no matter what the boy king says."

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"Yes," Roose Bolton said. "His blood is tainted, that cannot be denied. Yet he is a good fighter, as cunning as he is fearless. When the ironmen cut down Ser Rodrik, and Leobald Tallhart soon after, it fell to Ramsay to lead the battle, and he did. He swears that he shall not sheathe his sword so long as a single Greyjoy remains in the north. Perhaps such service might atone in some small measure for whatever crimes his bastard blood has led him to commit." He shrugged. "Or not. When the war is done, His Grace must weigh and judge. By then I hope to have a trueborn son by Lady Walda."

Say what you will of Ramsay, he's not to blame for his own conception. It's his own choices that make him evil, not the inherent quality of his blood.

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Lord Bartimos Celtigar thought not. “Bastards are treacherous by nature,” he said. “It is in their blood. Betrayal comes as easily to a bastard as loyalty to trueborn men.” He urged Her Grace to have the two baseborn dragonriders seized immediately, before they too could join the enemy with their dragons.

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The name echoed off the walls, and for half a heartbeat it was if every man, woman, and boy in the hall had turned to stone. Then Lord Costayne slammed a fist upon a table and shouted, "It's death that one deserves, not justice!" A dozen other voices echoed his, and Ser Harbert Paege declared, "He's bastard born. All bastards are thieves, or worse. Blood will tell." For a moment Dunk despaired. I am alone here. But then Ser Kyle the Cat pushed himself to his feet, swaying only slightly. "The boy may be a bastard, my lords, but he's Fireball's bastard. It's like Ser Harbert said. Blood will tell."

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"Mercy. I have been singing love songs for hours. My blood is stirred. And yours, I know . . . there's no wench half so lusty as one bastard born. Are you wet for me?"

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"The old High Septon told my father that king's laws are one thing, and the laws of the gods another," the boy said stubbornly. "Trueborn children are made in a marriage bed and blessed by the Father and the Mother, but bastards are born of lust and weakness, he said. King Aegon decreed that his bastards were not bastards, but he could not change their nature. The High Septon said all bastards are born to betrayal . . . Daemon Blackfyre, Bittersteel, even Bloodraven. Lord Rivers was more cunning than the other two, he said, but in the end he would prove himself a traitor, too. The High Septon counseled my father never to put any trust in him, nor in any other bastards, great or small."

And then we get stuff like this:

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"Good. Now, Jon Arryn married thrice, but his first two wives gave him no children, so for long years his nephew Elbert was his heir. Meantime, Elys was plowing Alys quite dutifully, and she was whelping once a year. She gave him nine children, eight girls and one precious little boy, another Jasper, after which she died exhausted. Boy Jasper, inconsiderate of the heroic efforts that had gone into begetting him, got himself kicked in the head by a horse when he was three years old. A pox took two of his sisters soon after, leaving six. The eldest married Ser Denys Arryn, a distant cousin to the Lords of the Eyrie. There are several branches of House Arryn scattered across the Vale, all as proud as they are penurious, save for the Gulltown Arryns, who had the rare good sense to marry merchants. They're rich, but less than couth, so no one talks about them. Ser Denys hailed from one of the poor, proud branches . . . but he was also a renowned jouster, handsome and gallant and brimming with courtesy. And he had that magic Arryn name, which made him ideal for the eldest Waynwood girl. Their children would be Arryns, and the next heirs to the Vale should any ill befall Elbert. Well, as it happened, Mad King Aerys befell Elbert. You know that story?"

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"A maid of sixteen years, named Jeyne," said Ser Kevan. "Lord Gawen once suggested her to me for Willem or Martyn, but I had to refuse him. Gawen is a good man, but his wife is Sybell Spicer. He should never have wed her. The Westerlings always did have more honor than sense. Lady Sybell's grandfather was a trader in saffron and pepper, almost as lowborn as that smuggler Stannis keeps. And the grandmother was some woman he'd brought back from the east. A frightening old crone, supposed to be a priestess. Maegi, they called her. No one could pronounce her real name. Half of Lannisport used to go to her for cures and love potions and the like." He shrugged. "She's long dead, to be sure. And Jeyne seemed a sweet child, I'll grant you, though I only saw her once. But with such doubtful blood . . ."
Having once married a whore, Tyrion could not entirely share his uncle's horror at the thought of wedding a girl whose great grandfather sold cloves.
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Not only have you broken your oath, but you've slighted the honor of the Twins by choosing a bride from a lesser house."
Robb bristled at that. "The Westerlings are better blood than the Freys. They're an ancient line, descended from the First Men. The Kings of the Rock sometimes wed Westerlings before the Conquest, and there was another Jeyne Westerling who was queen to King Maegor three hundred years ago."
"All of which will only salt Lord Walder's wounds. It has always rankled him that older houses look down on the Freys as upstarts. This insult is not the first he's borne, to hear him tell it. Jon Arryn was disinclined to foster his grandsons, and my father refused the offer of one of his daughters for Edmure." She inclined her head toward her brother as he rejoined them.

Here we see what the Westerosi believe that "harms" blood. Bastards' blood supposedly aquires a malevolent quality due to the unauthorized manner of their conception. Marrying commoners erodes the quality of the "superior" noble blood, and therefore it is undesirable.

Am I truly supposezed to believe that these people take some kind of rational, empirically supported stance to inbreeding?

If they say things like this

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"Aye," said another, "the gods hate incest. Look how they brought down the Targaryens."

then it is driven by superstition, not by empirical evidence.

It reminds me eerily of the following:

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"All that," said Prince Oberyn, "and your father's fall as well. Lord Tywin had made himself greater than King Aerys, I heard one begging brother preach, but only a god is meant to stand above a king. You were his curse, a punishment sent by the gods to teach him that he was no better than any other man."

If they really cared about empirical evidence, they would have been aware that bastards aren't any worse than other children, marrying commoners does not corrode worthiness of one's bloodline, and with it their entire ideology based on the superioty of royalty and nobility would have gone to hell ages ago. They would have also noticed that children born with birth defects are not evil and not a proof of their parents' bad nature.

It is very hard for me to believe that the Westerosi incest taboo is based on science. They talk of quality of blood all the time, but it doesn't mean they understand alleles or homozygozyty or any of that stuff. For them having sexual relations with a parent or a sibling is a monstrous sin, because gods said so. OTOH gods said nothing of marrying one's cousins, therefore it's okay. Since they don't actually understand the mechanism of why marriage between close relatives may lead to bad ends, they can't understand why successive cousin marriage may be harmful either.

Overall, GRRM has spoonfed us about what the Westerosi consider bad in all other cases, so I don't see why he would be hesitant to make it crystal clear to us that they consider cousin marriages or a succession of them harmful taboo as well.

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4 hours ago, Lollygag said:

various quotes

You are giving quotes about madness in the blood and hereditary diseases here, but not evidence that people thought incest caused such afflictions or worsened them.

Nobody doubts that 'the blood of the dragon' is tainted or that madness and other afflictions are (believed to be) hereditary in this world. They are. But nobody here says anything about incest causing or worsening such afflictions.

Stannis is of the opinion that incest in itself is wrong and sinful and that the offspring of incestuous couples are abominations he is not going to suffer in his domains. That's why Gilly and her son have to leave and Cersei's children have to die. There is no hint there that Stannis bases his opinion there on rational arguments or empirical data.

If you want a real quote where Targaryen incest is questioned I can give you one:

Quote

It had long been the custom of House Targaryen to wed brother to sister to keep the blood of the dragon pure, but for whatever cause, Aegon V had become convinced that such incestuous unions did more harm than good. Instead he resolved to join his children in marriage with the sons and daughters of some of the greatest lords of the Seven Kingdoms, in the hopes of winning their support for his reforms and strengthening his rule.

Now, that is a quote where incestuous unions are once considered to be not beneficial - or at least more harmful than beneficial. But we don't know how Aegon V reached that conclusion, and whether he based it on empirical data. He was living in a day and age where there very few truly incestuous Targaryen unions - his cousins Aelor and Aelora had married each other, and his brother Aerion had married his first cousin, but aside from that there were no incestuous marriages in this generation. And he himself as well as his siblings and his father and uncles and cousins were all descended from non-incestuous unions.

It is actually rather likely that the strong opposition the smallfolk still has to incest left its mark on Egg. The beginning of that can be seen in TSS when Egg mentions his betrothal to his sister Daella without considering it odd or controversial whereas Dunk is abhorred by the idea. It would not surprise me one bit if Dunk was the main instigator behind Egg's decision to dissolve his betrothal (not to mention that he is going to fall in love with Black Betha eventually).

But in the end he did not only permit the incestuous union of his son and daughter but also the incestuous marriage of his two grandchildren.

3 hours ago, Lollygag said:

If a woman has her first child at 15 and has children until say, 35, and she has siblings with a similar age gap, then the ages will align fairly often. Also as we saw with Tyrion and Sansa and Tyrek and Lady E....whatever her name was who happened to be an infant, Westeros has no problem with age gaps. Rickon could have easily been betrothed to Robb's daughter.

Yet these marriages are still extraordinarily rare.

That is actually not true. Usually people of roughly the same age are betrothed and married to each other. There are exceptions but they are rare and then politically necessary (like the Maegor-Ceryse match or Tommen-Margaery). Dany tells us that chances had been pretty good that she would have been married to Prince Aegon rather than to Viserys had the boy lived (and there been no Rebellion) since they were closer in age than she and Viserys (who could then have married Rhaenys, perhaps).

The few avuncular marriages we see have husband and wife be of the same age (e.g. Jocelyn Baratheon marrying her half-nephew Prince Aemon). The avuncular marriages in House Stark could also be similar affairs. Serena and Sansa were daughters of Cregan's son by his first wife while Jonnel and Edric were sons of Cregan's by his third wife Lynara Stark. The nieces could even have been older than their uncles in that scenario.

The rationale behind that is pretty obvious - sure, an old man can still have children but the chances are also pretty good that he is going to die soon, so you better get your daughter a young man as a husband rather than an old one. If you don't, your daughter is likely going to be forced to raise her children on her own, or has to look for another husband (or ends up returning to you).

4 hours ago, Lollygag said:

This argument assumes its own conclusion. It will work fine for anyone who thinks Jon/Dany is inevitable in the books, but for anyone who thinks it won't happen or are on the fence or just want want to wait and see, it's not a sufficient explanation for its inclusion. If Jon isn't supposed to have a problem with incest, then having him spend so much time with the wildlings who have the most hostile and rigid view of incest after the radicalized Faith was a big screw up. Ygritte specifically ties incest to weakening of the blood as quoted above.

Whoever tries to sit on the fence on that question is going to fall on his ass hard. If the show has settled anything then this question.

Jon cannot adopt the approach of the wildlings to incest without developing a severe and strong self-hatred. He himself is descended from a very incestuous bloodline as well as a bloodline which has no issues with cousin or avuncular marriages. And guess what - he and Daenerys turned out just fine.

The wildlings know some stuff but they are dead wrong on others. And they sure as hell are in their own marriage customs. Stealing women from other villages is disgusting and a crime in any civilized society. As is the idea that marrying some sixth or seventh cousin from your own village is 'bad' for some reason.

3 hours ago, Lollygag said:

It's what GRRM is showing. Yes, it may be incomplete for whatever reasons there may be for that, but it's all we've been given and I assert that the limited amount we've received up to this point was by choice, not accident. There's also not enough data to say that uncle/niece and aunt/nephew or consecutive strings of first cousin marriages are always 100% a-ok since those matches are so rare despite advantages to a feudal society.

Nobody said avuncular and first cousin marriages were the rule - what we dispute is your idea that they are for certainty uncommon, rare, and seen as potentially problematic. After all, you cannot even give us the exact amount of cousin marriages (through the female line) in the family trees we are given. There is no pattern to be found aside from the fact that avuncular marriages and cousin marriages are a thing.

And it was most definitely by choice on the side of the author to give us those marriages in the Stark family tree. Nobody expected the Starks to marry their cousins or uncles prior to TWoIaF. 

3 hours ago, Lollygag said:

I'm open to an alternate explanation for the rarity of uncle/niece, aunt/nephew and consecutive strings of close cousin marriages, but that ages don't line up (they do sometimes, not that Westeros has a problem with age differences), or that GRRM just forgot to lay out the rest of genealogies, or he forgot over 5000+ pages of book to lay this out for reader just doesn't cut it.

You keep telling us that the novels don't talk about this - but then, how or why should they when those books usually do not discuss the marriages of some noble house a hundred years ago? Even Lyarra Stark is not important enough to mentioned a single time in those books. 

The important thing of those family trees is that cousin and avuncular marriages are indeed a thing - not that they are not. We always knew in theory that there must be a lot of cousin marriages among the nobility simply because there are not that many houses. But George deliberately chose to includes close kin marriages through the male in line in his Stark and Lannister family trees. And in addition he reinforced the idea that the Lannisters and Starks usually choose brides from their own vassals rather than reaching out and include the entire nobility of Westeros (and perhaps even certain places in Essos) among their marriage candidates. That reduced the gene pool from which the Lannisters and Starks pick their brides.

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@lojzelote

George actually subtly plays with the whole 'bastard's blood' thing. Joffrey is very tall and strong for a twelve-year-old, which could be seen as 'confirmation' that bastards grow quicker than trueborn children. The same could make sense for Rhaenyra's sons when they stood their ground against ten-year-old Aemond. Joffrey was only three at that point but acts as if he was at least as strong as a six-year-old.

But it is quite clear that we should not take the wisdom that 'bastards are evil by blood' or 'traitor's blood breeds traitors' (like Pycelle tries to sell Sansa) at face value. This is a very superstitious society, especially the wildlings (but certainly not only them - most what the average septon or lord says is also nonsense).

And while Val might be, in the end, right about Shireen's greyscale returning we should never follow her lead on that question. She is suggesting murdering an innocent child rather than giving her the best medical care, and that's just disgusting. The wildlings are the ones who only follow strength, and who most likely leave lackwits, half-wits, dwarfs, cripples, and other freaks in the wild for the wolves.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

You are giving quotes about madness in the blood and hereditary diseases here, but not evidence that people thought incest caused such afflictions or worsened them.

Nobody doubts that 'the blood of the dragon' is tainted or that madness and other afflictions are (believed to be) hereditary in this world. They are. But nobody here says anything about incest causing or worsening such afflictions.

Stannis is of the opinion that incest in itself is wrong and sinful and that the offspring of incestuous couples are abominations he is not going to suffer in his domains. That's why Gilly and her son have to leave and Cersei's children have to die. There is no hint there that Stannis bases his opinion there on rational arguments or empirical data.

If you want a real quote where Targaryen incest is questioned I can give you one:

Now, that is a quote where incestuous unions are once considered to be not beneficial - or at least more harmful than beneficial. But we don't know how Aegon V reached that conclusion, and whether he based it on empirical data. He was living in a day and age where there very few truly incestuous Targaryen unions - his cousins Aelor and Aelora had married each other, and his brother Aerion had married his first cousin, but aside from that there were no incestuous marriages in this generation. And he himself as well as his siblings and his father and uncles and cousins were all descended from non-incestuous unions.

It is actually rather likely that the strong opposition the smallfolk still has to incest left its mark on Egg. The beginning of that can be seen in TSS when Egg mentions his betrothal to his sister Daella without considering it odd or controversial whereas Dunk is abhorred by the idea. It would not surprise me one bit if Dunk was the main instigator behind Egg's decision to dissolve his betrothal (not to mention that he is going to fall in love with Black Betha eventually).

But in the end he did not only permit the incestuous union of his son and daughter but also the incestuous marriage of his two grandchildren.

That is actually not true. Usually people of roughly the same age are betrothed and married to each other. There are exceptions but they are rare and then politically necessary (like the Maegor-Ceryse match or Tommen-Margaery). Dany tells us that chances had been pretty good that she would have been married to Prince Aegon rather than to Viserys had the boy lived (and there been no Rebellion) since they were closer in age than she and Viserys (who could then have married Rhaenys, perhaps).

The few avuncular marriages we see have husband and wife be of the same age (e.g. Jocelyn Baratheon marrying her half-nephew Prince Aemon). The avuncular marriages in House Stark could also be similar affairs. Serena and Sansa were daughters of Cregan's son by his first wife while Jonnel and Edric were sons of Cregan's by his third wife Lynara Stark. The nieces could even have been older than their uncles in that scenario.

The rationale behind that is pretty obvious - sure, an old man can still have children but the chances are also pretty good that he is going to die soon, so you better get your daughter a young man as a husband rather than an old one. If you don't, your daughter is likely going to be forced to raise her children on her own, or has to look for another husband (or ends up returning to you).

Whoever tries to sit on the fence on that question is going to fall on his ass hard. If the show has settled anything then this question.

Jon cannot adopt the approach of the wildlings to incest without developing a severe and strong self-hatred. He himself is descended from a very incestuous bloodline as well as a bloodline which has no issues with cousin or avuncular marriages. And guess what - he and Daenerys turned out just fine.

The wildlings know some stuff but they are dead wrong on others. And they sure as hell are in their own marriage customs. Stealing women from other villages is disgusting and a crime in any civilized society. As is the idea that marrying some sixth or seventh cousin from your own village is 'bad' for some reason.

Nobody said avuncular and first cousin marriages were the rule - what we dispute is your idea that they are for certainty uncommon, rare, and seen as potentially problematic. After all, you cannot even give us the exact amount of cousin marriages (through the female line) in the family trees we are given. There is no pattern to be found aside from the fact that avuncular marriages and cousin marriages are a thing.

And it was most definitely by choice on the side of the author to give us those marriages in the Stark family tree. Nobody expected the Starks to marry their cousins or uncles prior to TWoIaF. 

You keep telling us that the novels don't talk about this - but then, how or why should they when those books usually do not discuss the marriages of some noble house a hundred years ago? Even Lyarra Stark is not important enough to mentioned a single time in those books. 

The important thing of those family trees is that cousin and avuncular marriages are indeed a thing - not that they are not. We always knew in theory that there must be a lot of cousin marriages among the nobility simply because there are not that many houses. But George deliberately chose to includes close kin marriages through the male in line in his Stark and Lannister family trees. And in addition he reinforced the idea that the Lannisters and Starks usually choose brides from their own vassals rather than reaching out and include the entire nobility of Westeros (and perhaps even certain places in Essos) among their marriage candidates. That reduced the gene pool from which the Lannisters and Starks pick their brides.

I think this is pretty spot on. 

I don't see any evidence in universe that avunculate marriage is seen as an abomination or considered falls under the same incest taboo as brother sister/ parent child. 

The main reason why them hooking up is bad - they are so interbred already that genetically its the equivalent of brother sister - is a reason no one in universe would have any idea about. 

Is one of the reasons there was less incent in egg's days that the dragons where dead and  the whole reason for incest was gone? If before power came from dragons so they had to interbred, without the Dragons power would come from alliances so would be better to intermarry with the great houses. 

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40 minutes ago, jcmontea said:

Is one of the reasons there was less incent in egg's days that the dragons where dead and  the whole reason for incest was gone? If before power came from dragons so they had to interbred, without the Dragons power would come from alliances so would be better to intermarry with the great houses. 

No, it seems to be the lack of sisters many Targaryens had at that time. Daeron II had only sons, and of those sons only Maekar and Rhaegel had daughters. Rhaegel's twins Aelor and Aelora married each other and their younger sister eventually ended up with her cousin Aerion. Maekar had two daughters - Daella and Rhae - and Daella was originally betrothed to her younger brother Egg. That betrothal was dissolved but both Daella and Rhae eventually married and had children. The age gap between Aerion and his younger sisters could explain why they did not end up with him. Maekar's eldest son Daeron was married to his cousin Valarr's widow Kiera of Tyrosh which seems to have been a political match, most likely connected to the whole Blackfyre thing.

The first Targaryen to try to arrange political marriages with the really great houses was Aegon V. And he failed at that.

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6 hours ago, Lollygag said:

If a woman has her first child at 15 and has children until say, 35, and she has siblings with a similar age gap, then the ages will align fairly often. Also as we saw with Tyrion and Sansa and Tyrek and Lady E....whatever her name was who happened to be an infant, Westeros has no problem with age gaps. Rickon could have easily been betrothed to Robb's daughter.

Yet these marriages are still extraordinarily rare.

Yes, age gaps could well align. But normally? Conditions would allow for an Aunt or Uncle to marry someone else, allowing for a first cousin marriage.

Aunt/Nephew and Uncle/Niece marriages are uncommon because they're about securing the succession more than anything else, and most families are large enough that they can afford to wait for a cousin marriage under normal circumstances.

 

In addition, the "love" match that was Uncle/Niece that we know of - Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen, had a notable age gap.

 

--

Lollygag, sure, Tommen is born of Incest - his parents are siblings. That's incest by Westerosi standards. No one is saying Siblings are not incest by Westerosi standards.

Wildlings do have the broadest definition of incest in the books, that's true. However, I don't believe that such a point was made in the show. In addition, Jon's definitions of incest will have been those instilled into him in his childhood at Winterfell, not those of the Wildlings. He has spent a relatively small proportion of his life with the Wildlings.

 

However, look to the case of Alys Karstark - Arnolf Karstark, who she called Uncle, but was actually her Great-Uncle, and Cregan Karstark, called Uncle, though technically a cousin, intended to have Alys marry Cregan to claim Karhold in the event of the death of Alys's brother Harry. No one bats an eye at their blood relationship, or that she calls Cregan Uncle, nor is it claimed as a reason against marriage by anyone, not even Lord Commander Jon Snow - and that's after his time with the Wildlings.

 

All available evidence is that everyone in Westeros except the Wildlings, which is everyone in Westeros that counts for this discussion, only define incest as Parent/Child and Siblings (presumably also Grandparent/grandchild, although that's never explicitly included). First cousins is perfectly acceptable and moderately common. Aunt/Nephew and Uncle/Niece are also perfectly acceptable, although uncommon and arranged primarily to secure the succession.

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3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

@lojzelote

George actually subtly plays with the whole 'bastard's blood' thing. Joffrey is very tall and strong for a twelve-year-old, which could be seen as 'confirmation' that bastards grow quicker than trueborn children. The same could make sense for Rhaenyra's sons when they stood their ground against ten-year-old Aemond. Joffrey was only three at that point but acts as if he was at least as strong as a six-year-old.

But it is quite clear that we should not take the wisdom that 'bastards are evil by blood' or 'traitor's blood breeds traitors' (like Pycelle tries to sell Sansa) at face value. This is a very superstitious society, especially the wildlings (but certainly not only them - most what the average septon or lord says is also nonsense).

And while Val might be, in the end, right about Shireen's greyscale returning we should never follow her lead on that question. She is suggesting murdering an innocent child rather than giving her the best medical care, and that's just disgusting. The wildlings are the ones who only follow strength, and who most likely leave lackwits, half-wits, dwarfs, cripples, and other freaks in the wild for the wolves.

I've always thought that they mean by that bastards mature faster psychically. Not that it makes it any less BS. If bastards mature faster, then it's because society treats them with disdain since birth, not because they are inherently quicker to learn.

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"I am almost a man grown," Jon protested. "I will turn fifteen on my next name day, and Maester Luwin says bastards grow up faster than other children."

"That's true enough," Benjen said with a downward twist of his mouth. He took Jon's cup from the table, filled it fresh from a nearby pitcher, and drank down a long swallow.

Quote
Maester Luwin said, "There is great honor in service on the Wall, my lord."
"And even a bastard may rise high in the Night's Watch," Ned reflected. Still, his voice was troubled. "Jon is so young. If he asked this when he was a man grown, that would be one thing, but a boy of fourteen …"
"A hard sacrifice," Maester Luwin agreed. "Yet these are hard times, my lord. His road is no crueler than yours or your lady's."

Pretty disgusting, particularly coming from an alleged champion of reason. Apparently this fourteen-year-old should bear the same burden as adults, because bastards grow faster. Let's not even get into the fact the fruit of the hard sacrifice of these adults includes becoming the in-laws of the royals, leading a comfortable life, and great prestige. What the fourteen-year-old will get out of his hard sacrifice is "life of honor" in the prison colony in Siberia without a possibility leave. The adults made their decision themselves after a careful consideration, the fourteen-year-old brought his intention up when he was drunk and afterwards his father made the decision of how spends the rest of his life for him based on third-hand information he had had no idea of until then. I'd puke. Westeros is a truly disgusting society.

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On 01/09/2017 at 1:16 PM, SeanF said:

Dany is probably unworried about incest, but Jon has been brought up to regard it as an abomination.  And worse, she now has a rival for the Iron Throne.

No, that's not corret, this couldn't be more wrong. While the Valyrians practiced incest with their closest relatives, Westeros did it too, even if with less frequency. The honorable House Stark married uncles and nices before, and they did it twice. That's not to say, cousing marriages has always been fairly popular.

Westeros is not based on our modern times, they don't share our view. People from the middle ages always saw incest with different eyes, and pretty much everything else too.

 

I'm sure the fact that they are related will bother at least Jon for a while, but incest is nothing new to Westeros(or Planetos for that matter). After some drama, Jon will come to terms with it, love will have to speak louder, and i'm sure this will cause even more problems than the fact that they are related. They shouldn't be having sexual relations while the undead has just destroyed the wall and invaded the north.

My take is that Jon and Daenerys's love will bring an end to the both of them, just like Rhaegar and Lyanna. The Others/White Walkers will be defeated, but the costs of that victory will be huge, both on a personal level and on a political level. We will have a bittersweet end, one hell of a bittersweet end.

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19 minutes ago, theMADdestScientist_ said:

No, that's not corret, this couldn't be more wrong. While the Valyrians practiced incest with their closest relatives, Westeros did it too, even if with less frequency. The honorable House Stark married uncles and nices before, and they did it twice. That's not to say, cousing marriages has always been fairly popular.

Westeros is not based on our modern times, they don't share our view. People from the middle ages always saw incest with different eyes, and pretty much everything else too.

 

I'm sure the fact that they are related will bother at least Jon for a while, but incest is nothing new to Westeros(or Planetos for that matter). After some drama, Jon will come to terms with it, love will have to speak louder, and i'm sure this will cause even more problems than the fact that they are related. They shouldn't be having sexual relations while the undead has just destroyed the wall and invaded the north.

My take is that Jon and Daenerys's love will bring an end to the both of them, just like Rhaegar and Lyanna. The Others/White Walkers will be defeated, but the costs of that victory will be huge, both on a personal level and on a political level. We will have a bittersweet end, one hell of a bittersweet end.

Out of interest who are the uncles and nieces that have been married? I have never heard that before.

I think Jon should find any incest unacceptable as it is a pretty big no no in the old gods faith, right up there with violating guest rights. Look at how he reacts to Craster and how it lowers his opinion of Jeor Mormont a bit when he finds out the watch knows what Craster was up to.

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