"'A Song of Ice and Fire' and the British Isles,” from Dory to Lilly

So, as you may know, I’m taking a Shakespeare class this semester. The first play we read for it was Richard III, one of Shakespeare’s histories.  Well, it’s a history that Shakespeare took significant liberties with, including resurrecting a couple people that were actually dead at the time he’s talking about, speeding up events quite a bit, getting rid of the boring parts, making everyone talk in iambic pentameter all the time, etc.  This particular play is the last of his series about the Wars of the Roses, a civil war that eventually ended with the Tudors getting control of the British throne (think Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, all those folk.)

Ok, let’s switch gears for a second.  We are agreed that the culture of Westeros in George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series has some pretty stark (pun intended) correlations to that of Great Britain, yes?  I’m thinking the rough shape of the country, the wall dividing the country proper from the savages in the extreme north, the knights, the sigils, the feudalism, the fact that the country is made up of several united kingdoms, etc etc. 

Well, as I was reading Richard III, I started to notice some things that were similar to events in “A Song of Ice and Fire.”  Attend:

Richard III is about the eponymous Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and how he eventually (temporarily) comes out on top in the Wars of the Roses and is king of England for a few years, before dying in battle against the guy who will become the first Tudor king,  Henry VII.  He plots skillfully, uses people and then betrays them, and has them assassinated or executed.  The plot of the play isn’t terribly similar to that of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” but the details—some events, some names, some sigils—are.  Here are some:

--The reason this civil war is called the Wars of the Roses is because the two main families battling for control of the throne, the Lancasters and the Yorks, both had roses as their sigils.  The Lancasters were red roses, the Yorks white.  (Reminds me of the Tyrells)

--At the beginning of the play, the king, Edward, dies.  There are two very young princes who are potential heirs, and Richard is appointed Lord Protector and has them sequestered in royal apartments in the Tower of London “to keep them safe.”  Instead, to remove them as an obstacle between him and the throne, he has them killed (brutally) by a dude named Sir James Tyrrell.

--A guy gets drowned in a barrel of wine. (remind you of Ser Dontos?)

--The Earl of Richmond, Henry, eventually becomes king. He’s the wholesome, noble guy who has been off in exile and has returned to claim the throne as the preferable alternative to Richard III.

So, yeah.  I may be stretching, but some of these are kind of uncanny.  I don’t think I’m suggesting that Martin is drawing from this play in particular, but I definitely think he’s drawing from British history.  The War of Five Kings and the Wars of the Roses are rather similar.

What do you think?  All of that was terribly confusing for me to try to summarize, (civil wars are complicated, and EVERYONE in the British nobility is named Henry or Edward), so were things sufficiently explained for you?

Love, Dory

"Magical Bloodlines" from Lilly to Dory

Hello, sister!

Firstly, I must apologize to you (and our readers) for the fact that it has been FOREVER since I last posted here.  A reasonable explanation may be that my hypothesizing *mojo*, if you will, is all being taken up by the massive quantities of writing my classes have demanded of me lately in the form of essays, article reviews, précis, research proposals, book reports, and what else have you.  Really, though, that's not an excuse, and I hereby pledge that I will do more fun hypothesizing here, because, well, it's fun!  So anyway, I just finished a five-page essay midterm in less than five hours (that's a record) and it was on the processes of genetic variation and speciation events, and naturally my mind began to do what it does best which is apply these concepts to various other nerdy things that reside in my brain.  Also, I've been kind of amazed by genetics and meiotic cell division and stuff lately, because for some reason it's hitting me now like it never did back in middle school or wherever it was I first learned about this stuff.

So yeah!  Nerdy stuff!

Basically, what got me thinking is this: when we look at human alleles (the things that carry the traits in each of our DNA, different combinations of which produce our individual gene sequences), we find that what we think of as dominant alleles, like those for curly hair, dark eyes, round blood cells, etc, are actually our oldest alleles.  Dominance, by the way, in relation to genetic traits, doesn't mean "stronger" or "better;" it simply means it masks the expression of other traits, those that we call recessive.  So anyway, our dominant alleles are our oldest ones.  Think about that.  That means all of our recessive traits (those that we inherit but whose expressions are usually masked unless we inherit them from both parents in which case we have a one-in-four chance of expressing) are the results of random mutations within the gametes (sex cells) of generations and generations and generations of ancestors.  These mutations occured one allele at a time, and were shuffled around through the recombination stage of meiotic cell division until one ended up in a fertilized embryo, and when that person was born the outside environment decided that trait (red hair, let's say) was pretty okay and allowed that individual to survive to reproductive age and pass on the mutation.  Basic stuff, I know, but pretty awesome to think about.  As my professor says, "it's all sparkly in my mind."

So anyway, back to the main idea: our dominant alleles are our oldest alleles.  K, now flip a switch in your brain and start thinking about fantasy literature.  In a lot of stories there's this concept of magical bloodlines. These bloodlines are often implied to be ancient, and to carry a sort of primordial, world-building power.  In the "Abhorsen" series, there are three; the Abhorsen, the Clayr, and the Royal Family.  All three must exist and have an heir for the world to function correctly, and the magic associated with them acts as a genetic trait.  There is often another dynamic to this idea; when two (or more) of these bloodlines are combined in one individual, it often produces interesting results.  This is a tool that the authors use in almost every story that I can think of that has these ideas of genetically acquired magic and primeval bloodlines.  For example, in "Sword of Truth" Richard is the offspring of two independently magical bloodlines, affording a unique aspect to his magic. 

Fans of "A Song of Ice and Fire" refer to a similar concept to support a popular hypothesis regarding the parentage of Jon Snow.  His character is assumed to be the offspring of two such "primordial" bloodlines, each associated with a specific type of magic that is implied to be genetic.  At least one of these bloodlines (scientifically speaking) seems to be linked with phenotypical (appearance) traits that are apparently dominant in nearly every example.  In this an other stories, an individual who inherits these magical alleles seems to always express the phenotypical traits associated with it, but an individual who inherits alleles from two of these bloodlines will usually exhibit the phenotypical traits of either one or the other, suggesting that the traits are co-dominant. 

If we apply the rules of real-world genetics, a person who inherits co-dominate genes only has a one-in-four chance of exhibiting only one of them, while their chance of exhibiting both simultaneously (appearing as a blend of both) is 50%.  A real life example of this would be blood types A and B.  A child can inherit the allele for type A from one parent and type B from the other and have a one in two chance of exhibiting type AB, because the alleles are co-dominant. That couple's children have a 1:4 chance, however, of exhibiting only type A, and the same chance for only type B. 

Going back to "Abhorsen," Lirael is another good example of this.  She does not exhibit the phenotypical traits normally associated with the Clayr (to her character's deep dismay), even though she has just as much Clayr in her as all the rest.  Since we knew from the start that Lirael had inherited at least one the world's three primordial bloodlines, and that this bloodline generally causes all of its members to express very specific phenotypical traits, the fact that she doesn't suggests that her other parent was a member of one of the other primordial bloodlines.  Just as in Richard's case, when we learned Lirael's true parentage that information served to justify her unique type of magic.  Jon Snow's case is (allegedly) similar, in that the one known primordial bloodline also carries very specific phenotypical traits.  Since he doesn't exhibit these, this (along with the series title) suggests that the other half of his alleles are co-dominantly linked to physical appearance.  Point being, in almost every example the authors seemed to decide which side of the phenotypical dice these characters would land on based on information that is not immediately available, and to suggest a Mystery™.

I find it mega interesting that these fictional worlds seem to be paralleling this concept of old alleles being dominant alleles.  Their examples are simple and somewhat skewed versions of how it works in real life (and when thought about in this context may raise a few eyebrows concerning possible eugenics implications), but make me wonder what about this idea is intriguing to us as readers.  Is it just part of human nature to equate ancientness with power?  What are your thoughts, and do you know of any other examples of this concept in literature?

Love,

Lilly


PS: I tried to make the science easy to understand while simultaneously avoiding major book spoilers.  How'd I do?

"Wordle!" from Dory to Lilly

I have concluded several things, and also made something cool.

First, I made this!

It is a Wordle, and it shows all of our most commonly used words on the bloggy.  Except I had to tell it to exclude "like," because it was the biggest word on here. So,

Conclusion 1: We need to stop saying "like" so much.

Conclusion 2: This makes us look so awesome.

Conclusion 3: It has been 3 months since our last post, which is sad. The problem here is that we see each other too often and we have taken to hypothesizing in person instead of on the internet.  I suppose that's a good thing.

That is all.

Love, Dory

"Would" from Dory to Lilly

Hello sister!

The other day, I was sitting in Linguistics learning about Early Modern English. You and I have talked about how the random fun facts thrown out by our professors are often the best things about our classes, and I got one the other day that was especially interesting.

So, nowadays, we mostly only use the word "would" to put a verb into conditional tense.  As in, "If I won the lottery, I would pay off my college tuition."  We can also denote conditional with "could" or "should."  Now, it's kind of strange of English to form conditional tense like this--I believe most languages do so with a verb ending instead.  (This makes forming and understanding conditional in French right confusing--there's no way to make the distinction in meaning between "would," "could," and "should" except by context.)  I've been wondering idly about why English forms conditional like this, and I believe I may have a clue to the answer.

In Old English (and even up to Early Modern), the word "would" was a verb: a form of the verb "to will," vaguely synonymous with "to wish."  This usage still survives in one phrase that I can think of in Modern English: "I would rather." What's interesting about this, though, is that in modern usage we don't think of the "would" of this phrase as the verb.  We put the emphasis on "rather," thus in effect creating the word "to rather," which pretty much means the same thing as "to prefer."  Originally, the "rather" in this phrase was....an adverb? We even turn this phrase into a contraction: "I'd rather," attaching even less importance to what was originally the verb and making this a conditional phrase when it really has no business being one.  When this common phrase was formed, I'm guessing the stress would fall differently; something like "I would, rather, that my tea had more sugar in it."

So, what happened to "would" between Old and Modern English? Well, somehow we started using it to show the a verb was conditional.  Originally, a phrase like "I would do my laundry" actually meant I wish to do my laundry.  Since then, it's gone through a change in meaning so that it now means that if circumstances were different, I would be doing my laundry, but alas, something has come up and I simply can't.  It has no meaning that I actually want to do my laundry in the modern usage.

So, as "would" became a conditional marker and its meaning changed, while simultaneously the conjugated form of pretty much every verb was changing drastically, the original meaning of "would" got left behind, surviving only in the one phrase "I would rather."  Well, it also shows up in Modern English with its original usage when someone is trying to make their language sound archaic.  For example, Lord of the Rings.  Also, the book I'm reading right now, which uses it profusely:

He closed his eyes. "Adjunct, I would be there when the time came."
She was silent and he knew without opening his eyes that she was studying him, gauging his worth.  He was beyond unease and beyond caring. He'd stated his desire; the decision was hers.

....Did all of that make sense?  I would know your opinion. :D

"The First Indo-Europeans" from Lilly to Dory

Hello, sister mine!

We've had a few conversations lately concerning the Indo-Europeans, so I'd like to share some of the things we've been discussing in class about them that you might find interesting.

But first, some overview for our readers who may not be familiar with the subject matter:

Almost all the modern European languages can be linked together linguistically, first into categorical branches, and then to a single historical common language, known as Proto-Indo-European.  Here's a diagram posted by Dory in one of our earlier posts (click for the post and a more in-depth description) that shows these connections:

It's called "Proto-Indo-European" because it's been reconstructed, based on ways of tracing the history of words (known as etymology) to find words in other languages which share a common historical root.  Because of this type of analysis, we know it has to have existed, but until recently relatively little was known about the people who actually spoke it.  However, you can tell quite a bit about a culture from its language!

First, we know through the archaeological record that the Indo-European culture originated in what is now Ukraine.  This is supported linguistically, as the modern Ukrainian language is the most similar to the reconstructed Indo-European language as compared to the other branches.

Here is where it starts getting cool, and why I love Anthro-linguistics...

We know the Indo-Euros were a pastoralist society, meaning their sustenance was based around herding some kind of animal (like sheep, cattle, goats, etc).  Typically, this "type," if you will, of culture will fall into certain patterns as far as its societal organization and spiritual beliefs.  In this case, the hierarchy follows thus: the shepherd watches over the flock as the father watches over his family (they tend to be male-dominated) as the leader watches over his tribe as a father-like deity watches over his people.  This is seen in many modern-day societies, and indeed can be spotted in the organization of Western culture and the terminology of modern Christianity (which stems from Judaism, which originated within a pastoralist group); "the good shepherd;" "sacrificial lamb;" "guide your flock;" etc.  The Indo-Euros are thought to have worshiped a god called "Sky Father," or "Diaus Pater" in it's reconstructed form, which is the root of words like "Dios" (Spanish), "Zues" (Greek), "Deu" (French), and "Dyw" (Cornish).

Now, the Indo-Euros weren't just ANY pastoralists.....

They were horse lords.

And, they had iron weapons before anyone else, making it easy for them to go around conquering all of their agrarian neighbors which is how their culture, language, and belief system spread across Europe so fast.  The blending of Indo-European and the languages of the groups they conquered is probably what kicked off the separate dialects that later evolved into the different language branches.

So, there is a certain mysterious culture that has been in Europe as long as anybody and whose language is very mysteriously indeed NOT a descendant of Proto-Indo-Euro.  They are the Basque.

My thoughts concerning this are largely centered on the idea that perhaps the ancient Basque were isolated enough to escape the notice of the conquering Indo-Euros, and so were able to keep their language where others were not.  What I'm wondering is, how did the ancient Basque live?  Were they agrarian, or were they perhaps nomadic?  This would link them to another European group who also speaks an independent language and managed to escape Indo-Euro influence: the Gypsies.

So, what are your thoughts?  Do you know something about the Basque or Gypsy cultures that would support this hypothesis, or am I completely off?

Love, Lilly