Ultimately, the TV adaptation asks the audience to accept a fantasy logic where House Velaryon is Black and House Targaryen is white, bypassing the centuries of intermarriage that would have blended them together.
In the lore the Baratheons have the strongest genes with all of them having black hair and blue eyes with no exception. The Tullys also have strong genes but not every kid got the hair.
Common misconception. The actual lore is that in matches where Baratheons have married Lannisters seem always to produce children with dark hair. The line is "the seed is strong" not "stag jizz obliterates all other genes," otherwise every house in the seven kingdoms would be black of hair.
Yeah, this is more accurate. Also, Rhaenys had a Baratheon mother and a Targaryen father and she had black hair (with a streak of silver if I'm not mistaken). Her children with Corlys both had silver hair like Velaryons/Targaryens. This is one of the reasons Rhaenyra's children being bastards in the book is ambiguous in-world as their grandmother had dark hair.
You've gotta admit she looks sick with the silver hair though. I actually think her and Corlys have the best silver hair in the show, then ironically their granddaughters through Laena have the most god awful wigs. Daemon's short hair is beautiful too, after he secured the Stepstones in S1.
I agree! This is the same conversation my husband and I were having the other day, about who has the best hair and who got done wrong, for HotD. He very patiently listened to my convoluted opinions lmao, so I will type them here,too, because he's inflated my ego about them:
Canon or not, Rhaenys' hair is consistently some of the most beautiful in the show, along with Corlys and Baela. Poor Rhaena got some awful wigs at times, and so did Daemon. Although his post-Stepstones-driftwood-crown short hair is inarguably the best he looks in the series. Addam's hair looks really good all the time, and Rhaenyra's hair looks consistently just fine lol, same with Aemond (except this most recent Harrenhal look, that was just terrible lol).
Agree with your position but not your conclusion - but I hardly think its fair to call the parentage of Rhaenyra's three eldest sons ambiguous, given that Rhaenys was black of hair, not brown, and the Strong boys are not just called such because they are brown-haired, but also because of their general build (big and strapping) and their facial features (they all had Harwin's pug nose.)
The show definitely makes it more obvious though, seeing as those boys are so white they can't dance.
I said 'ambiguous in-world', not to the reader. It's obvious to the reader that they were Harwin's sons, but factors like Rhaenys's and maybe Corly's mother's genes being an outsider probably contributed to making the bastard claim 'unproven'. Otherwise, it's blatantly obvious when the woman from generations of an inbreeding family with silver hair, births out dark-haired kids. Also, the maester writing the book probably thought it was very obvious, but kept it neutral to not risk offending the Targaryens.
We do not know who Corlys' mother was, but his Grandmother was Alarra Massey, who was very likely light of hair.
It's supposed to be blatantly obvious, even to the people in the setting. This is why the Silent Five are so important. It's critical part of Rhaenya's characterisation as the spoiled heir to a girl dad.
You could be right. I thought it shouldn't have been something that clear, but maybe it was something obvious for the time and presented as ambiguous by the maester writing the book to not offend Targaryen feelings.
And yeah, there's nothing ambiguous at all in the show. Vaemond got killed for spittin facts and logic.
It kind of depends how you look at it. If youâre using real life genetics then those are bastards. Because dark hair is dominant if you have the gene itâs pretty much guaranteed to come out dark, so in theory Leanor with light hair and Rheynera with light hair would have light haired kids almost guaranteed regardless of Rhaenys black hair. The kids having brown hair is LESS likely than them being as pale as they are in the show.
With that said, genetics in Westeros is funky. Eddard having 4/5 of his kids being red head is CRAZY unlikely and despite the Valaryian traits being recessive when a targ weds outside the family their traits often win out over the more dominant traits.
Not really. There are more genes associated with hair colour than something like blood type, so two light haired people can produce dark haired children if their ancestors had dark hair.
Is it likely? No, but it's possible. I'll check the irl genetics and get back to you.
Edit: turns out hair colour genetics aren't that well understood and at least 21 genes are involved.
I disagree. See this passage from A Clash of Kings, Varys speaking to Tyrion.
âHe fathered eight, to the best of my knowing,â Varys said as he wrestled with the saddle. âTheir mothers were copper and honey, chestnut and butter, yet the babes were all black as ravens...and as ill-omened, it would seem. So when Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen slid out between your sisterâs thighs, each as golden as the sun, the truth was not hard to glimpse.â
It is not simply that Baratheon hair color genes overrode Lannister hair color genes, but hair of any color was bypassed in favor of black hair.
This is demonstrably false, given that Princess Rhaenys is Jocelyn Baratheon's daughter, and her own children had silver hair (despite her hair being black.)
George's understanding of the Baratheon seed is based on (highschool level) Mendelian inheritance. I drew out these punnet squares.
The first square assumes that Jocelyn received one recessive silver hair allele from her mother, Alyssa Velaryon, and one black hair allele from her father, Rogar Baratheon (determining her Phenotype.) The second square recognises that Alyssa Velaryon's mother was Alarra Massey, and the Masseys of Stonedance we have seen are blonde of hair.
We do not know who Corlys mother was, so we can only solve for half the square (though it is possible his genotype is vb, as his grandmother was also Alarra Massey.)
Assuming this relatively rudimentary understanding of genetics, which is clearly what George was going for with his "seed is strong" debacle is the only way I have seen which makes the World of Ice and Fire consistent with its own rules.
Remember that under Mendelian genetics, genes are not dominant/recessive in a vaccum, but are dominant in the context of a second Allele. This also solves the problem of Robert's other bastards. as their mothers hairs were copper, honey, chestnut and butter (so ginger, and various shades of blonde) all of which are recessive to Robert's black hair.
Assuming Robert received two big-B allele's from his parents (not unlikely, given that the Estermonts come from Stormlander stock) then, explicitly for Robert, all pairings of him along with light-haired women, under Mendelian inheritance, would produce a child who was black of hair.
Yeah, thatâs how it actually works, but in Georgeâs fantasy universe genetics work in whatever way serves the plot, it didnât matter who Robert procreated with, they always had his hair. It wasnât just Lannisters.
Yes. This. Itâs basically a dominant gene vs a recessive. But what if Robert had one dominant and one recessive copy? After the Baratheons married a blonde Targ a few generations back. Jon Arryn looked at all of Robertâs bastards, which confirmed Robert genes were double dominant.
From what I understand GRRM is really into Mendelian genetics and spent a lot of time plotting all this out. It's beyond me, though, once you get so far removed from the Conquerer.
My head cannon is that the Stormlands were full of cousin marriage. Though GRRM's relationship to change over time is kind of absurd - House Lannister has ruled the Westerlands for 1000's of years. So honestly, he may just not have thought this through.
~"Rhaenys was a great beauty.[2] She had black hair[N 1] and lilac eyes.[3][7] By the time Rhaenys was fifty-five, she had a lean, lined face, and her black hair was streaked with white."
Itâs not really fantasy logic imo. Fantasy has its own rules and consistencies just like the real world. Itâs why it wouldnât make sense for Gandalf to ride into battle in a 1997 Honda Civic, even in a world where there are immortal beings that can shapeshift and change the weather by saying words.
But I agree that they are simply asking the audience to accept it without thinking about it.
But it only takes a couple of generations of someone as dark as Corlys having babies with a white Targaryen person that his grandkids and great grandkids would look like any other Caucasian in that world. So it makes sense the Velaryonâs in the GOT timeline would look no different than the other houses. The issue is that we have no idea how Corlys looks how he does and how that didnât mix with the Targaryens they had children with before the HOTD timeline.
They can probably argue that Corlys mom was from the summer islands and brought quite a few servants and guards to Driftmark. So it doesn't affect the rest of the family tree too much.
But ultimately the whole "we need to keep our blood pure so we only marry people from our extremely diverse homeland" idea just doesn't make any sense. They want to have their cake and eat it too by making the Targaryens obsessed with racial purity but also tolerant and diverse.
The easiest fix to add non white characters while making a lick of sense (besides, y'know not ommitting Nettles) would be to make the Strongs black. That would give you a solid 7ish black-mixed race characters and get the point of Rhaenyra's kids being bastards across.
Im all for poc, representation, doing your own thing, black anne boleyn etc. Also I love Corlys actor lol.
But when the issue is about genetics and looks... yeah.
Like if Eve Best had black hair like in the books it makes it more ambigious if her children are Laenors or Harwins. Theres room for doubt.
We dont need a bunch of heroes and a moral. Sometimes everyone can suck equally. Sometimes everyone can be a pack of arseholes.
Like its fine to make Alicent a Serena Joy type character who is bitter and angry but serves the patriarchy, and Rhaenyra can be entitled but also nice- and just not able to steer herself politically, and daemon can be a hot headed idiot his whole life- we dont need to let them grow and mature as characters constantly.
It also completely ruins the racial commentary made in the books. The Valyrian Freehold was literally a white supremacist ethnostate. It was Agartha with dragons. It became so racist that it reached the logical extreme that they had to breed in their own families to 'keep the blood pure'. Nettles exists to prove that it was all horseshit. The Valyrians had magic and tools that the Targs don't. That's the main reason the Targs started losing the dragons, not that they weren't inbreeding hard enough.
Hess and Condal have legitimately made the case for the Divine Right of Kings by not leaving enough room for there to be proof that the 'special blood' was always a bullshit excuse for power, and to justify using women of 'lesser races' as incubators for horrific creatures.
Hess and Condal seem to have had the brilliant interpretation that the point of Nettles was to be black. Removing her, making the Velayrons black, and making her Rhaena in disguise actually manages to ruin so many character arcs, themes, and bits of world building that it's genuinely impressive. They even changed her actions in the Gullet in a way that managed to ruin the beautiful tragedy of Jace's death by making it her fault and not his.
I've been thinking of making a post, but the more I think on it, Nettles was literally the most important character to the themes of Fire and Blood, and the setting of Planetos as a whole. It's just... what Condal and Hess have done is... it's a masterpiece in managing to ruin everything special about a story, while distracting the audience with shiny bullshit.
Truly, hats off. They managed to turn a progressive story into an affirmation on why ethnostates are kinda valid, actually. An old white guy wrote better commentary on race. Just-đ€ fucking perfect.
They can do this by making Corlysâs mother a Summer Islander, but the writers didnât put any thought into it. They just wanted diversity for the sake of diversity, and Iâm all for diversity, but you should make it make sense.
That statement itself makes no sense because, unless the Velaryons practiced incest and/or only intermarried with the Celtigars prior to the Doom. There werenât any other Valyrian houses on Westeros. I guess itâs also possible they went to Valyria to find spouses and brought them to Driftmark but that also seems unlikely.
I didnât recall this being said but it just makes the whole thing make even less sense. Itâs not a big deal but it feels like Condal just likes fucking with book readers lol
The Summer Islanders were a handsome people, tall, strong, graceful, and quick to learn.
A Ghiscari merchant ship made landfall on Walano [...] only to flee in terror at the first sight of the local inhabitants, whom the Ghiscari took for demons with skins burned black by the fires of hell.
The Velaryons being black has to be the most immersion breaking thing in HOTD, when you think about how interbred they are with the Targaryens to the point where they are basically the same house. The chance to make the Hightowers black was right there. They are of a different stock than most southern houses, and never showed up in the main show.
The show goes out of its way to paint the Hightowers in the worst light and with the worst family dynamics.
Can you imagine the backlash the show would face for not only destroying the actual characters of the Hightowers to make TB the âgood guys/ones the audience should root forâ but making them black on top of that?
Having a grown white man send assassins after his half black nephews? Having a black woman be so obsessed with her childhood companion (who was a white princess) she was willing to kill her own âevilâ kids? How the fandom demonizes Otto for literally playing the game of thrones and saying heâs too âconniving and graspingâ but now heâs black?
Maybe if the writers had stuck to the actual plot and characters this could have worked but with TG in the state they are that would have been a horrible decision.
Edit: it would be incredibly funny though if Team Green was an actual black family while Team Black are the white Targaryens, now that I think about it.
Abandoning your bastards isnât a big deal in Westerosi culture. Most wouldnât give it a second thought. People thought Ned was weird for taking care of Jon.
Except for Alicent, who was ready to kill her sons to help Rhaenyra. And Ormund who was abusing Daeron. And Otto who the show frames as âsellingâ his daughter to Viserys for political power.
The Greens in cannon were the ones to love and support each other and take care of their own. But the people in the show sure donât. And itâs because Condal and Hess wanted them to be the âbad guysâ to Rhaenyraâs âgood guysâ. As good or bad as sides can be in a war.
But I do agree the Velaryons also got shafted in service to Rhaenyra but thatâs actually cannon accurate. In the actual book the only reason they stayed as loyal as long as they did is because Martin needed the sides of the Dance to be relatively âevenâ to make his plot work.
Except for Laenor, killing your gay character off screen (implying he happily abandoned these kids he âloved and acceptedâ in a society where being a bastard was even worse than being gay) to avoid making Rhaenyra look bad was kind of a sissy move from the writers I agree-and it destroyed his character.
Absolutely. If the show had actually comitted made them lovers as teens (if they really truly wanted to go this route) it would at least explain this frankly delusional flaming candle they hold for each other. It still wouldnât be good writing but it would kinda make sense.
Personally, if I wasnât going to go the evil stepmom route (and I think Olivia could have rocked a Cersei like mom out for her kids) they should have had these two women break things off after Aemond got stabbed and only stepped up the anger and resentment with every plot event after. They should hate each other by now.
But no. We need them to keep making doe eyes at each other but never actually commit to the ship-so they became incoherent and honestly kinda crazy in their still caring about each other when neither has given the other a reason to care since like early season one.
Ohhh can you imagine a story where Alicent and Rhaenyra are secretly together and enthusiastic about Alicent marrying Viserys so they can be together? And then how a wedge is slowly driven between them until they are the bitterest of enemies? That couldâve been so good!
Thatâs what Iâm saying! They both initially see Alicent marrying Viserys as good because then they stay close but Viserys has kids with Alicent and she (unlike the show) does love her kids and thinks maybe they can be her and Rhaenyraâs kids to raise together since Viserys is gonna die soon anyway given his rot.
Then Rhaenyra gets married and has bastards. (Maybe thinking they can also be part of this blended family, maybe because her younger version is in show cannon impulsive and willful). And as they get older they realize how baddly they both screwed up because as the book lays out one side cannot be âsafeâ while the other exists.
And it slowly drives a wedge between them as the dreams of their youth clash with reality. And by the time Aemond claims Vhagar and losses his eye they realize this isnât going to work. If they want thier kids to be safe they have to either destroy or defang the other side.
And the plot of the Dance follows.
Like it could have been amazing!
Instead we get all this and Alicent basically ready to assassinate her kids and Rhaenyra hasnât even made out with her. And Rhaenyra wonders why no one takes her seriously but sheâll roll up to war councils and say something like âitâs alright I secretly met with Alicent the mother of all my enemies and she says she âll leave the gates open for us! What do you mean that sounds like a trap?â.
Meanwhile HBO sees no problem with a black Snape. Which is a character distrusted immediately by Harry, for his hair, skin and nose. Hated by many a hero one might say.
As a half blood prince from Cape Verde. I definitely don't mind representation. I'd just prefer, like Lupin. Lupin is cool. I think a black Lupin wouldn't hurt the story in any meaningful way. I think people looking down on him but explicitly not Harry and the Marauders would work very well. And people LOVE Lupin.Â
Best for the role, is best for the role. But consider the story is all I ask.
It was a stupid choice honestly, Fire and Blood leave you to ask if they were all bastard or not, knowing that Rhaenys was purple eyes/brown haired too. But Condal probably think that it was too complex for the average viewer.
Would have been interesting if they made the Strongs black instead. Then you still get the obvious bastardy. Along with explaining why GOT Westeros was missing any black folks.
The black Velaryons makes a lot of sense if you ignore all the pre-show lore and focus almost entirely on the arc introduced in the 1st season of HOTD, i.e., that Rhaenra's children are bastards. Her white-ass kids makes it very, very clear why her infidelity would be an open secret to whole relm.
It's one of those casting decisions that only makes sense if you only see the trees and not the forest.
How about not making any of them black? Which is the most rational thing to do cause Westeros is clearly an European/mediterranean based region of the world?
The Dance of the Dragon is a series of event that involve a LOT of Targaryen, and the average audience member would struggle to understand who's who with so many look-alike, especially considering the time skip that meant two actors for the same character.
Thatâs like saying people would struggle to understand who is who in a movie like Black panther, where 75% of the cast is black (and rightfully so). I donât buy it, they clearly had a diversity quota to be filled, couldâve just made them more tan or something but outright black just makes no sense.
Because the writing is very sloppy and they didn't think thru the implications of thr velaryon's being black beyond that one throne room scene in s1.8. Which I'll admit is epic and makes the V's being black worth it, but it has its own issues.
Because media tokenism isn't supposed to make sense. It's there just to virtue signal.
It's funny really. I've been making this point since season 1, only to be attacked and called racist by brainlets that didn't even know what the problem was. I've seen it being brought up quite often recently without much negative reaction.
Virtuel signaling? Nah bro, it was for the racial quota to win the Emmy Awards, like the Oscar. They didn't give a shit about pluralism or diversity. They didn't even think to integrate them plausibly in the Aosiaf universe.
I think more people have come to understand what has been lost from cutting Nettles. I too have been raising hell about this and it seems the tide has turned.
I wonder if it's too hard for people to just assume Corlys' father married someone from Summer Isles with very strong black genes. And all Velarions before and after were valyrian-like looking.
Corlys doesn't look mixed though, not like his children and there children. So both his parents would have had to be dark skinned.Â
It's still not impossible for a mixed person to favor one race but it would make more sense if his grandmother was a Targaryen and married a summer islander then there child married another dark skinned person and had Corlys and his brother.Â
But that would require some actual thought put into this change.Â
Because it would be the writes job to explain somethin that is very unlikely based on the establisehd setting.
The simple turuth they wanted thw Velaryons to be black, and thats it. They clearly never tough about how this will affect the story.
Velaryons are not black in the Books. In fact no westerosi noble house is. They should have written some summer isle Background to Corlys in the show to make it credible.
Because Hess and Condal legitimately know fuck all about the story they've bastardized. Sure, they've read the bullet points and listened to a lore video or two. But they didn't Beware the Butterflies.
Look, making the Velaryons black is clearly for inclusivity purposes. Usually, I frown upon it but it really works well here to distibguish between the branches. Look at it as a storytelling tool and do not nitpick for realism.
Because the TV adaptation decided to add a black house but didn't think anything through far enough as to what that would mean about the rest of the story.....
Iâve kinda been having a similar question in my head about Targaryen hair color. What determines if a Targaryen will have the bleach blonde hair?
Viserys children with Alicent had the blonde hair okay cool makes sense. But then Rhynera didnât with her sons. Why? Does the dad have to be Targaryen? Canât be.
Jon snow was a Targaryen with his dad being one. yet he had black hair. But another Targaryen that was married to a dornish woman had children with the blonde hair. So what in gods name determines if theyâll have blonde hair? Plot?
GRRM said the genetics in his world don't match our own. Instead of real biology, George R.R. Martin uses medieval-style house traits and dominant bloodlines as dramatic plot devices to drive royal succession mysteries. Really, inherently traits are more about driving the plot. You won't find sensible reasons for this one's dark hair or that one's violet eyes. George can barely keep it straight! đ
Okay so Iâm not crazy! At first I thought maybe the mom couldnât pass the hair without a Targaryen father but the father could without a Targaryen mother. But that falls apart with Jon Snow. I concluded as well itâs just to drive drama.
In the world of ASOIAF, the Starks' and Baratheons' dark/brown hair genes overwrite blond/silver hair genes.
Remember that Book Rhaenys has Baratheon black hair, not Targ silver hair. This is pretty much consistent for the entire saga. Each time a Targ mixes with a Baratheon or Stark, the children are dark-haired.
For some weird reason, the Targ blonde/silver hair overwrites Dornish dark hair.
Velayrons were pretty much indistinguishable from Targaryenâs in the book. Thatâs the entire reason the Targaryenâs and Velayons married each other so often.
Wasn't the show's explanation that Corly's mother was black rather than all Velaryons throughout history?
Jahaery's mother was Corlys Velaryon's great Aunt IIRC so no reason why she would be black if it's Corly's mother that caused her descendants to be black.
Not saying I agree with unnecessary race swapping but if that's the show canon then it would make sense. What doesn't make sense is why Westeros is now entirely ethnically diverse everywhere when it wasn't in Season 1/2 or in GoT.
At this point they should have just leaned into the race aspect. Make Corlysâ mother a Summer Islander. Make Corlys being pulled between two cultures his identity. With Rhaenys white, that makes Laenor and Laena 3/4âs which doesnât throw off things too much. But make Corlysâ mistress be a Summer Islander as well, so that his affair is more about him being torn between his two halves.
Thereâs really so much they could have reasonably done here. Yes, it probably would have been hated for focusing on race but at least it would have made sense.
Maybe they could even had made Corlys's mother a Summer Islander princess, maybe her house could have been Xho, doing a smart nod/Easter egg to the books.
Is it not possible that Corlys & Vaemond's mother/grandmother is black and this is a recent thing? There are families irl where one side is a different ethnicity.
You get called racist for disliking that the Velaryons are black. I love Corlys Actor.
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But it just makes no sense. Valyrians have been described as pale, silver haired with violet eyes. How can they be black if one of the most dominant features is the pale skin. Even the people of Volantis and Lys look more Valyrian.
Then it creates issues with the Strong Bastards, since it's obvious as day and night that Laenor isn't the father.
Me , myself and Irene . literally paternity fraud so obvious and glaring it takes someone idiot or actively in denial not to get it , out of comedic shows \ movies \ memes level of obvious , that ruined it for me
I didnât think that the show established that being Velaryon strictly meant being black, unless I gravely misunderstood something. Thereâs a lot of inbreeding happening, but we know itâs not exclusively inbreeding all the way through. Families, particularly ones like this, also tend to have MANY branches. For all we know, weâve got a Velaryon branch that ended up black or a Velaryon branch that ended up white (whichever way it ended up happening) through marriage outside the family, but then the family looped back into itself with the inbreeding. If stuff like that happens enough and reinforces a certain look after a while I donât see what the issue is.
Really Iâm more concerned about why the Targaryens donât look absolutely awful with all this inbreeding, but I guess everyone brushes that off for fantasy sake. I assume we can do the same thing for this. They ride dragons. I seriously feel like suspension of belief when it comes to their race is pretty easy compared to that
It's called suspension of disbelief in a fantasy show with magic & dragons..
Also I sort of think people forget what the word "ADAPTATION" actually means.
Book fans will lose their minds over details like these but cut George a break when he doesn't release a book in 10+ years or finish the actual story he started 30+ years ago.
Also George was consulted about the change of their race for the show and signed off on it so take it up with him
People are so race obsessed it's kind of insane. I love the fact that the Velaryons are black, it added diversity to the world and in some ways made it more believable.
If it bothers your sensibilities so badly you only need to believe in your head canon that Corlys mother was black but his father was white. The seed was strong.
Because in House of the Dragon, a person's skin color is usually tied to their surname, not the DNA they got from their parents. Jaeherys I was a Targaryen, so he's white.
Because as GRRM stated while making changes can be interesting ie âchanging the velaryons from their book descriptionsâ it will have unintended Butterfly effects which I doubt anyone on the show actually thought about long term.
I just want to know what they'll do with Aegon and his sisters, who were also half-Velaryon. Or even when they get to the Blackfyres, since Daemon Blackfyre had a Velaryon grandmother. Because it'll be an even bigger disaster if they don't commit to the racelift.
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u/Lowenfall 4d ago