Game of Thrones begins....

[Martinus]

You can find a (recent) family tree of Starks here. It seems there have been a lot of only sons or no-issue deaths.

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Stark

[Martinus]

Also, apparently, Ned's mother was also a cousin Stark (so he is inbred ).

[Siege]

Well, sending off surplus sons to the Wall doesn't help in that regard.

Good point.
Still, even sending one son per generation, there should be a bunch of cousins walking around.

[The Larch]

I just file that one in the "stuff that don't make sense in GoT", like dinasties that rule unchanged for thousands of years, how a world with seasons that last several years works or Martin's total lack of sense of proportion.

[grumbler]

It makes perfect sense that Martin would want to keep the lines of inheritance simple in a story where inheritance plays such a key role.  The British House of Stuart had lots and lots of children dying in infancy, and Charles II, Mary II/William III, and Anne all died without adult issue.  Rather than having lots of kids who have to be kept track of and killed off before their majorities, Martin just doesn't have the major families generally having lots of kids.  That's perfectly okay with me.

[crazy canuck]

I just file that one in the "stuff that don't make sense in GoT", like dinasties that rule unchanged for thousands of years, how a world with seasons that last several years works or Martin's total lack of sense of proportion.

Meh, there are lots of cases of Great Houses coming to an end because of a generation that was not as productive as others.  How many brothers did King Henry VIII have?  One older brother and he died.  Ned has two brothers, the older one died and Ned married the women his older brother was to wed.  The other one takes the Black.

How many uncles did Henry the VIII have?  How many sons did Henry VIII have and how long did he live?  You see the point.

[The Larch]

Thing is, it's not just the Starks that have a pretty thin bench. Several other houses are a couple of unfortunate deaths away from dissappearing completely. The Arryns and the Tullys are in a similar situation, for instance, and these are supposed to be noble houses that have ruled unopposedly for hundreds of years.

[grumbler]

Thing is, it's not just the Starks that have a pretty thin bench. Several other houses are a couple of unfortunate deaths away from dissappearing completely. The Arryns and the Tullys are in a similar situation, for instance, and these are supposed to be noble houses that have ruled unopposedly for hundreds of years.

But, again, this is to serve plot points.  You can't blame martin for serving the plot, even if you could objectively argue that it sounds like too many coincidences.  This is fiction; realism has been subordinated to plot in so many ways that this gripe seems like griping for the sake of griping.

If these issues didn't serve the plot, you'd have a stronger case.

[The Larch]

Thing is, it's not just the Starks that have a pretty thin bench. Several other houses are a couple of unfortunate deaths away from dissappearing completely. The Arryns and the Tullys are in a similar situation, for instance, and these are supposed to be noble houses that have ruled unopposedly for hundreds of years.

But, again, this is to serve plot points.  You can't blame martin for serving the plot, even if you could objectively argue that it sounds like too many coincidences.  This is fiction; realism has been subordinated to plot in so many ways that this gripe seems like griping for the sake of griping.

If these issues didn't serve the plot, you'd have a stronger case.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really care about much of this stuff, I just say that there's lots of flimsy stuff in the background. Lots of things in the setup of the universe where the story is set don't make much sense, or seem workable at all or are plain strange or whatever, but it doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment of the story. I mean, when they say that the Starks have ruled the North basically unopposed for thousands of years I'm not going to nitpick it, I'll just think to myself that it sounds really weird and is quite unrealistic, shrug and go on, as it doesn't really affect the current action.

There's a funny trivia piece about this kind of stuff from when they started shooting the tv show. In order to recreate the Wall they used an abandoned quarry in Northern Ireland and rigged it to make it look like the Wall. One day while they were shooting Martin visited the set, and congratulated the producers on how faithfully they had recreated it for the shoot. They answered that they would still need to add lots of FX and CGI afterwards to make it look even taller, and Martin asked why because to him it already looked tall enough, and the producers said that in the books it is stated that it's supposed to be 700 feet tall or something (roughly the height of a small skyscraper), and that the quarry was only a small fraction of it, to which Martin basically answered "oh". I don't know if this is real, hearsay or fabricated, but it kinda supports the fact that Martin basically threw numbers around when building his world without really caring about what they meant, so there's no point in nitpicking them, just change the words in your mind when they say something to "really fucking fall" or "really fucking old", and it serves the same purpose for the story.

[crazy canuck]

Thing is, it's not just the Starks that have a pretty thin bench. Several other houses are a couple of unfortunate deaths away from dissappearing completely. The Arryns and the Tullys are in a similar situation, for instance, and these are supposed to be noble houses that have ruled unopposedly for hundreds of years.

Sure but the lack of heirs in those families is what drives the story.  There are other families that are not so denuded.  Think of the Freys  .  Others had larger families but have been largely killed off.  The TV show played down a lot of the carnage that happened in the books.

[grumbler]

Don't get me wrong, I don't really care about much of this stuff, I just say that there's lots of flimsy stuff in the background. Lots of things in the setup of the universe where the story is set don't make much sense, or seem workable at all or are plain strange or whatever, but it doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment of the story. I mean, when they say that the Starks have ruled the North basically unopposed for thousands of years I'm not going to nitpick it, I'll just think to myself that it sounds really weird and is quite unrealistic, shrug and go on, as it doesn't really affect the current action.

There's a funny trivia piece about this kind of stuff from when they started shooting the tv show. In order to recreate the Wall they used an abandoned quarry in Northern Ireland and rigged it to make it look like the Wall. One day while they were shooting Martin visited the set, and congratulated the producers on how faithfully they had recreated it for the shoot. They answered that they would still need to add lots of FX and CGI afterwards to make it look even taller, and Martin asked why because to him it already looked tall enough, and the producers said that in the books it is stated that it's supposed to be 700 feet tall or something (roughly the height of a small skyscraper), and that the quarry was only a small fraction of it, to which Martin basically answered "oh". I don't know if this is real, hearsay or fabricated, but it kinda supports the fact that Martin basically threw numbers around when building his world without really caring about what they meant, so there's no point in nitpicking them, just change the words in your mind when they say something to "really fucking fall" or "really fucking old", and it serves the same purpose for the story.

I agree that martin was just telling a story without worrying about how such things would work in the real world.  It is fun to question things within the make-believe world he sets up (and within many others - see how much ink has been spilled over Lord of the Rings, and I have spilled a lot myself over Babylon 5), but there are certain rules to the speculation game, #1 of which is you can't challenge the basic assertions of the world being speculated about.  An author of fiction who allows himself to be limited by reality is a different beast than one writing fantasy or SF, by definition.

One of the things I like about the GoT TV series' writers is that they recognize that they need to show, not tell, and that they are committed to doing nothing that spoils that dictum.  They don't dwell, as Martin can in the books, on secondary characters or genealogy.

[Razgovory]

Grumbler makes a salient point.

[Grinning_Colossus]

Nobody claimed that Robert was the "rightful" heir to the throne of the Targearyns. He had no "claim" by birthright, he conquered them. That established a new dynasty.

Just to nitpick a little, this isn't entirely accurate.  Robert has a sort of claim through his grandmother.  He is 1/4th Targaryen, as are his brothers.  The claim isn't exactly strong, and he still acquired his throne by conquest, but it's more like a cadet branch taking over (see: Bourbons/Valois).

Impossible to quibble with the rest, unless you're Martinus.

After the death of Viserys, Robert actually became the legitimate heir by inheritance as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_House_Targaryen 

[Martinus]

I think the point about "not enough cousins" fails to acknowledge that in many cases we are probably not being told about cousins because it serves no purpose for the plot.

I mean, which other family, in your view is showing a distinct lack of cousins? Noone else is facing the type of extinction Starks are. Arryns have a heir - and in the books there is a distant cousin heir who would inherit if Robin croaked. For Tullys, again, we have a heir, and if he dies without issue, there is another heir, the Blackfish - only if these two die, there is a problem of finding another heir.

Why would, then, the family situation of Arryns and Tullys be relevant enough to the plot to introduce cousin characters?

[Admiral Yi]

Grumbler makes a salient point.

Rockin' vocab bro.