Was incest prevalent in Old Valyria?

[James Steller]

This isn’t a defence of incest, to be clear.

I'm just curious about this notion that Valyrians must keep the bloodline pure (especially considering that it’s the bond to dragons that Valyrians wanted to preserve).

But while I can see why Targaryens would depend on incest in order to preserve that dragon bond. But what about in Old Valyria, where there were dozens of dragon-riding families to choose from? 

[Ran]

George has indicated that the dragonlords practiced it, and probably the families of bloodmages as well, linking a belief that their abilities were in the blood and that they wanted to not lose that ability.

But it's a good question as to how marriages within different families of dragonlords/marriages went. They must have happened for alliance reasons... but I've a notion that maybe as far as dragonlords go, they may well have believed/feared that their control of dragons was tied to specific lines of dragons associated with the families, and diluting that could be seen as dangerous. 

I always wondered how something like the Velaryons having dragons would have been seen in Valyria before the Doom.

[Gilbert Green]

Egg studied the effects on incest on the Targs, and decided it was a bad idea.  IMHO, the patterns we are aware of from the available history suggest one of negative effects of incest, leading to the line being restored by relative outbreeding.

My guess regarding Old Valyria is that they practiced incest, and for similar reasons, but did so less frequently because they had other options, due to the sheer number of Dragonlord families.  Thus, the effects of inbreeding were more frequently and regularly cured by relative outbreeding, and  the situation rarely got serious enough for them to notice the same patterns that Egg later noticed in the Targs.

[Alester Florent]

We know that there were no more than forty families who controlled dragons, although to be fair the Targs do seem to consider Valyrian blood important notwithstanding dragonridership - the Velaryons were not dragonlords (aside from Corlys's nominal descendants) but were still preferential marriage-partners for the Targs.

Finding suitable marriage-partners in a group that small is likely to lead to quite a lot of inbreeding, probably mostly at the cousin or second-cousin level, I suspect. But there was probably also a degree of segregation within those forty families: if any didn't have dragons, they'd be towards the bottom of the list. We know the Targs weren't particularly close to the top. The top ten families or so might have married each other almost exclusively and only venturing "downwards" when they ran out of potential partners in their preferred pool.

In any case, if practised over centuries, even millennia, with the forty families exclusively marrying each other, their genepool is likely to become almost entirely homogenous, to the point where marrying a second cousin is little different to marrying a sibling in terms of genetic diversity.

That doesn't entirely explain the Targs' tolerance for sibling-marriages, though, as the dragonlord pool in Valyria should have been broad enough that there was almost always a non-sibling available for any prospective marriage, and the possibility of building inter-family alliances, not to mention the near-universal human prejudice against sibling-breeding, would surely mean that out-marriage was preferable. Maybe in light of their eugenicist attitudes the Valyrians just never had a problem, and/or used magic of some sort to eliminate troublesome genes?

[SaffronLady]

8 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

used magic of some sort to eliminate troublesome genes

Like outright killing babies born sick?

[Gilbert Green]

48 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

We know that there were no more than forty families who controlled dragons, although to be fair the Targs do seem to consider Valyrian blood important notwithstanding dragonridership - the Velaryons were not dragonlords (aside from Corlys's nominal descendants) but were still preferential marriage-partners for the Targs.

Marrying Velaryons might not have been considered a good option, in the old days, when there were better options.  And even in latter days, it seems Velaryons were considered options not because they were Velaryons, but rather because some Velaryons had some Targaryen or other distant dragonlord heritage.  That's my guess anyway.

48 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

Finding suitable marriage-partners in a group that small is likely to lead to quite a lot of inbreeding, probably mostly at the cousin or second-cousin level, I suspect. But there was probably also a degree of segregation within those forty families: if any didn't have dragons, they'd be towards the bottom of the list.

40 families are a sufficiently large population base to support a healthy population.  Call it "inbreeding" if you want, but once you start talking about second cousins, or even first cousins, it is no longer really that much of an issue.

48 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

In any case, if practised over centuries, even millennia, with the forty families exclusively marrying each other, their genepool is likely to become almost entirely homogenous, to the point where marrying a second cousin is little different to marrying a sibling in terms of genetic diversity.

No.  It doesn't work that way.

In any event, no racial purity doctrine is going to completely suppress the chaos that is human nature.  There is going to be some interbreeding. 

39 minutes ago, SaffronLady said:

Like outright killing babies born sick?

Yes, that's an issue.  The downsides of relatively low levels of "inbreeding" are much less if you can just kill the unhealthy ones.  But it becomes more burdensome when the prevailing ethic says that unhealthy babes should be fostered and protected.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Gilbert Green

[Hippocras]

14 hours ago, Ran said:

George has indicated that the dragonlords practiced it, and probably the families of bloodmages as well, linking a belief that their abilities were in the blood and that they wanted to not lose that ability.

But it's a good question as to how marriages within different families of dragonlords/marriages went. They must have happened for alliance reasons... but I've a notion that maybe as far as dragonlords go, they may well have believed/feared that their control of dragons was tied to specific lines of dragons associated with the families, and diluting that could be seen as dangerous. 

I always wondered how something like the Velaryons having dragons would have been seen in Valyria before the Doom.

I am also curious. There do seem to be some vague hints in the series that not all dragons are the same. There may indeed be different "lines" of dragons. At the very least there seems to be some kind of importance to who rode which dragon in the history of the Targaryen dynasty, but it is alway just out of reach when it comes to making solid theories.

[SaffronLady]

14 minutes ago, Hippocras said:

At the very least there seems to be some kind of importance to who rode which dragon in the history of the Targaryen dynasty

Dreamfyre might be a good breakthrough point, since her riders tend to be ... queer.

[Hippocras]

5 minutes ago, SaffronLady said:

Dreamfyre might be a good breakthrough point, since her riders tend to be ... queer.

I kind of feel like rather a lot of the Targs were of ambiguous sexuality and gender. Sometimes it was more subtle than other times, but for example Daemon clearly had relations with women and fathered children, but also liked men. I always put it down to the assertion that dragons were neither male nor female.

[SaffronLady]

2 hours ago, Hippocras said:

ambiguous sexuality and gender.

I meant Helaena's bug interest and apparent prophecy powers. Less clear on Rhaena, but I don't think her comparing herself to Visenya was some mark of gender, just queer-ness in general. Half-mad if I'm less generous, but the circumstances of that comparison certainly weren't happy. Imagine your lover stealing nukes from you, probably not conducive to not mad states of mind.

[Hippocras]

57 minutes ago, SaffronLady said:

I meant Helaena's bug interest and apparent prophecy powers. Less clear on Rhaena, but I don't think her comparing herself to Visenya was some mark of gender, just queer-ness in general. Half-mad if I'm less generous, but the circumstances of that comparison certainly weren't happy. Imagine your lover stealing nukes from you, probably not conducive to not mad states of mind.

Yes, sorry. That makes sense.

But we are digressing a bit I think. It only matters for this thread if there are dragon "bloodline" that are connected to their riders' bloodlines. If that is the case, then even the dragonlords would not have been able to ride just any dragon, making the incest necessary for preserving the bond to "their" dragon line.

[SaffronLady]

25 minutes ago, Hippocras said:

But we are digressing a bit I think.

I meant using Dreamfyre and her riders as a breakthrough point to investigate how dragons choose their riders. If they show intelligence and preference for certain traits that make their riders more similar to themselves, then perhaps they could tell if a claimant's lineage is close enough to their previous rider(s).

[Hippocras]

42 minutes ago, SaffronLady said:

I meant using Dreamfyre and her riders as a breakthrough point to investigate how dragons choose their riders. If they show intelligence and preference for certain traits that make their riders more similar to themselves, then perhaps they could tell if a claimant's lineage is close enough to their previous rider(s).

Yes, I understood that. I just really don't know if dragons choose personality or lineage as a primary consideration.

[Lord Varys]

I think I was among the first who suggested that dragonlord incest might have to do with different dragon bloodlines which were bonded to individual dragonlord bloodlines.

But FaB firmly debunked that idea unless we want to assume the Conqueror's grandchildren as depicted by Gyldayn had no clue about dragonlore and its history.

Queen Rhaena thinks the Lannisters could acquire dragons (perhaps only by way of her blood) and Jaehaerys I fears that dragon egg theft could lead to a new dragonlord house in the Free Cities both in Braavos and in Volantis.

It stands to reason that no Targaryen relations do live in either city at that point - especially not in as exalted positions as that of Sealord or triarch - so if they fears are not just superstitions the conclusion is that the Valyrian dragonlords did not believe in incest to keep their own specific brand of 'dragon blood' pure but saw it as a general means to that.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Lord Varys

[Hippocras]

20 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But FaB firmly debunked that idea unless we want to assume the Conqueror's grandchildren as depicted by Gyldayn had no clue about dragonlore and its history.

It is a very common thing in these books for people to have no clue about history. Important things get forgotten in every aspect of the series so I would not think it is any different for Targaryens a century after leaving Valyria.
 

20 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It stands to reason that no Targaryen relations do live in either city at that point - especially not in as exalted positions as that of Sealord or triarch - so if they fears are not just superstitions the conclusion is that the Valyrian dragonlords did not believe in incest to keep their own specific brand of 'dragon blood' pure but saw it as a general means to that.

The descendants of the dragonlords were all over Essos as "dragonseeds" and children of the female line. The Targaryens were simply the only ones who still had their dragons and the only ones with their chain of inheritance intact. The Doom killed most of the legitimate members of dragonlord families but that doesn't change the existence of bastards and female line descendants.

So I am not so sure the idea has been disproven, though of course it also lacks any proof.

Riders of Balerion:
- Aegon I
- Maegor 
- Aerea
- Viserys I

Viserys had nothing in common in terms of personality with Maegor, nor did he descend from him or from Aerea. I see no pattern here.

Riders of Vhagar:
- Visenya
- Baelon
- Laena
- Aemond

Visenya's line died out (probably) and she was not looked on positively by historians. Baelon WAS looked on positively. Laena descended from Aemon, not Baelon, and Aemond was of course very different again from Laena. I see no pattern.

Dragons who Laid Eggs:
Syrax - 2 clutches roughly match her rider's 2 sets of children.
Dreamfyre - 3 known clutches. Her rider Rhaena had only 2 known children, but the clutches may more accurately correspond to Rhaena's lovers, a clutch for Larissa Velaryon, Melony Piper, Alayne Royce and one for Elissa Farman. Dreamfyre may easily have laid more eggs between the time of Rhaena and her next known rider Helaena.

[Lord Varys]

In Valyria we have to take dragon logistics into account. Sibling incest was the ideal, but there would have been spare sons and daughters for matches with outsiders or more distant relations.

Thing is, if we take 'thousands of dragons' in Valyria from HotD as coming from George - which is realistic as the 300 dragons destroying the Rhoynar were likely not the entire dragon arsenal - then obviously the more powerful dragonlord families - and especially the most powerful ones some of which had supreme rule of the Freehold at times - would have to control a lot of dragons. Scores, perhaps more than a hundred. That would mean such families must have been more fertile and much larger than the Targaryens, with many different branches, as dragon power would only have been a real factor if they were claimed by some actual dragonlords.

(Unless the Valyrians did have magical means to control or unleash dragons in war which were not (yet) claimed by riders.)

Thus realistically we would assume that non-sibling marriages within the family could involve the pairing of more distant cousins and kin to keep a larger dragonlord clan together.

Sibling incest might have come up among the dragonlords not so much for blood purity in general (avuncular and cousin marriages could have been enough there) but to also control the dragons and ensure that a (female) dragonlord doesn't run away with a dragon. Also, we can speculate that the blood of the dragons wasn't supposed to be spread to everyone. The Valyrian elite was fertile and spread out and founded colonies, but one imagines they weren't keen to see their daughters marrying foreign nobility and royalty to give them dragons.

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

11 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The Valyrian elite was fertile and spread out and founded colonies, but one imagines they weren't keen to see their daughters marrying foreign nobility and royalty to give them dragons.

Did happen on occasion though. According to TWOIAF, one Yi Tish emperor kept a dragon at his court because he was married to a Valyrian noblewoman.

Edited December 5, 2023 by The Grey Wolf Strikes Back

[Lord Varys]

28 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

Did happen on occasion though. According to TWOIAF, one Yi Tish emperor kept a dragon at his court because he was married to a Valyrian noblewoman.

Yes, but that was the Emperor of Yi Ti when Yi Ti was very powerful indeed, and not just some foreign nobility or royalty. It obviously happened rarely.

[Frey family reunion]

On 12/4/2023 at 8:59 AM, Lord Varys said:

It stands to reason that no Targaryen relations do live in either city at that point - especially not in as exalted positions as that of Sealord or triarch - so if they fears are not just superstitions the conclusion is that the Valyrian dragonlords did not believe in incest to keep their own specific brand of 'dragon blood' pure but saw it as a general means to that.

Maybe, maybe not.  Jahaerys also knew how prevalent Targaryen bastards were.  So if a group took enough trouble or expense to acquire dragon eggs, then they might take enough trouble or expense to track down Targaryen bastards and/or their progeny to help hatch them. 

Edited December 5, 2023 by Frey family reunion

[SaffronLady]

On 12/4/2023 at 10:59 PM, Lord Varys said:

It stands to reason that no Targaryen relations do live in either city at that point - especially not in as exalted positions as that of Sealord or triarch

Given how Sealords and triarchs are elected and rotate out of the position, perhaps the risk that potential Sealords and triarchs have enough Targ blood may be enough of a danger? I can't be sure in any case.