Is inbreeding good or bad?
The common view is that couples who marry close relatives are more likely to have children with genetic defects, which is detrimental to eugenics.
This is a scientific fact.
Since the dawn of humanity, the harsh natural environment has already eliminated most dominant disease genes from the human population.
Over millions of years, as humans developed relatively advanced civilizations, genetic diseases became recessive—only when both parents carry the same recessive gene for a particular disease does their child have roughly a one-in-four chance of developing the condition.
Note that it must be the same recessive gene for the same disease.
Relatives with close bloodlines, sharing a common ancestor, are naturally more likely to carry similar recessive genes. Their children are thus more prone to intellectual disabilities or birth defects.
However, if a bloodline undergoes dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of generations of inbreeding, all recessive defective genes within that lineage will eventually be expressed. By discarding children who inherit paired recessive defective genes, the remaining offspring will inevitably possess fewer recessive defective genes than the previous generation.
In other words, through a brutal system of elimination, inbreeding could reduce the prevalence of defective genes, effectively acting as a form of genetic optimization.
Of course, genetic optimization has two sides: reducing inferior genes and increasing superior ones, which is more practically achieved through crossbreeding.
Here, we will focus solely on the issue of how inbreeding reduces inferior genes.
Achieving inbred genetic optimization requires at least dozens of generations of effort. If new bloodlines with new defective genes are introduced midway, all previous efforts are nullified, and the process must begin anew.
Without a thousand years of direct-line royal intermarriage, the idea of a "noble bloodline" is nothing more than a fantasy.
The Great Celestial Dynasty has never had a thousand-year-old absolute noble house—one capable of refusing royal marriages. Therefore, for the Chinese nation, inbreeding has always remained a taboo to be avoided.
Even across ten thousand years of Earth's history, only the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt achieved this. Yet their system ultimately collapsed due to inbreeding, as the introduction of "inferior" mixed-blood individuals forced them to start over.
But how could they sustain their increasingly crumbling dynasty while continuously producing monstrous and imbecilic heirs? If their ruling power didn't decline, would these "noble" pharaohs have intermarried with other families?
In the end, the Ancient Pharaohs were nearly wiped out—though the people might have survived, their dynasty and the systems it established were eliminated.
The ancient European nobility shared a similar mindset to the Pharaohs, but their fate was even more tragic—take hemophilia, for example, which brought down European royal families.
The main problem was the inability to maintain pure patrilineal lineage; fresh blood had to be introduced periodically.
But what Earthlings couldn't achieve, many families on the Continent of Ice and Fire did—they possessed true royal bloodlines.
Take House Targaryen, for instance.
In fact, Essos once hosted a great civilization that practiced extensive inbreeding—the Ancient Valyrian Freehold, of which House Targaryen was merely a minor branch.
How potent was the Valyrian bloodline?
Look at Daenerys Targaryen today, and you'll understand.
Aside from the Valyrian remnants, the Great Houses of Westeros (once royal families, now downgraded to Great Houses after Aegon Targaryen's invasion and unification of the Eight Kingdoms) engage in what can only be called "secondary" inbreeding, and they still intermarry with other families.
The ability to perform "inbred genetic optimization" in this world stems primarily from their ancient histories. Take the protagonists' family, House Stark of Winterfell, for instance, with its history spanning at least 8,000 years.
House Frey of the Twins, responsible for the Red Wedding, has long been looked down upon by the upper nobility due to their shallow roots.
How "nouveau riche" are the Freys?
Well, they are merely a "mere" 600-year-old marquess family, possessing nothing but wealth.
Uh, if a 600-year-old noble family were placed in the Celestial Empire...
All this is to say one thing: Viserys's plan to sleep with his sister, while considered a crime in the barbaric and fantastical world of *A Song of Ice and Fire*, is not a moral one.
House Targaryen has always upheld the ancient tradition of sibling marriage.
For example, Aegon the Conqueror, who founded the Targaryen dynasty, married two of his sisters: his elder sister Visenya and his younger sister Rhaenys.
Uh, yes, two: his elder sister Visenya and his younger sister Rhaenys.
King's Landing is built upon three hills—Aegon's High Hill, Rhaenys' Hill, and Visenya's Hill—each named in honor of the dynasty's three founders.
In fact, Daenerys's parents, the Mad King Aerys and Queen Rhaella, were also siblings. Even her grandparents were siblings.
If Daenerys had been born ten years earlier—no, perhaps five would have been enough—she would very likely have married her elder brother, Rhaegar.
"And then?" Daenerys said calmly to Lilith. "Viserys is a bastard. I've known that for a long time."
Lilith shot her an odd look, puzzled by her composed demeanor.
Unable to wound Daenerys with words, her anger surged. She whirled around and pointed at Ser Jorah, who was watching her warily. "He slept with me too. He didn't call your name, but the way he looked at me... it was as if he was trying to fuck your soul through my skin."
"No," the knight protested, his face flushing crimson. He had been guarding against Lilith's sudden attacks on the 'pitiful and frail' Daenerys, but hadn't expected to be dragged into this. The hand in his iron gauntlet waved frantically. "You're slandering me. I didn't think that."
"I've seen countless men. You can't hide anything from me," Lilith sneered.
"Ahem, you are the Khaleesi now, not some top courtesan from the Lys brothel," Daenerys interjected awkwardly, immediately warning her sternly. "I doubt Jhogo would want to hear you say that."
Daenerys had long known that Jorah Mormont harbored carnal desire for her.
After all, before transmigrating, she had learned from *Game of Thrones* that when The Great Bear and Tyrion met in a brothel, he was embracing a silver-haired, purple-eyed Volantene prostitute who was cosplaying as the legendary Queen of Meereen—Daenerys two or three years in the future.
(Author's Note: This book is primarily based on *A Song of Ice and Fire*, with *Game of Thrones* serving as an important reference. The author, despite being a failure, has watched the TV series multiple times and read the books several times over. However, the protagonist of this book has only watched the popular TV series, so future plot developments may surprise her.
The Great Bear's whoring is more explicit in the TV series. In the books, this scene is merely implied—in fact, many plots in the books are implied, and the TV series spells them out clearly. This doesn't mean the plots have changed; consider the implied romance between Renly and the Knight of Flowers.)
"Jhogo?" Daenerys failed to startle her. Lilith's lips twisted further as she leaned close to Daenerys's ear, whispering in a voice only she could hear, "Do you think I followed him willingly?"
Daenerys's heart tightened. Had she become the Helen of *Troy*?
"Does he truly love me? It doesn't seem like it," she murmured, unashamed.
Lilith sneered. "Because like me, he only wants what Kao wants. To him, your horses, Drogo's tent, they mean nothing."
"So you're not even as good as Drogo's tent?" Daenerys pushed her head away and shouted, "Go! I don't want to discuss this nonsense with you anymore."
"Fine, I'll go. Kalasar returns to Vaes Dothrak almost every year. When you join the ranks of the Dosh Khaleen elders, I hope you'll still be as proud as you are now."
Lilith stormed off in a huff.
The next morning, as dawn broke, Jhogo's Kalasar began its slow march northward through the morning mist.
There was no choice but to leave. They had run out of water, horse fodder, and even firewood days ago.
The Red Waste was scorching hot by day and dropped below 10°C at night, typical desert climate.
Stepping out of the dim tent, Daenerys was blinded by the harsh light.
The rising sun, like a furnace dripping molten gold, poured its fiery essence onto the land, scorching the cracked earth into a barren, hollow wasteland.
The small camp wasn't silent. The coughs of an old man drifted from a nearby grass hut, a group of young children ran and played in the open space despite the heat, and farther off, women went about their daily tasks.
Over a hundred horses, their saddles removed, grazed in the surrounding area. They kicked the ground and wandered listlessly, occasionally letting out listless whinnies as if complaining: *Why is this cursed place so barren? Not a blade of grass in sight!*
As soon as Daenerys appeared, maids hurried forward with water, wine, fruit, and roasted meat.
After wiping her face and eating a quick meal, Daenerys had Aggo and the others direct the Khas to move back to the site of their former grass-hut palace. Though that area was also desolate, at least the nearby hills offered some shelter from the sun and sandstorms.
Kozo and Haggo remained in the tent with Drogo, who was now on the verge of death. Daenerys summoned Aggo, Quarro, Jhogo, Kharalo, and Ser Jorah to the shade, where they sat in a circle on the ground.
The first political council was held at the base of a small earth mound.
"The Kalasar is scattered," she told them directly.
Jhogo nodded matter-of-factly. "A Kao who cannot ride has no right to be a Kao."
"The Dothraki follow only the strong," Ser Jorah said. "Your Highness, I regret to say we cannot hold them. Since Bonokho, Drogo's warriors have been leaving in groups, day by day."
"How many people and supplies do we have left?" Daenerys asked.
"Khaleesi, not a single member of your Khas has left," Aggo replied solemnly. "We are your personal guards, sworn to you, not the Kao. That is why we all remain."
Daenerys's spirits lifted. Though the Dothraki were wild, their integrity far surpassed that of supposedly "civilized" nations—like the Westerosi, who treated sacred oaths like dog shit.
"And who else?" she asked cheerfully. "Our Khas is less than a hundred strong, but I saw at least two hundred tribesmen when we were moving the tents."
For any Daenerys, the Dothraki were her foundation. The horse-riders were loyal, brave, and straightforward—more real and trustworthy than the people of her "homeland" thousands of leagues away.
By status, Daenerys was the Kao's wife, already registered as a horse-rider of the Great Grass Sea. That's why she referred to the Dothraki as "tribesmen."
The others hadn't noticed this subtle shift in her mindset, or perhaps the horse-riders had always considered her one of their own.
Jhogo answered her, "The elderly, the infirm, the cowardly, and the weak were left behind. The new Kalasar who departed refused to take them in."