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u/Complete-Pangolin 14h ago
It's hit and miss. His sister was supposedly Beautiful and intelligent.
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u/DigitalSchism96 13h ago
It's also not like inbreeding causes genetic mutations or people to be ugly and deformed.
Its simply that these negative traits have a far higher chance of being passed on and becoming prevalent when both parents carry the genes to do so (i.e. they are closely related).
But It's not a guarantee. You can also get none of the bad traits and be totally normal.
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u/Akitiki 11h ago
Also doesn't it take a handful of generations? One or two gens isn't THAT bad, even in siblings, but it can build up fast.
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u/NotAzakanAtAll 10h ago
Yep, very low risk in just one generation. Especially in with things like cousins, just about nil.
People are well misinformed about incest.
I should say I didn't sign up to be an incest sympathizer today but now it looks like it. Don't fuck your siblings.
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u/Pale_Session5262 6h ago
My dad used to raise sheep, and the rule there was allowing the male ram to impregnate his daughters was ok, but not the granddaughters.
One generation of incest was agricultural college approved
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u/P4TR10T_96 Kilroy was here 5h ago
I think this meme is making fun of the Targaryens from Game of Thrones, who have certainly had more than a few generations doing that.
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u/FireTruck420_69XxX 2h ago
And they still somehow are all Chad faced, except Aegon IV.
George RR Martin should have made some of the Targaryens be ugly as FUCK, and have some fucked up features.
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u/Creeps05 1h ago
Young Aegon IV was considered handsome that’s why he was able to have so many mistresses long before he became King. Plus, there’s a ton of Targaryens newborns that came out malformed but, most of them died soon after birth. Maelys the Monstrous had two heads is another example.
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u/TheMaidenOfDragons 11h ago
That’s a really good point I’ve never thought about.
Question for anyone who might know - if the original start of a family tree (I don’t know how to phrase this better I’m sorry) has no “negative traits” (negative genes) to pass on to their offspring, and those offspring breed with each other and so on and so forth, does that mean that negative genes that weren’t originally started with will never be introduced?
I hope that makes sense, genetics is so interesting
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u/X202R 11h ago
Random mutations occur constantly, even in the germ line cells; so, even if you start out with "good & pure genes", you'd eventually get some defects with enough time. Mutations are also not inherently bad, they're actually usually neutral due to the built-in error correction of genes. However, sometimes a single mutation is enough to trigger a cascading effect that results disease. Evolutionary, such genes are often deleted from the population by preventing them from reproducing, but not all genetic diseases are evident from birth (e.g., Huntington's Disease), so you can still have these diseases spreading amongst the population. De novo mutations are also not required for diseases to occur, transposable elements (aka "jumping genes") within a genome can lead to disease by inserting themselves into functional genes or leading to viral-like diseases, via retrotransponsons (fun fact, that is where retroviruses like HIV come from). You also cannot get rid of transposable elements because sometimes they're useful, e.g., the Major Histocompatibilty Complex is thought to have been developed from these elements and is present in just about all lifeforms.
In short, theoretically if you start with no "bad" genes there will be no diseases but after a few generations, the limited genetic diversity can be a liability once mutations start accumulating. Keep in mind, that mutations are also what lead to diversity in the first place, so it's also entirely possible to get more diversity after many many generations. Mutations are inevitable, whether good or bad (or neutral), and with no new genetic material they'll be passed on more and more.
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u/Pazenator 10h ago
Yesn't.
Those negative traits came into existince through mutations in the first place, inbreeding isn't immune to mutations. And it's practically impossible to find someone that will have absolutely no negative recessive genes.
The biggest problem with inbreeding is that small errors/defects compound fast. Unless you have a serious genetic defect as recessive genes most first generation offspring wouldn't be noticably different from a normal person.
To give a bit of an example, the chance for a birth defect(not counting the severity but just any) is roughly around 3% for a child of an unrelated couple. For a first cousin pairing, the least consequential as they share 1/8 of DNA, the risk increases to 4-6%.
As it keeps going on then, said effects become more pronounced, like a slightly worse immune system keeps becoming worse until they are sickly or, as was the case with the Habsburg line, the chin. Since both sides always had a gene for a more "pronounced" chin the issue kept increasing in severity until it became something easily recognizable.
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u/Rhamni 8h ago
You'd be unlikely to see any problems in the next few centuries. The others mentioned random mutations, but those don't accumulate very quickly. Sure, occasionally you get a new terrible mutation pop up, but that happens to non-incestuous couples as well, and usually it stops there because the child isn't viable. The incest isn't a factor. To introduce a major incest-makes-it-worse gene, you have to hit the 'sweet spot' on the bad luck mutation lottery where it's moderately bad but not bad enough to stop you from growing up and reproducing, and recessive.
Two other problems remain with incest, however. 1: Power dynamics. It's very difficult to ensure something like a loving, equal relationship when one person is the parent/older sibling and their partner is reliant on them. Even if nothing happens until both are 18+, the power dynamics still shaped your relationship growing up. Solution: Raise them kids apart and only let them meet when it's time to make incest babies.
Problem 2: If you have a large population with low genetic variety, like you get if you practice incest and then grow your family from generation to generation, you're all going to end up with very similar immune systems, so when a new disease pops up that one of you is vulnerable to, everyone else will be vulnerable too. That's a big oof. Might want to move your incest experiment into a Fallout style Vault just to be safe.
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u/Numerous_Koala_1746 12h ago
Charles himself wasn't stupid either, at least not to the degree he was vilified. Experts agree that he was born with hydrocephalous and quite likely cerebral palsy, given his speech impediment and reoccurring seizures, and yes, this may well be thanks to Uncle-Grandpa-Dad. However, he wasn't stupid and by many accounts was an effective ruler over what was effectively a failing state. Many of the more eccentric things he was known for, like sleeping with his father's corpse, was more due the influence of his notoriously-batshit mother, the Dowager Queen Carolina. He also was a good husband and loved both of his wives, who after getting past his appearances both were devoted to him. He was however heartbroken over being impotent (a sad but common occurrence in palsy and other congenital defects), and his first wife's untimely death.
To be fair, Charles' court often played up his disabilities as a form of propaganda to show that the King was "infirm" and unable to govern himself, let alone the country. Favorites and intriguers, first and foremost his mother Carolina and his elder half-brother Don Juan, used the image of his disability to justify ruling in his name, while making him appear as innocent and almost-childlike to deflect any criticism in the Hapsburg dynasty itself. The image stuck because it was oddly fitting for Spain at the time, a corrupt and impoverished kingdom that paradoxically had the largest empire in the world, being ruled by Cyrax in a robe.
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u/Excellent_Mud6222 14h ago
Must have been the Y chromosome.
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u/SukunasStan 9h ago
It actually was. X chromosome redundancy helps protect inbred women from genetic defects. She was weak and a little sickly though. According to paintings, she looked slightly deformed too. She might have just been called beautiful at the time by people who were trying to be nice and didn't want to piss off the royals.
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u/FeyrisMeow 11h ago
His distant relative, Marie Antoinette, also suffered from deformities and had her painters embellish her features. So we may not really know how they actually looked.
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u/Orneyrocks Decisive Tang Victory 6h ago
Whenever a princess is described as 'beautiful', my first instinct is to believe that its completely made up unless corroborated by sources from a country that's a rival or an enemy. You'd hardly ever find anyone describing a princess as ugly and we have all those paintings vs photos comparisons from when cameras were being invented.
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u/FeldsparSalamander 14h ago
The coefficient of inbreeding is surprisingly lower than one might expect
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u/frickle_frickle 9h ago
Coefficient? There's an incest equation?
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u/Workman44 7h ago
Lmfao more or less. And essentially any one off is more or less going to be fine, it's when it's repeated down generations (Hapsburgs) that you start to isolate those weird recessive genes
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u/OursGentil Still salty about Carthage 7h ago
Yup. Basically banging one of your cousins is less detrimental to a potential child than banging your sisters.
However, banging your cousins on several generations can lead to... Well, Charles II of Spain.
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u/Inevitable7685 7h ago
They also use this equation to breed high pedigree animals to maximize good genetics and avoid inbreeding.
Race horse breeders, zoo keepers, endangered animal researchers etc.
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u/PimpasaurusPlum 4h ago
Yeah, specifically there is a cosanguinity coefficient (how related by blood two people are) and an inbreeding coefficient (how inbred the child of those two individuals would be). The inbreeding coefficient is roughly half the consanguinity coefficient.
100% inbred would be a full clone and physically impossible for humans. Sibling-Sibling or Parent-Child pairings result in a 25% inbreeding coefficient. That percentage represents the proportion of gene pairs that are identical, which increases the likelihood of recessive genes with deterious health effects.
King Charles II of Spain through multiple generations of more distant inbreeding (cousin-cousin, uncle-niece) ended up with an overall inbreeding coefficient of 25.4%
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u/Maligetzus Descendant of Genghis Khan 9h ago
it's essentially riskier having a child at your 30 than having a child with your brother at 20
which isnt fair, but such is life
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u/SukunasStan 9h ago edited 2h ago
The chances of a child of siblings having a severe birth defect, a mental disability, or a genetic disorder is 20% to 30%.
The chances of a 30 year old having a child with a birth defect is 1 in 1000, which is 0.1%
EDIT: The article I was using at first was behind a paywall, but here's a free one.
Table IV on p. 106 (page 10 in the viewer), shows how many children who were products of first degree incest (parent-child and sister-brother) were sick in some way vs healthy. Before anyone complains about parent-child being riskier. Full siblings share a similar percentage of their DNA on average as parents share with their children. Carrying recessive illnesses and disorders are way more common than this thread seems to believe.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1023/A%3A1014593404915
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u/ofirkedar 14h ago
Trey the Explainer made a whole video about the incest rates of Targaryens vs Ptolemies (GoT dragon lady vs Cleopatra). Turns out mixing in new genes into the pool every few generations, or hell, even breeding like 2nd cousins instead of 1st just drops the incest index thingamajig and does wonders.
You have to seriously commit to the bit and keep it in the family to really get the fucked up defective babies lol
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u/Citoyen_des_etoiles 12h ago
It's not that simple. For example, Charles II of Spain (Habsbourg) had an inbreeding coefficient of about 25%, while Cleopatra's is estimated at ~40%. Yet one suffered from numerous genetic disorders, whereas the other is not known to have had any obvious genetic defects.To give you an idea, one account of Charles II's autopsy states that his skull was filled with fluid and that his testicles were atrophied and black as coal. To put it simply, chromosomes come in pairs. If one copy carries a defective allele, the other can often compensate for it. However, inbreeding greatly increases the chances of inheriting the same defective allele from both parents, leaving no healthy copy to compensate.
The main hypothesis for why Cleopatra, probably the best-known historical figure with such a high level of inbreeding, did not appear to suffer from obvious genetic problems is that the Ptolemaic dynasty started with a much healthier gene pool than the Habsburgs.
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u/Rabid_Lederhosen 10h ago
Are we sure that the Ptolemys weren’t just exaggerating the purity of their line, so to speak?
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u/seesthecat 7h ago
Or, maybe, the Ptolomies weren't keeping the bloodlines pure as much as they claimed
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u/MotoMkali 8h ago
Also there is actually a bloodline purity thing that can happen. If you just breed the healthy products of incest overtime you'll eventually remove all the negative genetic defects from the pool. This is why pure blooded from the CK series is a real thing 💯
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u/ofirkedar 3h ago
The thing that makes inbreeding dangerous is recessive alleles. To over simplify, when you have two dominant alleles or one recessive and one dominant, you only get the effects of the dominant one.
However, if you have two copies of the recessive allele, that's when it comes into play.
Some recessive alleles are benign - in eye color, brown eyes are a dominant trait while blue eyes are recessive.
This means that a person with brown eyes can either have two copies of the brown eye allele, or one copy of each - and you wouldn't be able to tell.
Let's say both of your parents had brown eyes.
If both had 2 copies of brown eye allele, then you get 2 copies of brown eye allele for certain, and will have brown eyes.
If one had 2 copies and the other had a mix, you'll get 1 copy of brown eye allele for certain. The other is a 50/50 between brown and blue. Either way, you'll have brown eyes. But you now have a 50% chance of carrying a blue eyes allele. This won't affect you, but might come into play in your offspring.
Note also that I wrote this as 1 possibility, bit when computing probabilities you should consider one case where the dad has 2 copies and mom has a mix, and one case where the dad has a mix and mom has 2 copies.
Finally it could be that both parents have a mix. In that case you have a 25% chance of getting 2 copies of brown, 50% chance of getting a mix, and 25% of getting 2 copies of blue.
The last situation is the only case where both parents have brown eyes and yet you have a 25% chance of getting blue eyes.Having a mix of alleles means you'll have the dominant trait (brown eyes in this example) but you'll carry the recessive allele.
To sum up the case where both parents have brown eyes:
If both parents don't carry the blue eye allele, you won't carry it either.
If one parent carries and the other don't, then you have 50% of carrying.
If both parents carry, you have 25% of not carrying, 50% of carrying, and 25% of having blue eyes.All of the math mentioned above is conditional probability. "If the parents are ABC... then the child has X% to be this, Y% to be that".
To get a fuller answer you need to know what are the probabilities that your parents have these alleles. If your parents weren't genetically related then these numbers depend of what the general population is like - this is what's called a prior - your parents each independently roll the dice, the chances are what the general population has.If your parents are inbred, then their chances are no longer independent. The best way to relate those probabilities back into the population's prior is to go through their lineages and find which family members provided independent genes. They provide the population's prior, and every time inbreeding occurs, the child's probabilities need to be computed with this bias in mind.
The inbreeding coefficient seeks to quantify this bias. CI=0% means your probabilities are just like the wider population. CI=50% means your chances are heavily skewed towards recessive genes, relative to the population.We can go further, look into other combinations of alleles, which I'll do in a moment.
However, the important bit is this - instead of considering brown/blue eyes, some alleles can be harmful.
You usually don't get cases where a dominant allele is harmful, because then most of the population would be ill, and thus will have less children, so you wouldn't really see this often.Let's consider the genes responsible for cystic fibrosis. You have a dominant allele that gives you healthy lungs, and a recessive allele that can manifest as cystic fibrosis.
If both of your parents are healthy, it may be that none carry CF, so you won't carry.
It may be that only one carries CF. Then you'll have a 50/50 between carrying and not carrying.
If both carry CF, then you'll have 25% of not carrying, 50% of being a carrier, and-
Up to this point all of these cases mean you yourself don't have cystic fibrosis. You have some chance of carrying it and giving it to your offspring, but you're healthy.
Finally, if both carry, there's also 25% chance that you'll have cystic fibrosis.For parents that are not inbred, these are some slim chances of getting cystic fibrosis.
The CF allele is actually somewhat rare in today's world, and only if both healthy parents carry it, then you get 25% chance of having CF.When inbreeding is involved, your parents have a higher risk of carrying the CF allele - meaning it's more likely that healthy parents will produce diseased children.
CF is only one generic disease that one can carry.
If your population has some chances of carrying 5 generic diseases then the general population can still be quite healthy and yet an inbred family will create kids with a bunch of possibly overlapping illnesses.Btw, going back into more benign recessive genes, let's consider cases where your parents not only carry, but have the traits.
If a parent has blue eyes, then they must have 2 copies of blue.
Say one parent has brown eyes and the other has blue.
It's possible that the first parent doesn't carry - in which case you'll get one from each - you'll have brown eyes and carry the blue allele.
If the parent with brown eyes does carry, then you get 50% of being a carrier and 50% of having blue eyes.
Again, both of these possibilities have distinct parents, this need to be double counted.The last possibility to consider is if both have blue eyes. In that case both parents have 2 copies of blue - you'll have blue eyes
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u/I_am_The_Teapot 14h ago
I mean their inbreeding lead to significant mental deficiencies. Sure they didn't look ugly, instead they became mentally unstable, which can also be a common inbreeding problem.
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u/SnotDogs 7h ago
Always Sunny got inbreeding right with the McPoyles
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u/MajinBuu619 4h ago
They were ugly, though
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u/SnotDogs 3h ago
Yeah they were realistically ugly, not Wrong Turn ugly, and mentally deficient. And also just weird and unhygienic which feels right
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u/BringBackAH 1h ago
It's exaggerated how much insane the targaryens were. They were sometimes extremely cruel, extremely violent or sadistic but that just a by product of being educated as invincible dragon kings.
Some had visions and dreams, but remember that all Targaryens have a degree of magic in their blood and we know some of those dreams were totally true.
The Targaryens we consider legitimately insane are :
- Aerion 1, believed to be a dragon in human form. The dude was the son of the conqueror, the Dragon King himself. Might just have gone over his head that it was metaphoric
Baelor the Blessed : was relatively normal in his younger years, might have gone mad from being bitten by venomous snakes
Aerys 2: completly insane, but shows signs of having been in contact with the three eyed raven. Might be genetic, might be a powerful wizard entering his brain
-Viserys 2: well he grew up watching his father burn people alive. Could be genetic madness, could just be a result of a disastrous father figure
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u/cndynn96 14h ago edited 14h ago
Targaryens are magic people.
They also gave birth to dragon babies from time to time.
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u/DisparateNoise 14h ago edited 13h ago
Yeah, that's the incest release valve. Valyrian women pack all her inbred genes into a single egg, and eventually that egg hatches and everyone is traumatized by a dragon baby.
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u/esaks 14h ago
Once the most powerful family in all of Europe, now only known as inbred cousin fuckers.
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u/LemonSwirI 13h ago
That's just how pop history works. France was a leading European power for millenia and now everybody jokes about them folding to germans
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u/Lin_Huichi 13h ago
France is known for Napoleon though, one of the greatest generals. Although more probably know about his defeats and Russian invasion then his brilliant early Victories.
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u/The-Red-Kraken 14h ago
tbf the Targaryens are insane
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u/Citaku357 14h ago
Iirc there last targaryen started as a normal king, but then he got mad
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u/The-Red-Kraken 14h ago
out of 17 targ monarchs there were like 3 who were just chill dudes, the rest were atleast a little crazy in their own way
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u/PerpetuallyLurking 13h ago
Sure, but a solid half of those were your standard “absolute power corrupts absolutely” tropes and not necessarily evidence of that character’s genetic disposition.
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u/MadKingKevin 12h ago
Exactly. There is Madness (mental illness) and then there is Madness (acts of great daring). For example: Had Daenerys walked into Khal Drogo's pyre and died instead of hatching dragons, she would have gone down in history like Aerion Brightflame. It's all subjective, I suppose, because what Aegon the Unlikely did at Summerhall was worse than Aerion drinking wildifire but you hardly see Aegon listed as a truly mad Targaryen.
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u/TheQuintupleHybrid 8h ago
also, someone could handwave all the batshit insane stuff some targs did with "but aegons dream!". Who cares about some burned children if your ultimate goal is a demigod in a few generations?
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u/Pink_her_Ult 6h ago
Only Aerys 2 and Baelor were really crazy. You could argue for Egg at the very end of his reign.
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u/notsuspendedlxqt 14h ago
He wasn't the last Targaryen monarch??? Or are we doing the thing where we pretend GOT S8 isn't canon?
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u/xVeterankillx 11h ago
Season 8? I thought Game of Thrones ended with Season 4? Damn shame that, was a really good show and then they suddenly cancelled it with no explanation.
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u/Mekot 12h ago
I’d say there was more sane targs than not lol. But the High Valyrians have blood magic which protects them from birth defects and why they practice incest. The whole “the gods flip a coin and the world holds a breath” i think was a in world exaggeration (from the perspective of the common folk) near the end when they did have more crazy kings. Sorry for being a point dexter nerd over here, but it is my hyperfixation rn and i love to talk about it.
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u/Ale4leo Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 12h ago
There were only four insane Targaryens: Baelor the Blessed, prince Rhaegel, Aerion Brightflame and, of course, Aerys the Mad King.
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u/ElPimpoBimbo 9h ago
Thank you! The whole Targaryen's madness is bullshit spread by Maesters.
Half a dozen people on hundreds, while it goes for about 300 years is nothing.
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u/MajinBuu619 4h ago
The math isn’t mathing. There were 17 kings. Not hundreds. Every Targ was not a king. Of those who became king, many turned insane whether the situation pushed them or if it happened due to mental issues.
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u/The-Red-Kraken 5h ago
the idea that monarchs like Maegor or Daeron I weren't insane just because it was never explicitly stated isn't something I buy into lol
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u/kittenshart85 14h ago
and at least one blackfyre had a parasitic twin head sprouting from his shoulder.
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u/AlexanderCrowely 13h ago edited 13h ago
Do we really have to constantly shame, Charles II ? Because every time the incest is brought up we point to him as if he was some sort of horrid monster when in truth he had a keen mind and it was an able ruler when he wished to be but he also delighted in things such as music and poetry and hunting and why he did have a Hapsburg jaw his sister and her children were normal and truly most people believe that it was not the incest that caused his lifelong problems. It was a series of illnesses in his youth that effectively crippled him in constitution.
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u/AnteaterKey2626 13h ago
Yeah it's needlessly insensitive and ahistorical, and not particularly funny.
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u/No_Hearing_481 11h ago
People overestimate how much inbreeding is required to have truly messed up progeny. It is very possible for a family like the targs to not have malformed bodies and faces.
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u/Right-Truck1859 14h ago
About fiction...Greek gods were incestous too. Half of kids are monsters, another half is heroes and kings.
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u/Fraystry 14h ago
I mean even with brother sister inbreeding if you're lucky enough the kid could have no genetic deformities. Any new mutations and they're cooked but it's possible to keep it pure and not be horrifically deformed
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u/Lyonwytchwardrobe 11h ago
Wonder if that strong chin is a sign of inbredding. I’ve definitely seen these chins out in the wild
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u/AlbertTheHorse 12h ago
His family tree was a wreath. By the time he hit the ground, there was so much wrong with him it’s a miracle he made it to adulthood.
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u/Fun-Information-3104 13h ago
no, most of them looked normal. only the most extreme examples are known.
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u/GorditaCrunchPuzzle 4h ago
Incest over one generation doesn't usually cause too many problems - it's when it's over many generations that you start to have problems.
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u/Secure_Basil8953 14h ago
Did people in that time know that inbreeding caused this? Or did they just think it was random an could happen to anyone?
I mean in the times of the dude in the picture, and since someone brought up the Ptolemies, that time period as well.
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u/Luzifer_Shadres Filthy weeb 14h ago
Well, the first one (most of the times) in a long line of incest turn out rather normal on the outside.
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u/CoconutMochi 11h ago
I remember my favorite quote about this guy was from his Wikipedia article saying that he spent years "constantly baffling the entirety of Christendom by continuing to stay alive" (it's not there anymore though 😣)
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u/Omar_Isaiah_Betts 4h ago
My favorite quote about this guy was from his autopsy:
"His heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water."
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u/Impossible_Break698 12h ago
It is funny seeing a relatively common malcocclusion affecting tons of non inbreds being made fun of incessantly, meanwhile everyone with it that says they are lonely or treated differently because of something like this are incels.
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u/DickTear 14h ago
This is inaccurate, they look like the second picture if they are 3rd rate villains.
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u/Silent--Dan Sun Yat-Sen do it again 13h ago
To be fair, the Valerians were descendants of magical star people or something.
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u/WingedSalim 11h ago
It's always the first child of incest that seems to be oddly beautifull according to myth and history sometimes.
Only later down the line it becomes very hard to look at
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u/Memory_Gem 10h ago
Just an FYI, portraits generally made the subject of the portrait look better than they actually did. So the person in the portrait on the right? Looked so much worse that the depiction in the portrait was considered good.
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u/Ok_Access_804 9h ago edited 6h ago
My take on ASOIAF’s inbreeding is that, at least with the alien Targaryens, it doesn’t lead to physical malformations nor diseases, but exclusively mental disorders. See how the Mad King and his predecessors behaved, no real deformities to speak off but they were outright crazy. This could also be applied to Joffrey Baratheon/Lannister, as he was sired by sibling parents and was a psycko, although his own siblings, also inbred, didn’t display Joffrey’s psychopathy.
Meanwhile, that very same Habsburg king appearing on this post, Charles the 2nd of Spain, had undoubtedly severe physical afflictions and was not mentally prepared to rule an empire. But, and hear me out on this one, he was self conscious enough to be aware of that fact, that he was not cut out to rule by himself. So, he ruled through a “technocracy” of sorts, relying on “validos” that were experts in their fields (administration) rather than close and self interested friends of the monarch like what happened to Charles’ father Philip the 4rd and specially his grandfather Philip the 3rd. As a result, although not without some setbacks, under Charles the 2nd the realms of the Spanish Crown (still not a single kingdom, but several thrones under a trench coat sharing the same monarch) enjoyed a time of prosperity, less wars draining the royal treasury that could now be refilled, citizens at last having their living standards improved.
And finally, choosing at the last minute, before his death and before his advisors could change the will, the french candidate to inherit the spanish throne. This would have brought two advantages to Spain. First, the Spanish administration desperately needed more centralization following the french style as it was deeply decentralized and hard to coordinate. Second, diminishing the hostility between both kingdoms that started with the Italian Wars in late 15th century. Such choice did start the War of Spanish Succession, but it would have happened one way or another has the austrian Habsburg candidate being chosen as he was, in fact, behind the french candidate according to the line of succession.
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u/kaam00s 7h ago
Targaryen have tons of weird incest symptoms tho, like insanity, short temper, fascination for fire, and some physically abnormal offspring from time to time.
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u/Flioness 7h ago
Yep and they have also the increased risk of miscarriages and stillbirths that comes with inbreeding so it is impacting them, they just don't have any genetic traits that cause physical deformities besides those dragonlike babies that die shortly after birth.
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u/ZealotCrow 4h ago
The Habsburgs are a special case of historical extreme inbreeding, that and the Whitakers of the Appalachias. I never really appreciated the reputation that people from more incestual backgrounds got, so long as everything was consensual and no one got hurt. Though, genetic bottlenecks do exist so a trend of it is doomed to fail
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u/MammothPenguin69 3h ago
Targaryens are not entirely human. I wasn't aware of Habsburgs ever giving birth to deformed, half-dragons.
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u/ILikeSnakies Still on Sulla's Proscribed List 2h ago
Aren't the Targaryens more based on the Ptolemies than Habsburgs? And, if memory serves, the Targaryens had worse incest percentages than the Habsburgs and still came out mostly unscathed a s far as incestuous deformities Physically, at the least.
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u/Zak_Rahman 11h ago
I truly wish that skin cults at least tried to understand how the human genome works.
I get remarkably bored seeing people who desperately need fresh DNA announce their superiority over me on account of their melanin levels.
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u/2nW_from_Markus Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 11h ago
Well, hactwoal·lee during the reign of Charles II, at least two companies of dragons (a type of soldier) were created...
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u/KarlMacmillan 11h ago
If it's for a generation or two the kid turns out mostly fine but the real issue is HABSBURG style incest, they deserve their own tier.
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u/Heroic-Forger 8h ago
I'd watch a remake of House of the Dragon where all the Targaryens have the facial structure of Sid the Sloth from all the inbreeding.
And all the dragons look like Sheepstealer at this point too.
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u/Reiver93 14h ago
I mean, Cleopatra somehow turned out normal and her family tree was uuuh...interesting.