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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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I do not find the casting of the Velaryons to be much of a diversion from what you describe. Valyria, a region with a mediterranean climate, somehow managed to produce and maintain consistently an overwhelming percentage of white albinos mixed with the odd 100% black person. This makes the Strong Boys story point farcial, three children, all white as snow? In a way it's worse than RoP and Wheel of Time and the other shows that cast randomly until certain demographic percentages are met and pay the setting exactly no mind, House of the Dragon wants you to believe that Valyrians can be any race so long as they have white hair and then make a point of identifying Criston Cole as being dornish based on his skin tone.

It's authorial fiat within the ASOIAF universe that human genetics there don't work the way they work on earth; because people kept calling out that Ned's "discovery" in GoT that Cersei's children were bastards because of the blonde hair was retarded and explaining recessive genes to GRRM at conventions. So GRRM just ragequit and said the whole thing works differently, that in Westeros your paternal family "type" will always predominate over another or something like that, because magic or whatever.

I prefer the idea that Ned's discovery was based on his own misunderstanding of genetics, and while he was factually correct, his evidence was total bunk.

So there's a lot of precedent for the setting just ignoring ordinary genetics in favor of bespoke solutions. Maybe where they are, that's just how it works. I mean if we're going to apply science to that setting, the seasons are a much bigger and more glaring problem with absolutely no workable solution within the text.

I like this theory, although I would describe his evidence as "slightly flawed" rather than "total bunk". The Baratheon family all having black hair implies that both they and the people they tend to marry mostly have two black hair genes rather than one, otherwise you'd expect 1 in 4 of them to be lighter. This doesn't prohibit the case that one of Robert's parents might have had a recessive light hair gene and passed it on to him, but it does make it less likely.

Further, Ned doesn't learn of the family history and immediately falsely conclude that it logically implies Joffrey is a bastard, but it does raise the possibility. He then proceeds to check Robert's bastards, which again all have dark hair. If Robert did have a recessive light hair gene, you might expect some of his children to have light hair, but they do not. Again, this does not logically preclude the possibility, but it makes it statistically less likely. Combine this with the fact that all three of his supposed children are light haired, and even in the case he has a recessive gene there's only a 1/8 chance all 3 children would get it. Combining all of these is a lot of statistical evidence, even if it's not a logical certainty.

And of course, Ned doesn't actually understand genetics or statistics, but he does understand vague ideas about heredity and combining multiple sources of evidence, so I think his general process is heuristically valid. And again, he doesn't take it as logical certainty, he takes the evidence and confronts Cersei, who then confesses. Which is probably a mistake politically as it ends up getting him killed, but not a mistake in terms of deduction given the information available to him.

otherwise you'd expect 1 in 4 of them to be lighter.

But why would you expect this? Why are we assuming earthen genetics? What genetics do the fire breathing dragons have? What are the genetics of the children of the forest? For the "others"? It's just as likely as black hair being a Baratheon "curse" that all Baratheon offspring will always have forever.