#dynastic inbreeding

[resplendentoutfit]

Portrait by Benjamin von Block (Here, Leopold was content to grab the nearest tablecloth with which to drape himself. Not to bad effect, mind you.) He may not have been handsome but he certainly had a flair for fashion!

The outrageous, extravagant, sometimes quizzical, and often humorous outfits worn by subjects of old portraits.

Half-assed History Lesson. Expect errors. Feel free to correct.

Here he is again, the banner-boy of this blog - Leopold I (Leopold Ignaz Joseph Balthasar Franz Felician, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia ! (If I were speaking it, I'd be out of breath!) Leopold of the famous, in-bred Habsburg jaw.

 Because his jaw was depicted unusually large on a 1670 silver coin, Leopold was nicknamed "the Hogmouth"; however, most collectors do not believe the coin was an accurate depiction.

Portrait of Margaret Theresa of Spain by an unknown artist, c. 1662–1664, currently displayed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

So, Leopold had been waiting for years to marry his niece, Margaret Theresa of Spain. When she was a mere 15 years of age, she married Uncle Leopold who was also Cousin Leopold. By marriage to him, Margaret became Holy Roman Empress, German Queen, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia. Gotta catch my breath again. Though she kept her Spanish customs and never learned German, she fondly referred to her husband as "Onkle". How quaint.

There is a resemblance, don't you think? Who would've guessed.

The couple had a gaggle of children but only a couple made it to adulthood. One such was Maria Antonia Josepha Benedicta Rosalia Petronella. As one would expect, she bears an especially strong likeness to her parents.

In fact, Maria Antonia had the highest coefficient of inbreeding in the House of Habsburg. As we know, her father was her mother's maternal uncle and paternal first cousin once removed. Her maternal grandparents were also uncle and niece. Her coefficient was higher than that of a child born to a parent and offspring, or brother and sister. Despite this, it is written in the Wikipedia entry about her that she was intelligent and cultivated, sharing her parents' aptitude for music.

Portrait of Maria Antonia by an unidenfied artist

This concludes The Resplendent Outfit Half-assed History Lesson. I'm sure there are errors. Feel free to point them out.

[asknarashikari]

What's King-Ohger reactions to our Royal intermarriage especially that leads to incestuous marriages & inbreeding? One of the famous examples is House of Habsburg and their infamous 'Habsburg jaw' defect.

I don't really think they'd understand the concept of royal houses intermarrying, since since there's only five nations and they're all allied anyway, begrudgingly at that. As there is no reason for them to further formalize their ties, the very concept of using dynastic marriages to galvanize those alliances (which is the main reason why such marriages occur) would be odd for them.

Not to mention they would not risk their kingdom becoming subordinate to another through such a marriage, let alone allow anyone power to consolidate power over the whole world (cough Racles cough).

I think they would be downright disturbed by intermarriage of close relatives, especially repeated ones down generations like the case of the Habsburgs. Though, in the case of Ishabana and Shuggodam (which are the closest to our traditional idea of monarchies) I imagine that the royals frequently marry into a handful of aristocratic/noble families that could be related to them somehow- just not to the level of the Habsburgs.

[bidonica]

Do you think Alicent regrets marrying Haelena to Aegon rather than Jace after seeing what both boys turned out like? And likewise do you think Viserys after seeing how happy Daemon and Rhaenerya were, he regrets not letting them marry?

Finally getting around to answer this! Honestly for both these questions I need to premise that a lot of the second half of the season hinges on us accepting that characters' decisions were discussed and pondered offscreen, because of the time jumps. While I liked the show, I think it suffered a bit for not having more room to let the character development breathe, because while there were things they succeeded at communicating with only a few scenes (i.e. Harwin and Rhaenyra; I would have loved to see more of them together, but honestly those two scenes really told us everything we needed to know about the kind of rapport they had), others could have used a bit more focus. So I can only answer based on quite a bit of speculation and headcanoning, and forgive me if I take the long route because I'm brainstorming out loud here! This is still all very fresh in my mind and I haven't set in stone opinions except that I will die on the hill that Larys Strong deserved better writing in the second half of the season

1) I've read the take that the Aegon/Helaena match was Viserys' idea, but I don't think the show wrote it that way, and also it seems inconsistent with his character. I believe it really was Alicent who pushed for it, because it would reinforce that her children are True Blue Targs ™ down to the dynastic incest, unlike Rhaenyra's dubious heirs. This said, I also believe (and this is mostly speculation on my part) that it required a lot of compartmentalization from her. It's one thing to rationalize that Targaryens marry brother to sister, it's a "them" thing, and another to marry your own children to each other. Also, with the way the timeline is set up in the show Alicent didn't really witness dynastic Targ incest as part of the establishment: she was about 6 years old when Jaehaerys died in 103AC, with Alysanne dying three years before. Viserys' parents were also brother and sister, but Baelon had died in 101 while Alyssa died even earlier. It was probably very theoretical to her up to that point. What I'm saying is: Alicent comes into the royal family at a moment where the family tree is tentatively branching out instead of going down in a straight line, so my guess is that it would have taken her a bit of self convincing in order to go "we should totally marry Aegon and Helaena to strengthen his claim." Ironically the Jace/Helaena match Rhaenyra offered was not only very sensible, but would have also strongly diminished the inbreeding factor given Jace's actual parentage... well, we might not even have had a Dance if Alicent agreed or Viserys put his foot down and made her accept the match. But I just think she saw the legitimization of Aegon as a worthy heir as too important.

Honestly, I think that if she ever came to regret not accepting the match it would happen further down the line, and not really because Jace has a better character than Aegon, but because of the bloodshed it could have prevented (or maybe not; there were still many ways for things to go awry). But as things stand now, I think that no matter how she comes to despise Aegon, making his claim as a Targaryen king as airtight as possible is of paramount importance to her, and just like she sacrificed by marrying Viserys, it makes sense for her that Helaena has to occasionally endure Aegon. I'm sure she doesn't like it for her daughter, but she also thinks that's the way of the world, duty, sacrifice, all that jazz.

And let's not forget how she knows Jace is a bastard, and how she belongs to a culture where that carries a HUGE social stigma; see how Catelyn felt about Jon Snow. Marrying her daughter to him would be super dishonorable in Alicent's eyes, even if Jace is legally legitimate, since his real parentage is an open secret. So yeah, no matter how nice and well adjusted Jaceaerys is, it's difficult for Alicent to consider him a good option given the context and her own biases.

2) I don't know about this; I think it becomes a bit of a non issue for Viserys, because they still got around to marrying each other eventually, and he goes out thinking peace is finally reigning in his family (oh Vis.). He's characterized as someone who has the occasional flare up of dragonlike rage, but he forgives and forgets just as easily. There's nothing Viserys wishes more than for things to fall into place by themselves, and that's pretty much what happened with Daemon and Rhaenyra in his eyes, I bet.

[ftafp]

Do you have any theories on how dryads could evolve? Cause you've got them for Dwarves, Elves, Merfolk, etc., so yeah, I'm interested in hearing this

Unlike other species I’ve mentioned before, Dryads and the related Ents aren’t so much a distinct race or species as they are a medical condition prevalent among the Elf population. Elf Papilloma Virus (EPV) is a virus closely related to HPV in humans, and is known to result in development of sizable, scaly growths of keratin on the head, and torso which to the uninitiated may look like tree bark, horns or antlers.

Due to their cultural reverence of nature, these plant and animal-like growths were seen by early elves as a sign of holyness, or of being touched by the spirits. For this reason, EPV patients often found a place in druidic and shamanistic traditions as priests. Dryad priesthoods were almost exclusively dynastic and overwhelmingly matrilineal. This may be related to the fact that, because the condition has a low rate of infection, the transmission of the disease was quite often from mother to child. As with humans, these dynasties often enforced a custom of “bloodline purity” which often involved incest. The side effects of this inbreeding are most apparent in the cases of the Ents, for whom the bark-like growths can end up covering the majority of their body. Such conditions are outright disabling, which is why Ent life expectancy is often lower than it is in humans

[buckybarnesss]

I can’t stand jonarya either. I feel like it ruins their earlier dynamic besides the issues you pointed out. I almost thought of Jon as a surrogate Ned in Arya’s mind after Ned is executed, and to have that morph into a sexual relationship...well no can do.

I don’t think I’ve necessairly hidden the fact that I don’t ship it, however, I don’t think I’ve spoken about it either at any great length.

I know that GRRM said that he had at one time planned Arya/Jon to be a thing. Which, fits a pattern with him tbh. But at the same time, I’m not sure he’d just say that and then still put it in the books, you know? Maybe at one time he was atttracted to the possiblity but as the books grew in length, time passed and the characters developed he decided to keep it as a sibling relationship only. (and he also said that it’d be a Jon/Arya/Tyrion triangle? Which, George, my dude....no). I’m just not a big fan of the idea that two people who were raised as siblings, think of each other as siblings, refer to each other as brother/sister are suddenly going to develop a romantic/sexual relationship because they’re actually cousins. I, personally, think they have a beautiful familial relationship. Arya and Jon love each other dearly but it doesn’t have to be romantic to justify that love. And as you said, Arya may have put Jon on a pedastel due to their seperation and her trauma. Her clinging to Needle is because Needle is quite literally all she has left of who she was before her father’s death. It’s become so symbolic that she cannot part with it. Her family and her love for that family will eventually drive her back to Westeros. Jon wanting to go save his favorite little sister from a cruel monster like Ramsey isn’t a romantic gesture. I don’t think he’d wish that fate on anyone but because it’s Arya is drives deeper. 

The incest we see in Westeros is not exactly protrayed as healthy. We have Cersei and Jaime, which is a dreadfully abusive, exploitive, toxic relationship where Jaime is Cersei’s victim and has been their entire lives. The Targaryen sister-wife incest is drawn from real world history as showcased by most royalty throughout history. How the Targaryens remained as hot as they are is a goddamn mystery to me and madness being a clear sign of their inbreeding is quite important. There should be some physical issues just as we saw with the Hapsburg’s famous chin, the hemophilia that was carried by most of the royal houses of Europe, the fact that even to this day you can see the traces of it in the English royal family. It’s not a good thing to practice incest and even in Westeros as it in in real life was done for dynastic reasons. I just can’t get behind the pairing especially when Gendry and Arya are right there. Gendry is defintely similiar to Jon and Ned and it makes sense that Arya would find those qualities attractive. 

[lyinar]

About the only really “historically accurate” thing about ASOIAF is that pointless, stupid-ass dynastic power struggles caused a craptonne of deaths, usually of innocent people who were conscripted, or starved, or killed by roving bands of assholes (who may or may not be in the employ of one of the families fighting for the throne) for daring to not want to hand over all their food.

The fact that one of the stupidest and most pointless in European history got stapled onto a fantasy setting...  you could make it work.  But the worldbuilding details in ASOIAF don’t match up and it completely derails everything if you actually stop to think about it.

Magic is gone at the beginning of the series, and its return isn’t exactly a good thing.  Great idea...  but exactly how the fuck did this copy-pasted Medieval European society survive multiple periodic ice ages/zombie apocalypses without it?  When your technology is exactly the same as what’s adequate to survive three or four months of winter, you need some supernatural assistance to survive years of winter, and that’s even without the FUCKING ZOMBIES that are an intrinsic feature of a Westerosi Winter.  The Fimbulwinter that precedes Ragnarok in Norse Mythology is only three years, and it’s a literally apocalyptic world-ending event...  and a society with medieval tech levels and no magic surviving multiple such events is more than enough to shatter one’s thoroughly-frozen suspension of disbelief.

The Targaryens have a massive level of inbreeding?  How are they universally hot?  They should look like the fucking late-stage “This is our family twig” Hapsburgs.

The main reason ASOIAF gets bandied around as “realistic” is some people’s pessimistic impulse to label anything Grimdark as “more realistic” than idealistic stories.  And by the end of what GRRM’s currently written, it’s veering heavily into what Warhammer fans (who coined the term Grimdark to begin with) refer to as Shitdark: So unrealistically bleak and hopeless that you think “Why the fuck am I reading this?  WHY WAS IT WRITTEN?”.

The show ran headlong into that territory after they ran out of extant books to adapt, with a side serving of Grimderp (”Let’s have the characters make decisions that make no sense for who they are at that point, just to make things more horrible!”).

Someone over on Discord asked, "I'm morbidly curious: How BAD is A Song of Ice and Fire in terms of the authenticity George claims it to be?"

My reply was straightforward:

The long and the short of it is that ASOIAF is basically a vehicle for GRRM to present both his rape fetish and his Hobbesian view on human nature and has less historical accuracy than Frozen or most other Disney movies.

That's actually a good way to think of it, now that I've said it--he's Family Unfriendly, they're Family Friendly, but both have the same relationship with History: just Pure Aesthetic with no consideration for how the worldbuilding would work.

[worldbuildingworkshop]

Worldbuilding Tutorial #9: Example World B

Intro This world, as usual, will be a much better example for building your standard fantasy world than World A was, for the tutorial on government an on others. I will use a couple different methods of building governments just to demonstrate examples of how to come up with these things. 

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Region #1: Warm Coastal Region This is a region with a small physical area but a high population density and a lot of resources moving through. It’s a trade city with a lot of money flowing and a lot of access to unusual services and goods, and thus the government needs to be able to support all of that. A lot of the day-to-day trade affairs are governed by guilds; there are many major guilds in the city - for shipbuilding, carpentry, theater, blacksmithing, dyers, bakers, you name it - and individual guilds will tax their members for funds by which the guild operates. Guild members are expected to abide by certain rules about where they can conduct their business, who they can conduct it with, etc; operating in a craft without belonging to the guild is not quite illegal but heavily penalized. In return the guild will help protect them and their families and support them in some situations - especially legally but in other ways, including monetary ways, as well. The guilds have a lot of power in the city, and while they do not run it and nor are the guild masters de facto on the ruling council, they have a lot of weight to throw around if they choose to. They also compete heavily with one another (and within themselves at times) and are not beneath sabotage and subterfuge in order to get an edge.

There are two portions to the actual rulership of the city: the council and the regent. The council does most of the heavy lifting; they do the proposals, the research, the wording of the decision or law, etc. The regent then approves or disapproves the decisions and signs off on them, although the regent can be overruled by a 8-1 vote. The council and regent are also in charge of adjudicating major crimes (minor crimes are usually dealt with by city law enforcement, who answer in turn to the regent). Regency is hereditary through a family member chosen by the current regent and approved by the council (does not have to be a child); councilship is not hereditary (though the same family will often find their hands on the seats) and can be any of the upper-class members of society. Candidates are nominated by guilds and other powers around the city, including the regent, who serves as a tiebreaker in the ultimate vote on new council members.

Region #2: Wooded Region Because of the widespread smaller-scale communities and the cultural disinterest in large-scale stratification, government in this region tends to come down to individual villages. Generally villages will have a town meeting every week which is open to anyone who wants to come; during the meeting everyone has the opportunity to discuss issues with other townsfolk, say their bit or present their own perspective, and then the yes or no of the issue is determined by a simple majority vote. There are several city officials who are in charge of running, conducting, and mediating these meetings; they are the closest it generally comes to any kind of ruler. They are also the figures who, in times of crisis, will be sent as “diplomats” to speak to other towns or villages and come to an agreed-upon course of action. These figures are usually people who have been active in the town meetings for a long time and shown interest in the job, who are then brought in as trainees until someone is ready to retire (or the population grows such that they need another person to fill the job).

Region #3: In-Between Region This region operates in a somewhat feudal system governmentally speaking. There are a number of fifes which are ruled by various nobles or warlords; this land is governed by the owner, whose rulership is hereditary. Generally the more land and resources a noble has, the more power they have; as such, land wars between fifes are fairly common. If you live on the land belonging to a fiefdom, you are assumed to belong to that fief and subject to its laws; for more travel-oriented jobs, such as trading or barding, it is common for people to pledge themselves to a particular house who then becomes the patron of that person and funds their ventures (so getting a house to accept your pledge is a big deal). Fiefdoms can negotiate with other fiefdoms to make alliances, trade or land deals, fund armies, etc - all the larger decisions that require some degree of coordination.

Region #4: Open Plains Region This region is essential rule by local warlords. Bands vary widely in size from 20 to hundreds of people, and bands may merge or split as it becomes politically or economically necessary. The headperson in charge of an individual band is whoever has enough sway to keep control of and manage it well; this is often hereditary, although traditions vary somewhat and in all bands there inevitably comes a time when the next blood relative doesn’t have the skills necessary to take care of the band, at which point they are usually usurped by someone who does or the band splits off to follow a rival. Marriage between bands is common as both a way to keep inbreeding from becoming an issue and also as a way to cement alliances and other agreements; it is traditional for the member of the more powerful band to join the less powerful one as a sign of good faith. At times there will emerge warlords who have the drive and skill to bring many bands together into their own and create something more like a dynastic period under a single ruler; this also tends to break apart eventually, though that time can vary to the rulership of a single headsperson to many, many generations.

Region #5: Cool Coastal Region Unlike the other regions so far, this region is actually ruled by a monarch and a centralized state. Individual towns and people pay taxes, the wealth goes back to the monarch who distributes it across various projects throughout the region. The rulership is hereditary to some extent, although it usually passes within the same family rather than from parent to child; the monarch nominates an heir and their advisers and other notable figures (like a representative from a particularly large city) confirm or deny the nomination.  Aside from taxes and any state projects that are local, there isn’t much day-to-day interaction between communities and the government; mostly the communities regulate themselves however they see fit, usually a combination of selecting a community member to be the headsperson (usually an elder or married couple of elders) and town meetings.

A cultural note on the monarchy in this region: unlike in our world, the position comes with very few bells and whistles. The vast majority of people don’t know who the reigning monarch is and don’t particularly care except in passing; there’s little glory or personal wealth attached to the position, mostly just a sense of duty. If a particular monarch starts to step outside the lines on cultural norms, it’s usual for their advisers to stage a quiet coup and things essentially go on as they were. 

Region #6: West Coastal Region Like region #5, this region is ruled by a monarch. Unlike the previous region, the power structure is much more stratified, top-down, and rigid; the throne usually passes from parent to child, comes with a lot more glory and power and wealth, and is paid more direct attention by common folk. Rulership is usually done by a married couple; the man’s (King’s) purview usually includes collecting taxes, running the military, and making trade agreements. The woman’s (Queen’s) purview usually includes distributing crown resources and overseeing legal or judicial affairs. The two work together on projects that fall under both their purview, but otherwise work independently - hence one of the important traits that people look for in their rulers is a good marriage, because a bad one will tear the country apart. 

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Up next will be a tutorial on religion and magic and how those play out in different cultures (rather than the reality of divine forces in your world, which was covered in the metaphysics tutorial). 

[epifaniaelescorial]

It was a bad idea. Henry was visiting for the week, as was his custom now. Marta had accepted an invitation to a dinner before she knew he would come for certain. At first she had been inclined to decline but then had forgotten and when she remembered the date it was already upon them. He had been in town for long enough that they had gotten back to something of a pattern, such as it ever was, and she wondered if, from her perspective as a hostess, some variation might not be in order. He wouldn’t mind she knew; her reticence was her own only. He would gladly meet her friends and go out in her world. She was the one, one part from jealously and one part from self-preservation, who was slow to reveal their situation. Ana knew about Henry, but she would not be part of the evening. Much beyond her, he was only a rumor, a suspicion between Marta’s other close friends: the posited cause for her regular and regularly unaccounted for disappearances.

This particular group was only peripheral to her main social groupings. The hostess, Núria, she knew from Madrid; the other women were part of a book club Núria had invited Marta to join. A book club was of course a norteamericana idea Núria had hatched after a vacation to Maryland. Where the other women of the club came from Marta was only vaguely aware: business, neighbors, Núria’s chic boarding school. They were a nice group of “ladies” of roughly the same age and situation: two children, a re-assembling career, and varying states of marriage.

The dinner was ostensibly a couples’ affair, even though one of the three women was divorced and, to Marta’s knowledge at least, another was quite unhappy in her situation, which had died romantically years before. There had once been a luncheon that included the spouses, an event Marta had attended alone, but there were other guests as well on that occasions and the men had all blended together such that, had she been introduced to the men associated with the other women she had either not registered the fact or forgotten it immediately thereafter. However, from the chatter that surrounded each of their monthly or so meetings Marta gathered that the masculine situation, as they coyly referred to it, was forever in flux. Nevertheless, here they were the set of them: Núria and her husband, Joaquim, a sexual pervert, as best as Marta could tell, and the other three women, each with a doting man at her side. Not “at her side” exactly: they were Spanish men, after all, and it was difficult to tell from their behavior, doting and obsequious for the evening, which was associated with the other.

The drinks and the meal, begun absurdly late, lingered on happily into the early hours. Just as Marta had begun to become sleepy and dream of slipping between the sheets with Henry for a long winter nap, a stirring came from the kitchen. Núria emerged with one of the other women stomping behind. A few of the men had gone with Joaquim to see a specimen of horseflesh in the four barn stable, another woman and one of the men, perhaps coincidentally, had been missing for half an hour, Henry and Marta and the others were reclined drinking wine before a baronial fire in the large sala. Núria and Joaquim’s ancient farmhouse where they lived with their two daughters was part of some vast estate stretching up into the hills beyond. Whether the house came from Núria’s family or that of Joaquim remained something of a mystery. It was all bound up somehow in that complicated way of all truly aristocratic Iberian ancestry.

“Marta,” called Núria, coming into the hall. “Come.”

Marta rose and followed her. Marta admired Núria. She was tall, dark, and slim with long hair and the aquiline nose of a woman who was either a peasant from a distant and untraveled village in the northwest or the product of a fantastic amount of dynastic inbreeding. But regardless the cause, she was beautiful in only a way that certain women might be able to maintain.

“There is going to be a match,” she said, meaning Marta took it a game, but one with competitive if not downright sinister undertones. “We each take a number and then the men, they as well select one. And then.” She raised one of her magnificent and historically sculptured eyebrows.

From the book club evenings that Marta had spent previously with this group of “ladies” she knew that the longer things went the more likely they were headed for trouble. She also recognized that, as the newest comer to this group of people, not to mention la gringa, there was an unspoken sense between her and the others that she was a special case, a provisional member, a bench-sitter who might from time to time not be asked to travel with the team to a particularly difficult or distant competition. And Marta had always been comfortable therein; she wasn’t after all one of them. And she was as relieved as not to be exempted from the rituals in which they tribally engaged: outré vacations and delirious shopping orgies. Indeed, she sensed that, as she was being given they option now, it might be in her best interest to plead her natural exemption, gather Henry and make, all within the graciousness that Spaniards naturally showed their inferiors, a swift exit.

But something, the amount of brilliant wine she had drunk foremost no doubt among the proximate causes, led her to hesitate sufficiently that Núria, who expected a demurral, it seemed but heartily hoped, Marta now sensed, collusion, smiled as widely as she was famously capable. “Yes?” And then she said it. “Yes. You are coming. Come.”

The rules, it appeared, were already known to the other guests. The women drew slips of paper from a majolica bowl. First was Cecilia, a petite but beautiful woman with reddish hair. Fabricia selected next; she was the rowdiest of the bunch. Then chose Carolina, a blonde who was probably an actual blonde as a youth. Marta took number four. Henry looked at her. She shrugged. He returned her gesture sleekly. The men rose and, grabbing bottles of wine from the copper tank that held seemingly cases of them, bumbled in a chummy pack somewhere into the back of the house.

The facts of the situation began to dawn on Marta. This was clearly a bad idea. Her knowledge of the nebulousness of the book club “ladies” relationships came now, along with the hints of sexual kinkiness that always emanated from Joaquim every time she had seen him, into a sharper focus. Núria had been right to offer Marta an exit. Marta had been wrong not to accept it.

Núria led the women, after instructing them to gather and fill their glasses, also back into the house after then men had been gone. She and Joaquim had recently completed a major addition and it was in this direction they headed. They came, after the inevitable stairs and hall and stairs that describe daring additions to ancient houses, to what appeared to be a guest suite, a set of separable apartments destined for guests or long-term visitors. Indeed, the whole plan appeared to be quite the size and design of a different house entirely, one built with no less attention or money than the opulent one they had just exited. There was another sala, set by unseen help with a fresh blazing fire, a commodious kitchen of the open American sort for entertaining, and a long hall that led to a large bedroom with yet another burning fire. An alcove set to one side with a dressing room and beyond that lay a bath.

Núria led the women to the dressing alcove. There was a commodious empty walk in closet stacked only with linens. In the bath there was a sink and a bidet opposite a Japanese soaking tub and a glass walled shower. Between there was a white wooden door that did not lead, Marta suspected, to another closet. Before it sat a boudoir stool.

Before Marta could decide one way or another, whether to leave at that moment or to wait a bit longer to see where all this was leading, Núria produced her slip, with the number one in her handwriting and entered the bath to sit on the boudoir stool. By means of a latch or a groove that Marta could not discern, she slid back a panel on the door revealing an opening behind it, something about the size of a mail slot. She reached her hand into the darkness. When she withdrew it there followed a penis, an erect penis, not a very large one but straining with excitement. Núria produced an elastic hairband from around her wrist, pulled back her long black hair, and took the stiff cock into her mouth without touching it. She braced herself with a hand against the door and sucked it.

Marta expected to look away once it was obvious what was happening. But the other three women, who she expected to join her in the bedroom while they awaited the outcome of this strange match, showed no such intentions. Indeed, they spectated eagerly. They were around the door with one, Cecilia, the small one, standing just inside it. Núria had positioned herself, cheating outward on the stool and turning her head just so, so that her guests could see exactly what she was doing.

And what was doing did not last long. The small cock, sufficiently stubby that Marta herself was glad not to be associated with it, did not last long beneath Núria’s vigorous ministrations. She tilted her head backward with a jerk. The four women could see a surprising amount of cum for a cock so small as it spurted upward and out, over and across the marble tiled floor. Núria laughed and the other women followed. The penis withdrew. Núria took a hand towel hanging beside the bidet and wiped her mouth and then the jism that glistened on the white marble floor.

Now that Marta knew the rules and goals of the match at hand, she decided it would be best for her to make her exit. Why hadn’t she trusted Núria’s tacit warning to begin? Like the shopping, the weekends in Menorca or London, and the confidential references to spas, plastic surgeons, and sympathetic psychiatrists, she should have recognized that this game, like the other more rarefied ones participated in by her and the other “ladies” of book club, were beyond her own strictly recreational league. And while Marta was not shocked, she was well beyond vulnerability to that, she was still a bit surprised. These women, pretty and smart and mostly ambitious, were also conservative in the way most patrician Spaniards were. They were animated on issues of women’s rights and gave lip service to the refugees’ plight, but mostly they were monárquicas, passive abettors of the ancient regime. While only nominally Catholic and hardly repressed, nevertheless she found these shenanigans to come as a surprise. On the other hand, she admitted that standing so close to another woman, a beautiful woman, fellating a hidden man’s cock, and seeing that cock cum profusely, did arouse her. But, and on this point she had no hesitation, none of the three women at that moment huddled in the doorway giggling beside her was going to suck her man’s cock.

“Et voilà,” cried Carolina, withdrawing a slip from her blue smock. She held the 2, which she waved before handing it to Núria. Carolina took her seat on the boudoir bench and wrapped with a single knuckle on the white door.

A second penis emerged, not as hard as the first but noticeably larger. Carolina studied it, or so it seemed, before looping a forefinger around its base, holding it like a pool cue, and taking the head into her mouth. The response was rapid. With more manhood to contend, Carolina did not take it in her mouth all the way to its base as Núria had on her first stroke. Rather, she practiced slow repetitions, each time allowing her lips to travel further down its length. Quickly, or so Marta thought, she gained speed. Soon her bright forehead was bobbing, nearly close enough to the door to knock it. And almost as quickly as she had begun moving rapidly, she too threw back her head to reveal the cock, much harder now and glistening with her saliva, pulsing with the rapid heartbeat of the body behind. It squirted its cum straight outward. She continued her pool players grasp until the last pulse of jizz ran over its crown and down onto her fingers. At the touch of cum she released the fading cock as if it was hot and flicked the offended finger of its ropey cum.

“Ay,” cried Fabricia, the holder of the next place in the order, who had been flecked on her bare arm by the errant semen. As she theatrically wiped at her bare bicep she eagerly took her place on the stool. Here was the point, Marta told herself, that she must leave. It was the inflection point of her odds she knew from statistics, the place where her bet traded to sell.

But as quickly as she turned to go, the penis that emerged through the carefully cut in the door was immediately and obviously not Henry’s. It was the thickest yet, with a dark rind of pared foreskin. It too grew quickly beneath Fabricia’s touch. Marta began backing out from the dressing room, intending to flee, but her progress was interrupted by Núria. She held two large glasses of wine, one for Marta who had not brought hers along. Whether Núria intended to block her retreat or not, Marta could not discern; however, there she was in her way in the small space. An unnoticed exit would not be possible.

Somewhere behind that door stood Henry, watching the backs of these men twitch as their cocks had been sucked by unfamiliar mouths. What was he thinking? Did he intend to go along with the outcome, regardless of what it might be? And even if she had drawn him, would he know for certain, more importantly, was he confident in his own mind he would know it was she? In the meantime, Fabricia had begun an elaborate licking of the shaft before her, running her pointed tongue up one side then the other, along the bottom, and then about the head. After each stroke she paused, delighting in how the erection bounced with anticipation of the next contact. She had yet to take it into her mouth and its owner pressed his hips hard against the door so that his hard cock strained upward swollen it appeared beyond what even its elasticized skin could bare.

Finally she took the head and only the dark shield of the head into her mouth. She stroked the shaft firmly not more than three or for times before she had him. With a glance back to the women in the doorway, a boastful glance at that, the cock grasped in Fabricia’s fist spurted out thick cum that ran down in pearlescent waves over her hand.

For the first time Marta could smell it, the smell of cum, like a hydrangea blossom, and she remembered that but for the taste and smell of Henry’s cum, it was something she had never much liked about men.

Her turn was up. Núria pressed her from behind between the shoulder blades. Carolina put an arm around her waist to whipsaw her forward. What to do? With the same mix of emotions she allowed herself to be propelled forward. What if it were not to be Henry? Would she suck him? Did she want to? And if she sucked this other man, would Henry be angry? Because Marta gave very good head. If she sucked another man’s cock, he would most certainly remember it.

She sat and paused feeling dumb. This was a bad idea.

“Andale,” cried Fabricia, the loud one. With that a penis emerged to a receptive murmur from the ladies behind.

Marta kissed Henry’s cock in the place she knew he liked best, underneath in the small notch where the shaft blossomed into the head. She teased that bit of skin, the seam, as she though of it, with her tongue. She ran her lips from the tip over the heart shaped brim of his head, keeping her tongue to the spot. She heard him moan. She allowed his whole head to feel the softness of her tongue. Then she took him, all of him hard and quickly until the tip of his cock pressed all the back inside her throat. The pressure made her dizzy, but on the second plunge in also brought about the response she knew it would. It always did.

Marta let his cum bubble over her lips and cheeks, letting the other women arrested in their own deliriums of voyeurism witness how much cum he delivered. They had gone quiet at his cock and Marta’s show. They were transfixed as they should have been by the cascade of his jism.

The last turn went to Cecilia, the extremely petite woman with pale skin and reddish hair. She took her perch on the stool with the nervous diffidence that characterized all her actions and awaited the display. When it came Marta’s knew that it could only belong to Joaquim. It was a huge veiny fire hose, a rope of meat that poked through and banged with an audible noise against the door. Fabricia and the others gasped then catcalled the monster. It was truly a huge member, the cock that only a complete sexual pervert like Joaquim could own.

Cecilia’s eyebrows ran as far up her freckled forehead as they might go. She gripped a small pale hand around the horseflesh. It sprang quickly to action. The women, excluding Marta and Núria, who stood aside with her arms folded, goaded Cecilia on. She stroked Joaquim’s forever enlarging shaft and then tentatively took it into her mouth. Her jaws flexed, her eyes watered, the whole performance was entirely too much. Joaquim became quite hard and incredibly even bigger. How could Núria bear it? Cecilia stood, the only way she could reach the head of Joaquim’s now fully engorged cock.

Marta wandered out to the bedroom and into the long hall that led back to the sitting room with the surplus fire. Henry awaited her in the hall.

He kissed her forehead and took her by the hand. They began winding their way back to the main house where they had begun.

“How did you know it would be me?” she asked him.

“Let’s just say, I was confident it would be.” She pressed against him.

“Wait,” she said, stopping. “Confident? How?”

“Just confident,” he said.

Now she had reason to be suspicious all over again.

[ericfruits]

A Mexican vote with big consequences

THE wood-panelled walls of Rodrigo Moya Torres’s study are decorated with hunting knives. On his desk lies a pistol; underneath is a rifle. Mr Moya, who wears a black Stetson and monogrammed cowboy boots, grew up on a ranch. But he has spent the past 31 years publishing a weekly newspaper in the town of Ecatepec, just north of Mexico City.

The firearms are for self-defence. The opinion pages of his newspaper, Morelos de Ecatepec, fulminate against corruption at all levels of government. Mr Moya has received death threats; a local politician tried to kidnap him, he says. No politician merits his respect. “They treat people badly and they don’t look after them,” he fumes.

Ecatepec is a violent part of the State of Mexico, which encircles the country’s capital city almost fully and provides a home to many people who work there. Many of its inhabitants seem to share Mr Moya’s contempt for politicians, which suggests that turnout in a gubernatorial election on June 4th is likely to be low. Despite their indifference, the outcome could affect the direction not just of the state but of the country.

The contest pits the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, against Morena, the political vehicle of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist who hopes to become Mexico’s president next year. A loss would be traumatic for the PRI, which has governed the state for 88 years, and embarrassing for Mr Peña, who has his political base in the state (he cannot run for re-election). Victory for Morena’s candidate, Delfina Gómez Álvarez, would confirm Mr López Obrador as the favourite to win in 2018. He is a fierce critic of corruption, and of reforms introduced by Mr Peña to modernise the economy and Mexican schools. As president, Mr López Obrador, or AMLO, as he is known, would seek to clean Mexico up and drag it backwards.

The PRI’s prestige is at stake in two smaller states it governs, Nayarit in the west and Coahuila in the north, which will hold elections on the same day (the eastern state of Veracruz will have municipal elections). But it is the result in the State of Mexico that really matters. With 16m inhabitants, it is the country’s most populous state; its GDP is the largest after Mexico City’s. Mr Peña was born in the state and governed it from 2005 to 2011. It is “the last bastion of the PRI”, says Sergio Miranda, a historian at UNAM, a university in Mexico City. The current governor, Eruviel Ávila, won 62% of the vote in 2011.

The PRI’s dominance has a feudal quality. Mr Peña is distantly related to six earlier governors. Alfredo del Mazo Maza, the PRI’s candidate to succeed Mr Ávila, is an even better example of political inbreeding. His father and grandfather were governors. The state is said to be home to the Atlacomulco group, a clique of PRI politicians so shadowy that some doubt its existence.

Voters may be losing faith in dynasts and cabals. Crime is their biggest worry, says Fernando Moreno, who operates a one-man citizens’ advice bureau in Ecatepec, the municipality with Mexico’s fifth-highest number of murders. The state is not a hub of organised crime, but a “woman out getting milk in the morning will be robbed for the sake of 20 pesos” (about $1), he says. On May 30th five policemen were killed by unknown gunmen in an ambush.

The national statistics office says the State of Mexico is the country’s most corrupt, as measured by the number of corrupt acts per 100,000 people. The rate of off-the-books “informal” employment is higher than the Mexican average; the poverty rate rose from 42.9% in 2010 to 49.6% in 2014, the second-biggest increase among the 32 states. Under Mr Ávila’s governorship there has been no improvement in the quality of life, says Eduardo Garduño of the state’s Autonomous University.

AMLO aims high

These grievances are regional echoes of national ones. Mr Peña is just as unpopular in his home state as elsewhere. People blame him for failing to reduce corruption, impunity and insecurity. They hate his government’s decision to increase petrol prices sharply this year. Despite all this, Mr del Mazo is slightly ahead in some polls, but his lead, if it exists, is tiny and insecure.

If he loses, it will probably be to Ms Gómez, a former teacher and congresswoman. She is trying to become the first governor from Morena, the party Mr López Obrador created after he split in 2012 from the leftist (but more establishment-minded) Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Governors can be a big help to presidential candidates, by rallying voters and, if they are unscrupulous, by diverting money from the state to their parties. Morena has spent a lot of its own money to win in the State of Mexico. If it does, that would create “the image that Mr López Obrador is unbeatable” in next year’s presidential election, says Jesús Silva-Herzog, a political scientist at Tecnológico de Monterrey, a university.

The main challenger to Mr López Obrador next year may be the candidate of the centre-right National Action Party (PAN) rather than the PRI’s nominee (both have yet to be named). The PAN has a strong chance of unseating the PRI in Nayarit, where it is in alliance with the PRD, and in Coahuila. It could even win in the State of Mexico (though it trails behind the PRD, which is now in third place in the polls).

The PRI, by contrast, has all but given up on trying to win next year’s presidential election, suggests Alejandro Schtulmann of EMPRA, a political-risk consulting firm. A victory in the State of Mexico would not resurrect its prospects. Even so, it will remain a force to be reckoned with. In 2015 it had 5m members, many more than any other party. If it loses all three gubernatorial elections on June 4th, it will still run 12 of the 32 states.

Pundits predicted the PRI’s demise after it lost a presidential election in 2000 for the first time in 71 years; Mr Peña brought it back to power 12 years later. It retains a voto duro, a hard core of supporters, many from trade unions. That can give the party victory in elections when turnout is low. A loss by the PRI in the State of Mexico would wound the party but not destroy it. The bigger consequence would be the election of Mr López Obrador as president next year. That would leave a lasting mark on the country.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "Keystone state"

http://ift.tt/2ruIKsd

[rudjedet]

Correct, it is exaggerated, and the Ptolemies are outliers in more than one way so counting them as examples of ancient Egyptian royal inbreeding without at least three disclaimers is academically dishonest. Ancient Egyptian royal incestuous marriages did happen, just not to the extent some people choose to believe. A few other things to keep in mind:

There was not one continuous royal family line that spanned the entirety of dynastic history - in fact, there are multiple periods of decentralisation of power and/or foreign invasion, and within the dynasties (a non-native invention that the ancient Egyptians did not use to demarcate their history) themselves it was quite common for one distinct royal family to be succeeded by another, unrelated royal family.

Full-sibling marriages didn't happen all that often and if they did, didn't always result in a male heir.

Ancient Egyptian rulers could and did marry more than one woman, so even if one or more of these were family and the consummation of those unions resulted in offspring, there was still genetic diversity being introduced into the family.

Two Ancient Egyptian terms of spousal endearment were "brother/sister", but this does not mean that they were actual siblings by blood. This one is often cited as "proof" of incest.

It can be extremely hard to determine interpersonal relationships. DNA, if you can even get a sample from bodies of this age, yields results that are not necessarily definitive. In addition, the lack of unequivocal evidence for e.g. the Old Kingdom royal families, who seem to have gotten a bit excited about the incest thing, means we can't claim to be absolutely sure about the rates of inbreeding, much less what the effects, if any, would have been.

tumblr stop saying the ancient egyptians were more inbred than people realise on the same post i lament people having the incorrect idea that ancient egyptians were super inbred challenge 20fucking22

[fanzelteim]

Everyone on this planet has a responsibility to ask the surviving Habsburg heirs how their dynastic history of inbreeding kept the bloodline elevated above the rest of us.

[bidonica]

I was listening to the latest episode about Asha Greyjoy on the Girls Gone Canon podcast (which I recommend - the podcast in general and their Asha commentary in particular since she’s such a weirdly underdiscussed character imo) and they were discussing the theme of cannibalism, which is emerging in ADWD and will most likely be at the forefront in TWOW; not only we already had the Frey pies, men in Stannis’s troops have started feeding on corpses in order to survive their food shortage right at the onset of the harsh Northern winter; and it’s obvious it’s only going to get worse from here.

Eliana on the podcast made these observations about cannibalism as a wider theme in the series:

If we look at cannibalism more metaphorically and thematically (...) I think we kind of see it arising in Stannis’s story in a few other ways(...), what it means to do something in terms of consumption, not just literally eating another body. And I think there’s something kind of like the concept of sexual cannibalism, which some of you may know if you’re into bugs and shit, like praying mantises do it, red widows, spiders… it’s really common among bugs. The female of the species will mate and then consume the male either before or after sex (...) There’s already a lot of other Freudian readings when it comes to VAGINAS! IT’S THE MOUTH AND IT’S SO HUNGRY! Vagina dentata, right? The admixture, the complication of desire. (...) I think you can see this idea of sexual cannibalism coming through with Stannis and Melisandre as his life force ends up becoming devoured during their copulation in order to create the shadow babies. And then I think there’s another way we can interpret it, in the context of Greek mythology; there’s a famous myth of Cronus, or Saturn depending if you want to be a Roman or not, devouring his own children same as his father did before him (...) and of course many likened Stannis to Agamemnon, because of his impending sacrifice of Shireen.

Which got me thinking about how the recurring theme of incest can be viewed as a form of consumption of your own flesh and blood. The Targaryens practice incest as a way to preserve their connection to dragons, but this behavior also “cannibalizes” their own dynasty because it seems to be behind the stillbirths and mental illness that keep popping up in their history. Of course we could debate at length about which Targaryens were actually “mad”, something that GRRM deliberately plays with but also links explicitly to their inbreeding (thanks for the reference, @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly) - and George also has them marry outside of the family just enough that they don’t find themselves with a bad case of their equivalent to the Habsburg jaw. Also, we have another real life example of the perils of inbreeding among royals with Queen Victoria’s hemophilia, which, in just a few generations, affected royal houses among Europe, killing off male descendants and arguably, in the case of tsarevich Alexei, played a part in the fall of the very institution of the Russian monarchy. I think that, besides the Ptolemy pharaohs, GRRM also had in mind these other real life examples of dynastic inbreeding, and how they played a part in ultimately ending the royal bloodlines they were meant to preserve.

Craster also practices incest as means of survival (and because he’s a disgusting person), raping his own daughters to produce male children to be given to the Others. Even if he doesn’t literally eat his sons he is treating them as meat, and he can be seen as another Cronus parallel; besides, just like Stannis is probably going to do, he subjects his heirs to ritual sacrifice. In Craster’s character incest, cannibalism, and ritual sacrifice overlap in one big ball of horror, but also call back to ancestral practices such as sacrifices to the Old Gods and the brutal, bloody history of the “true North” as opposed to the more civilized version we meet in the beginning through the Starks.

The Lannister incest is the one that apparently fits the least in this framework: the twins are aware that it’s a taboo and sort of keep things on the down low, and their relationship started so early it’s hard for them to rationalize. But it’s also a relationship that engendered so many toxic dynamics we could argue it stunted both twins’ emotional development in different ways. Besides, unless Tyrion or Jaime produce and acknowledge an heir anytime soon, it ended the legitimate Lannister lineage since it was one of the main drivers behind Jaime’s decision to be a kingsguard, and the children he had with Cersei are officially Baratheons.

However, if we look back, Tywin and Joanna were first cousins, and there’s at least one other instance of Lannister/Lannister marriage that we know of - Joanna’s half brother Damon and Ella Lannister, from the Lannisport branch. While these marriages don’t technically have that high of an inbreeding quotient (it’s probably irrelevant in the latter), they express the same tendency of the Targaryens and of the aforementioned real life royals towards marrying in rather than out. In the Lannisters’ case, and especially when it comes to Tywin and his children, it’s also an expression of their self importance; no one is worthy of a Lannister except maybe another Lannister - or a king. Don’t settle for less. Just to be clear: this kind of “family first” worldview is the default for the kind of feudal society asoiaf is set in, and we see it in other noble houses, but when Martin writes it for the Lannisters it’s a bit too much; it’s pathologized, warped. It doesn’t look like a coincidence that they’re the non-Targaryen family who gets the major incest storyline, and their incest is the first fateful domino tile to fall in the chain of events that will bring the continent to war. And this mentality doesn’t seem to have done much to tighten the bonds within the family, where patricide already occurred, a valonqar has been prophesized, and murderous levels of resentment abound. The Lannisters are cannibalizing themselves indeed.

(Oh, it just occurred to me -you know who’s also cannibalizing themselves through family infighting and literal, unwitting consumption of the flesh of their kin? The Freys. And who are two old, sleazy patriarchs who lord over a way too numerous offspring in their castle who you have to pay respect to if you want to proceed forward in your path? Craster and Walder Frey.)

So yeah, George might be kind of fixated on incest as a narrative device, and sometimes even romanticizing it, but I think that even though he presented some functional examples like Jaehaerys and Alysanne, he’s also using it to show that when a community - even the smallest nucleus of it, a family - folds onto itself it will end up consuming itself, exhausting its own resources and making everyone involved miserable, sometimes to the extreme consequences.

[opinions-about-tiaras]

This is the most interesting scenario I’ve seen posited in a long time!

Another fly in the ointment here might be Aemon. Aemon had the option of turning down the crown in the OTL because being an intelligent, discerning man, he could probably tell “they’re almost certainly going to offer it to Aegon in my absence, and Aegon is a fine man and will be a fine king.”

But if Aemon sees that the Council is looking askance at Aegon as “half-a-peasant,” so much so that they come to him, a chained maester, and try and get him to forswear his oaths? And that Aenys Blackfyre is (hypothetically) swanning around charming the dickens out of people? Depending on his own prejudices regarding House Blackfyre and his own estimation of Aenys as a man and potential king, he might decide that his obligations to his House and to the Realm obligate him to accept the crown when offered it, lest, instead of turning to Aegon, the Council instead turns to Aenys. A hypothetical King Aemon is a huge change, especially since Aemon is the only Targaryen we know of to “beat the odds;” in a family where even the healthy, non-mutated, non-obviously-damaged-by-their-inbreeding members almost universally die of old age in their fifties and sixties, he makes it to the century mark. (Perhaps the pressures of kingship shorten his life, though.)

The marriage question is interesting. (There’s SO MUCH we don’t know about this period; there’s a bunch of branches of House Blackfyre and House Targaryen that simply vanish into the aether.) If Aenys is unmarried? If he’s at all smart, and they’re at all free, Aenys will push hard for “I will marry Daella or Rhae.” Him marrying one of Maekar’s daughters unites the Blackfyre and Targaryen lines; even with the ‘weakness’ of a distaff claim, these things matter.

I love the idea of the name of the dynasty being a sticking point. That’s literally the sort of thing that historically can entirely collapse delicate dynastic negotiations like this. Is Aenys the sort to decide “King’s Landing is worth a mass,” as it were?

bouncin off those previous asks, obv bloodraven doesnt let it happen but lets say maekar's ghost bonked him on the head beforehand, does / could aenys stand a real chance against the weaker candidates presented in the great council? maybe "i will dismantle the police state, divert crown resources to aid to rebuilding from previous crises, promise an end to the blackfyre wars, the golden company will become a royal army dedicated to directly protecting future raids" and would they take targ name?

The issue with that is that I think Aegon V would be offering much the same thing re: Bloodraven's police state particularly because he saw how the brutality that Bloodraven's policy fell on the smallfolk. I'm not sure Westeros has the bureaucratic structure necessary to fund a professional standing army with regular pay and facilities, and so if the Golden Company does have ties to Westeros, it would probably be in signing on to friendly Free Cities in Essos to advance Westerosi interests.

In the interests of not opening up old wounds, I think the Great Council would elect to not pursue legitimization of the full Blackfyre line in the interest of not reopening old wounds ala the aftermath of the Dance. Rather, the Council would instead acclaim Aenys by the power vested within the Great Council regarding succession and have him take on the Targaryen name, almost like an adoption by acclaim and assent. I admit, this might be a little bizarre because we don't really see this sort of thing happen in non-marriage scenarios (Joffrey Lydden becoming King Joffrey Lannister), but that's the closest Westerosi precedent I can think of. I don't think that would transform Westeros into an electoral monarchy, because Great Councils still seem like an emergency situation, rather than one that is called every matter of succession.

So the real question is whether Aegon's "half-a-peasant" nature would be more off-putting that Aenys's Blackfyre heritage. Making matters worse, what kind of guy is Aenys? Is he charming or is his nature off-putting? Does he have a strong handle on Westerosi customs and traditions or does he carry himself more with the Essosi style? What is his policy idea? How would he handle the nature of the Blackfyre exiles? What are his domestic and foreign policy priorities? If he's unmarried, who will he select as his Queen-Consort?

I'm not saying it's impossible, he'd almost certainly beat out Maegor Brightflame and Vaella, daughter of Daeron the Drunk. I'm just saying we know absolutely nothing about Aenys, so we have no idea whether or not he'd appeal to the lords assembled at the Great Council, what factions would support him or oppose him. Bloodraven seems to think that there's a large enough Blackfyre loyalist camp to warrant murdering Aenys, but Bloodraven is defined by paranoid overreaction and a willingness to do whatever he thinks is necessary regardless of the consequences, so it's not like he's a rational judge.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[rudjedet]

Fuckin wild how you tagged this "bad history" while using the goddamn Ptolemies as main example and a partially non-definitive family tree (that doesn't even show quite as many sibling marriages producing heirs as you make it out to be) as the other.

I said Egyptian royal incest did happen, just not to the extent people love to make unsubstantiated claims about (or worse, cite the Egyptian "brother/sister" terms of spousal endearment as evidence for). "Commonly inbred" is an overstatement you're going to have to present a lot more than one (1) native family tree and one (1) outlier family tree for. Preferably without treating the three millennia of Dynastic Egypt as a monolith, because as it stands the dynasties are a non-Egyptian convention that don't even always encompass a single family. You can't compare that to an actual single family that didn't stop inbreeding until they saw their Spanish branch die out, and if you reread the post you'll see any such comparison was not what was happening to begin with.

Sure, you have to take cultural and religious values into account when talking about these things in the historical record but the people who make these claims don't, that's the whole blistering issue. Anyway this was originally about stopping to hold gods to mortal/modern standards.

ETA: Above poster has retracted his statement and deleted the comments after educating himself, which I applaud. We need more of that attitude here. I'm leaving this version up because it's been reblogged a fair bit already.

even beyond the whole thing where divine pairings aren’t at all comparable to western marriage constructs “THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS GODS DID AN INCEST WITH THEIR SIBLINGS EW” is such a fucking moot point too because what, do you think divine fucking beings have like. chromosomes or some shit? no. shut up. you know nothing. Atum masturbated the universe into existence and you’re worried about Shu and Tefnut boning. come on now.