So...the Masseys were from the Great Empire of the Dawn too.

[Corvo the Crow]

34 minutes ago, Willam Stark said:

Lannisters are Andals descendants, confirmed by GRRM himself

ssm are semi-canon and House Lannister not only already exists during the Andal invasion but were powerful kings.

 

38 minutes ago, Willam Stark said:

The purer Andals are the stony Dornishmen and they are the fairest

You are kidding me, right?

I provided the quote that says some Andals went places no other went before, so those guys are without a doubt purest.

Not only the stone dornish houses have  FM origins but they were able to hold their own and some like Yronwoods were even able to vassalize some of the Andals.

Short and not fair haired andals come with all their might, mingle with locals and after a time claim they were fair is quite a likely story and you can find similar stuff in our own world.

This isn’t real life so we can’t dig up bones for DNA tests to prove it’s one or the other but if Grrm really intended that Andals truly were fair haired, from all his writing it seems quite the opposite. All the Andal houses we see with fair hair have mixed with FM whereas we see FM people with no Andal ancestry having fair hair. We see fair haired people in the North where Andals couldn’t reach and also beyond the wall.

[Lord Varys]

The Andals were a fair-haired people. The Arryns are supposedly the purest house of Andal nobility and their trademark looks are fair hair and blue eyes.

Insofar as the Lannisters are concerned, their looks seem to go back to Lann the Clever who may or may not have been 'an Andal adventurer'. But we can and should, of course, also assume that the Andals marrying into House Lannisters and eventually taking it over with Joffrey Lydden were not exactly dark-haired.

The First Men houses and common people are not associated with fair hair - or any specific hair color as such.

[Corvo the Crow]

We are told Andals are a fair haired people, repeatedly, yet we are never given a description of early invaders. Arryns WERE supposedly the purest house of Andal nobility when they came to Westeros, they've since married with FM houses, Teora Hunter - a lady from the FM house, Hunters, is the earliest we know of. Unless it's mentioned in Fire and Blood(I only read parts of it), Arryns were never given trademark coloring. We only have Harry HARDYNG that is said to look like Jon Arryn, whose facial features may very well be reminiscent of Jon Arryn's while having different hair, eye or even skin color. Jon Arryn's own son, whose mother has auburn hair, doesn't have fair hair - hair that Arryns supposedly have yet we somehow don't see- but brown hair.

[Willam Stark]

17 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

ssm are semi-canon

Same can be said for TWOIAF, the source you rely on. The difference is the information provided to us in the SSMs comes directly from GRRM, while the information in TWOIAF comes from maester Yandel, who is not fully reliable. So if there is a contradiction, it is the information from the SSM that must be taken into account. Thus the early Lannisters were Andals who later intermarried with other Andals and First Men.

17 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

I provided the quote that says some Andals went places no other went before, so those guys are without a doubt purest.

The Andal invasion happened before the Rhoynish invasion and before doesn't mean that nobody came after them. When the Rhoynish arrived in Dorne, they interbred with the local First Men and Andals. The sandy Dornishmen interbred more with the Rhoynish than the stony one, and took over their darker features. This is the logical conclusion that can be drawn by linking all the information at our disposal.

17 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Not only the stone dornish houses have  FM origins

Both Andals and First Men origins.

17 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

but they were able to hold their own and some like Yronwoods were even able to vassalize some of the Andals.

That doesn't mean that they didn't interbreed with Andals.

17 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Short and not fair haired andals come with all their might, mingle with locals and after a time claim they were fair is quite a likely story and you can find similar stuff in our own world.

Tall and fair-haired Andals actually.

18 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

This isn’t real life so we can’t dig up bones for DNA tests to prove it’s one or the other but if Grrm really intended that Andals truly were fair haired, from all his writing it seems quite the opposite.

You just didn't understand what you've read and drew the wrong conclusions. To make your point, you've talked about Myr and then the sandy Dornishmen. The thing is that the Andals are from Andalos not from Myr, the sandy Dornishmen have more Rhoynish blood, who have dark features themselves, than the stony Dornishmen who have fair features. With all the information at our disposal, nothing contradicts the fact that Andals were tall and fair-haired people. We don't have any real reason to doubt that, actually.

18 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

All the Andal houses we see with fair hair have mixed with FM whereas we see FM people with no Andal ancestry having fair hair. We see fair haired people in the North where Andals couldn’t reach and also beyond the wall.

As Martin said: "<...> Of course, you also need to remember that there have been hundreds and in some cases thousands of years of interbreeding, so hardly anyone is pure Andal or First Man."

3 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

We are told Andals are a fair haired people, repeatedly, yet we are never given a description of early invaders.

I already provided you the information

"The Andals were the first, a race of tall, fair-haired warriors"

A Game of Thrones, Chapter 66, Bran VII.

"And those who would not be slaves but were unable to withstand the might of Valyria fled. Many failed and are forgotten. But one people, tall and fair-haired, made courageous and indomitable by their faith, succeeded in their escape from Valyria. And those men are the Andals."

The World of Ice & Fire, Ancient History: Valyria's Children

[Lord Varys]

14 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

We are told Andals are a fair haired people, repeatedly, yet we are never given a description of early invaders.

We get such descriptions. How accurate they are thousands of years later is unclear, but the in-universe stories about the Andals describe them as a fair-haired people.

14 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Arryns WERE supposedly the purest house of Andal nobility when they came to Westeros, they've since married with FM houses, Teora Hunter - a lady from the FM house, Hunters, is the earliest we know of.

The Arryns are still described as one the purest bloodlines of Andal nobility in the appendix of AGoT. Apparently, they can be this pure-blooded and occasionally intermarry with First Men houses from the Vale - who, in turn, would have also intermarried with Andal houses. And it would also strike us as very likely that Jon Arryn wasn't the first Arryn to marry an Arryn cousin.

The Vale must be one of the regions in Westeros where a majority of the people is now of Andal descent. They drove most of the original First Men into the mountains.

14 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Unless it's mentioned in Fire and Blood(I only read parts of it), Arryns were never given trademark coloring. We only have Harry HARDYNG that is said to look like Jon Arryn, whose facial features may very well be reminiscent of Jon Arryn's while having different hair, eye or even skin color. Jon Arryn's own son, whose mother has auburn hair, doesn't have fair hair - hair that Arryns supposedly have yet we somehow don't see- but brown hair.

Harry is described as fair-haired and blue-eyed, so the implication is that Jon also shared those traits - and perhaps some others he shares with Harry.

While we never get a 'family look' for the Arryns - mostly because we have met very few Arryns so far - Jon's and Harry's description as well as the general description of the Arryns imply that the trademark look of the Arryns would be the classical Andal look - fair hair and blue eyes.

11 hours ago, Willam Stark said:

Same can be said for TWOIAF, the source you rely on. The difference is the information provided to us in the SSMs comes directly from GRRM, while the information in TWOIAF comes from maester Yandel, who is not fully reliable. So if there is a contradiction, it is the information from the SSM that must be taken into account. Thus the early Lannisters were Andals who later intermarried with other Andals and First Men.

SSMs you can, for the most part, throw out the window since they are preliminary information and information often drawn from George in informal conversation and without him consulting the books or any of his notes before giving an answer. Those comments can be accurate, they can be wrong, and they might be overturned by something in the next book - and that does happen. They are never definitive answers.

TWoIaF and FaB might be factually incorrect due to the narrative framework, but everything in there comes from George. And it was published, unlike SSMs.

Elio and Linda just edited TWoIaF, meaning some stuff was changed or cut for length, but everything was approved by George in the end.

[Willam Stark]

36 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

TWoIaF and FaB might be factually incorrect due to the narrative framework, but everything in there comes from George. And it was published, unlike SSMs.

I was referring to the narrative framework, but I wasn't clear: unlike GRRM with his notes, maester Yandel is an in-universe character and doesn't have access to all knowledge. I still think they are a more reliable source of information though and shouldn't be thrown out the window, but I agree on the fact that they aren't definitive answers in absolute terms.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Willam Stark said:

I was referring to the narrative framework, but I wasn't clear: unlike GRRM with his notes, maester Yandel is an in-universe character and doesn't have access to all knowledge. I still think they are a more reliable source of information though and shouldn't be thrown out the window, but I agree on the fact that they aren't definitive answers in absolute terms.

In context here, Yandel or Gyldayn talking about fair-haired Andals would have the same (or even more) veracity as in-book characters like Catelyn or Tyrion talking about fair-haired Andals - they would all get their knowledge about the looks of the ancient Andals from in-universe history books or songs about the ancient Andals.

SSMs are problematic, because George himself is more or less informal there - of course, there are different takes there. A throwaway informal line at a con is different than something he said in a written interview. But it is all not canon as information until it is published information in a book.