Family Traits

[Corvo the Crow]

Not exactly related to your thread, but i had this thread on families

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/148871-family-defining-features-will-no-longer-get-updates/#comment-8053766

Thought you might be interested… and who knows, perhaps you may connect the personality traits with the physical ones in some way or another.

[Bowen 747]

On 3/10/2020 at 10:48 PM, James Fenimore Cooper XXII said:

House Targaryen

Dragon's Blood. The blood of Old Valyria. 

Silver-blonde, purple eyes, athletic.  Usually taller than average.  Physically beautiful. 

Quick of temper, but many in the family are also coldly calculating. 

Intelligent but ruthless. 

Some have a tolerance for heat.  Some have a very high resistance to infectious diseases.  Some may have prophetic dreams. 

Males in the family are alleged to have a higher than average chances of losing their sanity. 

Some are able to bond with dragons.  One very special female fulfilled the Azor Ahai prophecy and hatched dragons from stone. 

House Stark

Wolf's Blood.  The blood of the First Men.

Quick of Temper, Slow of Mind.

Quick to Anger, Slow to Think.

Freakishly long faces among some in the family.  Ex.  Arya Horseface. 

Very emotional.  Family oriented people. 

Touchy nature, quick to take offense.  Very much a trait of Jon.

Poor self-control, prone to violent outbursts.  Ex. Jon attacked Ser Aliser Thorne. 

Proven oathbreakers.  A rebellious family.  Troublemakers in recent history. 

Kin to Craster.  Practiced human sacrifice to the weirwoods. 

Some have the ability to warg.  One special boy has the green sight. 

House Lannister

Gold-blonde hair.  Physically beautiful.  Blood of the Andals.

Deceitful.  Intelligent, but cruel.

Prideful and haughty.  Harsh.

House Baratheon

Dark-haired.  Born of Durandon stock. 

Tall and strongly built.  Stubborn. 

Warriors.  Not particularly intelligent. 

House Frey

Weak of chin.  Most are not physically attractive.

Good business people.  Smart, clever, and wise with money.

Very capable people.  Practical. 

Very family oriented.  The family is large and many of its members have married out into other noble houses outside the riverlands. 

 

Agrees with you

[The Bard of Banefort]

On 3/19/2020 at 5:02 PM, Corvo the Crow said:

Not exactly related to your thread, but i had this thread on families

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/148871-family-defining-features-will-no-longer-get-updates/#comment-8053766

Thought you might be interested… and who knows, perhaps you may connect the personality traits with the physical ones in some way or another.

Thank you, this looks very interesting. 

I don't know enough about genetics to know if George's pattern of writing families as having the same physical traits for centuries is practical or not. Even so, there does seem to be something fantasy-esque about it, such as the infallibility of Baratheon black hair. Same with the Targaryens: Baelor Breakspear, for instance, had dark hair and eyes like his mother, but his son, Valarr, still looked Valyrian.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Thank you, this looks very interesting. 

I don't know enough about genetics to know if George's pattern of writing families as having the same physical traits for centuries is practical or not. Even so, there does seem to be something fantasy-esque about it, such as the infallibility of Baratheon black hair. Same with the Targaryens: Baelor Breakspear, for instance, had dark hair and eyes like his mother, but his son, Valarr, still looked Valyrian.

The particular case of Valarr could also be due to the fact that his mother and father had Valyrian/Targaryen ancestors.

But overall, with the Targaryens you have the 'inbreeding factor' - in George's world it would likely take a couple of generations to completely breed out the Valyrian traits of a particular Targaryen cadet branch.

And to a lesser degree this seems also to be the case for many of the other families who have 'family looks' (Tullys, Starks, Lannisters, Arryns, etc.). After all, the Starks and Lannisters seemed to have married their own bannermen on a regular basis - which would be the very people their daughters would also marry, meaning they marry more or less themselves, creating a characteristic lasting 'look'.

The Durrandon-Baratheons seem to be special - or might be special - because they are ultimately descended from deities.

[The Bard of Banefort]

54 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The particular case of Valarr could also be due to the fact that his mother and father had Valyrian/Targaryen ancestors.

But overall, with the Targaryens you have the 'inbreeding factor' - in George's world it would likely take a couple of generations to completely breed out the Valyrian traits of a particular Targaryen cadet branch.

And to a lesser degree this seems also to be the case for many of the other families who have 'family looks' (Tullys, Starks, Lannisters, Arryns, etc.). After all, the Starks and Lannisters seemed to have married their own bannermen on a regular basis - which would be the very people their daughters would also marry, meaning they marry more or less themselves, creating a characteristic lasting 'look'.

The Durrandon-Baratheons seem to be special - or might be special - because they are ultimately descended from deities.

Yeah, that's why I'm inclined to think ASOIAF takes more of a fantasy approach to genetics than a realistic one. Inbreeding, specifically, seems to only affect someone's psychology in this world, rather than their physical traits. Aside from Aegon II's son having extra fingers, I can't think of any Targs who are deformed due to inbreeding.

[Lord Varys]

10 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Yeah, that's why I'm inclined to think ASOIAF takes more of a fantasy approach to genetics than a realistic one. Inbreeding, specifically, seems to only affect someone's psychology in this world, rather than their physical traits. Aside from Aegon II's son having extra fingers, I can't think of any Targs who are deformed due to inbreeding.

One has to keep in mind that the Targaryens would have practiced sibling incest for thousands of years before they came to Westeros. They would have bred out most, if not all, problematic traits - i.e. all hereditary diseases and such. In a sense, one can imagine that their characteristic beauty confirms that, assuming the ancient dragonlords who started the incest had to deal with the detrimental effects of real world inbreeding (their magics and 'the blood of the dragon' have to be considered as well), only allowed their most healthy and most beautiful children to marry each other and continue the line.

What the clearly didn't get rid of is a certain mental instability as well as a lust for violence and cruelty - but then, one imagines that those would actually have been more or less positive traits in the snakepit that was Valyria where, one assumes, you needed to be strong and cruel to compete with the rival dragonlord families. It is quite clear that there is now a pretty limited set of 'character traits' in the Targaryen gene pool they really no longer can breed out. Even if people like Maegor and Saera and Aerion do not procreate (or are not reabsorbed back in the main line) individuals having similar or the same traits will inevitably turn up again and again. The same goes for 'the autistic ones' (people like Vaegon and Aerys I and to a lesser degree Aegon III) as well as the soft 'nice guy types' we have in Aenys and Viserys I and Maegelle and possibly in Daeron the Drunk or Jaehaerys II. A certain extreme thing in appetites (sexual and gluttony) can also be observed in some - Viserys I, Aegon II, and Aegon IV.

Overall, though, there is a striking prevalence in physical strength and beauty as well as in mental strength, sense of justice, etc. - one has all that in the Concqueror, Aenys' three sons, Aemon and Baelon, all of Rhaenyra's sons aside from Aegon III, Daeron the Daring, Daeron I and the Dragonknight, Daemon Blackfyre, Baelor Breakspear and Maekar, Aegon V, Duncan and Daeron, Rhaegar, Aegon (if he is the real deal), and Daenerys.

There are far more good apples than bad apples it seems.

Also, one has to keep in mind that like with real world royal families (where some hereditary diseases like hemophilia and schizophrenia were introduced into a bloodline at a certain point only then be involuntarily heightened or conserved by continous cousin marriages thereafter) one has to consider that some problematic traits may have entered the Targaryen family when they married outside their usual gene pool. One can ask whether Jaehaerys and Jaehaera were 'less than perfect' because of their Targaryen or their Hightower ancestry (which was 'preserved' to the same degree when Aegon and Helaena married each other).

The same one can ask about Aerys II and his children in relation to their Blackwood and Dayne and Martell ancestry which would have also been reinforced in them due to his parents incest.

[James Fenimore Cooper XXII]

On 3/12/2020 at 11:12 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

I was inspired to make this post because I'm re-reading Fire and Blood, and I noticed that a lot of the families are often characterized in similar ways throughout the generations. Part of that is perception; I mentioned in another post that Ned is thought of as cold by most people, but we the readers don't generally feel that way since we've seen inside his head. Alysanne comes to a similar conclusion about Alaric Stark.

Alaric and Ned

Tough men come from the roughest of places.  Poverty and scarcity do not encourage small talk.  I am more convinced they lacked interpersonal skills more than a problem with personality.  Where time and resources allow, many interactions between people are preludes to negotiation.  Being the north, they skip right to negotiations.  What are considered courtesies in the south may tax the patience of a northman.  

Most lords would have greeted the queen with more generosity and ceremony.  Not Alaric.  His vault was not as large and his funds may have to last the family awhile.  It is normal for him to be stingy.  Robert's welcome feast would have likely been grander in the south.  It's just the nature of scarcity.  The north does not have much resources in comparison to the south.  There are cheap lords even in the south.  Walder Frey rules over an extremely wealthy family and yet he is still frugal with his funds.  Walder and Alaric have a lot in common, though the former has more resources at his disposal.