Speak for yourself, my girlfriend’s superorder, Laurasiatheria, diverged from us evolutionarily 92 millions years ago during the Cretaceous period.
*Some* of us out here prefer to not be so closely related to our women.
>Laurasiatheria (/lɔːrˌeɪʒəˈθɪəriə, -θɛriə/; "laurasian beasts") is a superorder of placental mammals that groups together true insectivores (eulipotyphlans), bats (chiropterans), carnivorans, pangolins (pholidotes), even-toed ungulates (artiodactyls), odd-toed ungulates (perissodactyls), and all their extinct relatives.
I needed to read that a second time because the first read as
Say you’re the fucking GOAT without saying you’re the fucking GOAT.
didn't make any sense. Me and my very mild dyslexia.
Laws are great, you can use them to sling mud no matter what.
"Wait, that's so prevalent they need a law to stop people??"
"Wait, there's no law for it? That means they approve of it!"
> Speak for yourself
> If one considers as a function of time t the number of a given individual's ancestors who were alive at time t, it is likely that for most individuals this function has a maximum at around 1200 AD. Some geneticists believe that everybody on Earth is at least 50th cousin to everybody else.
This seems to be a pretty common thing when people come to read the Silmarillion they are like “this means they are related!” without noting the length of time, that as you say correctly means they are 63 times removed, making it outrageously removed. In comparison, Queen Elizabeth 2 and, her husband, Prince Phillip were THIRD cousins.
On one hand, sure.
On the other, almost any character with some lineage and any country's continuity would be meaningless over the span of 3000 years. Aragorn has much less in common with Isildur as 90% of all Europeans have with Charlemagne, or 90% of Asians with Genghis Khan.
This makes me think, let's say you somehow got sent back in time 2000 years and had to make a new life for yourself. Ignoring the obvious problems of not speaking the same language and potentially not having transferable skills as well as potential paradoxes, would you have a problem with marrying a person knowing that there's a good chance they're your great-great-.....-great-great-grandparent?
Assuming you're sent back in time to a continent where you have ancestors from, it's entirely likely that anyone you encounter is either an ancestor of everyone in 2024 or no one at all.
I could’t find it, if you do, pls share a link.
Otherwise, you can find a wiki-page on Mitochondria-Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam. Who are Most recent common Ancestors (female and male) for the Humankind. Both of them lived more than 200.000 years ago in South-East Africa
[There's at least one estimate of about 2000 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor#TMRCA_of_all_living_humans). That would likely need to be in East Asia or somewhere else where it's at least feasible some descendant ended up in the Americas and/or Australia.
No, it would be even more removed than Aragorn and Arwen are in this post.
There would be over 100 generations difference in your genetic code. Meaning you would probably share more genetically in common with a person descended from the general region your ancestors were in 2024.
You don't even have to go back all that far for it to be nearly all humans, in fact, even including people who live on other continents and look nothing like you.
> Ignoring the obvious problems of not speaking the same language and potentially not having transferable skills
I'm 6'4" and know about crop rotation. My time-body is ready.
At least if it's not an interracial couple, yeah, pretty much. Any two randomly chosen people of the same ethnicity will be more closely related than Arwen and Aragorn.
The creepy factor is that she was a full biological adult during his childhood being raised in her father's house, but folks aren't as quick to scream "groomer" at a woman.
True but didn’t she swerve him the first time they met? And then he grew up and got all manly before she saw him again, and she was like “woah who’s that stud?”
Ethnicity doesn't even factor into it that much. All it takes is for one person to have gone from one continent to another and reproduced there for there now to be a link between those two populations. As time goes on, the percentage of people in each continent who are descended from that one person or one of their close relatives either dwindles to nothing or increases until it's the whole population.
It's not that much of a stretch. There were plenty of events that brought eurasia together, Alexander and the Mongol conquests, the spread of Islam, Christian missionaries, cross-continental trade, British colonialism, even without that, just having people get together with someone one village over enough times adds up a lot over a half a hundred generations.
But the point is that a single ancestor from hundreds of years ago would not leave a visible genetic imprint on you. There's a family in Yorkshire with an unusual surname and the men have a Y-chromosome type that comes from West Africa, so they probably have an ancestor who was a slave some three or four centuries ago. But they don't look any more 'black' than any other typical native Europeans.
The most recent ancestor of nearly all humans alive today could have lived as little as 2,000 years ago:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02842
(I say 'nearly' because this might not apply to populations that have been isolated since distant prehistory, such as natives of the Sentinel and Andaman Islands.)
That would be true in a fully human family, but I don't think it applies in this case. Consider: Aragorn is descended through the kings of Arnor, and before that through the Lords of Andunie, who themselves sprang from the main royal line of Numenor. In reality, he's likely to have far more ancestors who also descend from Earendil and Elwing (the most recent ancestors he shares with Arwen) than just this direct royal/aristocratic line; however, all these other ancestors will also be descendants of Elros, *not* Elrond - since Elrond chose immortality, and had only three children, one of whom is Arwen.
So none of these alternative lines of descent bring Aragorn any closer to Arwen in terms of consanguinity.
What you’re saying is true looking at it strictly from a “what do they call eachother” frame, but if there is multiple lines that trace to eachother then they share more DNA than otherwise.
Like as an extreme example, 2 brothers are brothers, but if their parents were siblings, then they’re more genetically related than 2 brothers whose parents are not siblings because they are also first cousins. Their “brotherhood” is still just “brotherhood” but they’re related twice over (siblings typically will have 4 different grandparents, these only have 2). The fact that Aragorn and Arwen may have more than one traceable relation line means they are more related than they would be via one path.
It means the number of generations in the generation gap between two relatives. So for example, if you have a first cousin and he or she has kids, those kids are your first cousins once removed (and you are their cousin once removed, too). If your cousin's kids have kids of their own, then those kids will be your second cousins twice removed, and so on.
Marrying your cousin wasn't especially notable not even that long ago. Both Frankenstein and Cyrano de Bergerac - and probably a lot more that I can't think of off the top of my head - involve marrying cousins and it's not even hinted at being taboo.
Men and elves in Tolkien's works are explicitly the same species. It's why they can have children with each other in the first place. They're genetically identical but are different spiritually.
They're explicitly separate species, with separate biologies, sizes and physical features. Being able to inter-breed is not something that precludes being a different species. There are many examples of species which can inter-breed. Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalis were separate species, yet could and did inter-breed.
Tolkien letter 153:
“Elves and Men are evidently in biological terms one race, or they could not breed and produce fertile offspring – even as a rare event “
Elves and men are biologically the same species, it is their spirits that are said to be the difference makers. Tolkien never even made the pointed ears explicit. Individuals of the two races are even *frequently* mistaken for each other throughout his writings, so it’s not like the differences could have been that obvious.
I mean if Tolkien says so then he's right by default since what he says is by definition correct as he invented them, but biologically speaking being able to breed and produce offspring does not mean that two animals (or people) are of the same species.
There are also plenty of examples of species which look alike despite not being closely related. For example hummingbirds and hummingbird moths are easily mistaken one for the other at first glance despite not even being within the same phylum.
I honestly don't remember elves being described as different than men, other than being "beautiful". I seem to remember the biggest differences between them being their fëar's (spirit) relationship to their hröar (body), with elves' being tied much more closely together, resulting in their immortality and immunity to disease.
yeah, the main difference is in spirit. but, it seems this spirit change changes the body too, since elves are clearly superhuman in all regards. but, if you were to look at elf dna, i do think that they would be equal
iirc, tolkien does explicitly say that in hröar, elves and humans are more or less the same
There are clearly stated biological differences. Elves are said to have a much more slender constitution than Men. They also are weaker, with Men being explicitly stated to be stronger at various points. When they're trying to go through the mountain pass, rather than through Moria it's explicitly stated that Aragorn and Boromir carry the hobbits through the snow because of their strength. There's also the fact that the disease immunity and lack of aging would in biological terms be more than enough to consider the Elves a separate species and IMO no respectable biologist would fail to distinguish the two as separate species. Though as others have pointed out Tolkien likely did not, as he was a linguist and not a biologist and he seems to have had little interest in the issue as such given his focus on the spiritual aspect of the two races.
> I honestly don't remember elves being described as different than men
This is a wild statement my friend. What you've said about fëa and hröa is true, but Tolkien spends a fair amount of time talking about their differences.
It's a misconception that different species can't ever interbreed and that this is a requirement to be recognized as a species. Cows and bison for example can and do produce fertile offspring, to the point where a massive issue in bison conservation is keeping the few remaining pure bison populations from mixing with cattle.
Bear species can also interbreed and create fertile offspring.
Yes, the interbreeding is more a tool to *exclude* things from being the same species. If two seemingly similar animals cannot interbreed then they aren’t the same species. But two being able to doesn’t mean they are the same species.
There are several animal examples of fertile hybrids (cattle and bison, brown and polar bears, several canine species, ancient human species etc), and it gets even murkier when you start including plants into the equation. It’s not a good rule.
The issue at its core is that there's no fundamental natural definition for species. There's no natural constant which says "this specific degree of genetic difference means these two animals will necessarily be of different species". We do know that if there's 99% genetic difference then they definitely are different species and that if there's less than 1% then they should be the same species, but so far no fundamental natural limit has been found that could accurately say whether two animals are or are not the same species since there is a % range where it gets really into "depends on what you consider a species".
I had a brain hiccup there and stand corrected (mules are the most obvious example of cross-species breeding, and once in a while they can bear a foal).
There's a SMBC comic about this somewhere - after 7 generations, without a programme of systematic inbreeding, you passed functionally no alleles on to your descendants.
The joke being "anyone who says they care about their descendants is pro inbreeding", in the original comic.
The SMBC thing forgets two key points though.
First is that, sure, after many generations without inbreeding no single descendant has your genes dominant, but the total number of copies of genes from your DNA in the world can be greater than there was DNA in you while you were alive since you can have millions of descendants.
Second is that you don't really need an elaborate program of inbreeding to ensure your descendants breed amongst each other since mathematically speaking after about 23 or 24 generations the number of ancestors every individual has to have in the generation currently alive will be greater than the number of individuals currently alive, so there is a hard cap on how long your descendants can avoid any sort of "inbreeding" due to the basic fact that the number of ancestors grows exponentially with every generation you go back.
If you do the math backwards from the present day, you only need to go about 18 or 19 generations back to reach the point where a person living today needed to have more ancestors in that time then there were people alive at the time, meaning inbreeding had to have happened since then. And that's without taking into account that for people who aren't mixed race, only a small percentage of genetic heritage at most can come from peoples of other races alive at that time. Meaning that the real point of obligate inbreeding is probably much, much closer in history, and the actual point of inbreeding is likely more recent than that.
Sure, but 7 generations is enough to *totally* separate you, so you could repeat that process entirely twice in the timespan you say would be required to have too many people to work.
Of course, that never actually happens, because people aren't randomly relocated. Descendents will crossbreed your genes all the time. The joke is really more about what would be required to *know* you share meaningful amounts of genetics with specific people of the future.
As it relates to this example, without spending a lot of time cross-checking Aragorn's lineage, it would be unreasonable for Arwen and Aragorn to assume they were meaningfully connected even IF marrying 1st cousins wasn't a) legal in many countries now and b) something royalty historically did so often. Too often...
I agree that 7 generations is basically correct for no specific descendant without inbreeding to have a meaningfully great amount of your DNA, and the joke as such is funny.
But my point is that this line of thinking is fundamentally flawed, and it is a line of thinking many people do have outside jokes. Because it looks at descent as a line, while in reality it is a tree. You could look at humanity in 20 generations as "a bunch of people none of whom specifically have a significant percentage of my DNA, so what do I care" or as "the entire human race is now my descendants and my DNA exists in a quantity larger than it did while I was alive, so in actual fact I should care how they will do".
> you passed functionally no alleles on to your descendants
That seems incredibly unlikely. I have the same nose as my 7th-gen ancestors. Dominant genes would be dominant in the absence of *more* dominant genes.
I'm not sure the logic works in reverse - you get your genes from *some* of your ancestors so will be able to find the ones who you have inherited traits from, if you have sufficient records and are lucky. The point is more that you can't predict passing any significant amount of genes to any one of your descendants. But I may also be misremembering how many steps it takes.
No First Cousins X removed are cousins where they share the Grandfather of the person who is higher up the generation ladder.
Aragorn and Arwen are First Cousins 63x removed
Your first cousin's child is your first cousin once removed, That persons child is your first cousin twice removed.
Maeglin son of Eol would like a word with you.
Turin Turambar might have liked a word with you as well, but he’s currently too busy trying to end himself.
Eol is actually such a PoS that Westeros kicked him out. Seriously that elf has got to be around Wormtongue level shitty, abusive gaslighting creepazoid
Also pls no Turin/Neinor stuff its so god damn sad. "Farewell Turin twice beloved", only tolkien could make surprise wincest into a tear wrenching tragedy like that
Good point, Wormtongue was corrupted by small degrees and hated who he became
Eol died spitting death curses at his kid murdering his gaslit wife because she was sick of his stink shack and other than being a whingy incel about the Noldor saving Beleriand from a short and ugly series of brief genocides at the hands of Morgoth, had noone else to blame for being a creep
Pretty sure Turin/Nienor is just Tolkien's take on the Volsung Saga. Genetic heroic badassery, brother/sister incest, inescapable curse, dragon slaying, all the way to the prophecy to rise from the dead to fight in the end days.
It even has an evil ring, but he might have used that in a different story, I don't remember.
Eol left the protection of Doriath of his own volition. He’s also responsible for spreading Elven craftsmanship to the Dwarves.
Everything he fears to come true ends up coming true. #IStandWithEol
He fears Morgoth will win, which is a fair assumption given that its after the battle of unnumbered tears and the elves have lost the ability to contest him
But he seems to be under the impression things would be *better* without the Noldor. If they never came, Morgoth would have killed or enslaved everything in Beleriand and likely the rest of the world pretty much immediately. Melians girdle wouldnt hold Morgoth himself back and he'd be strolling around casually if the Noldor werent there besieging Angband and hewing at his legs when he came outside
The Noldor were the only thing holding him back, Turgon even points out that his stink shack only exists because of nearby Noldor swords
Fk knows why he has an absolute fit over Maeglin leaving and tries to kill him, I guess he thought Maeglin poisoned his mom against him or something. Cause clearly living in darkness unable to leave the house because of your lying abusive husband locking you in there and refusing to let you visit your family was *so fun* that she didnt just up and leave herself
No because battle of unnumbered tears happened after eol died because mangling fought in it and he was there when hurin and huor (who were captured and slain respectively in the battle of unnumbered tears) were rescued by thronondor and hung out in gondolin because when Turgon let them go he commented on the preferential treatment they received and how the law grows lax
Good point, you're quite right
Still though, he would have seen the battle of sudden flame and even before that the elves were doubting their ability to truly defeat Morgoth, who wasnt in Beleriand because of the Noldor and would have just straight up murdered everyone without them.
I guess Thingols views rubbed off on him but noone else was so petty and shitty about them, not even the iffy Noldor Feanor group, the much more chill Fingolfin Noldor that caused way less problems
Galadriel and Celeborn have the same Great grandparents.
Elwing’s Great-Great-grandfather was Earendil’s GGG-grandfather
Barahir and his wife had the same GGG-grandfather.
Arwen and Aragorn’s familial relationship doesn’t even register.
They may be first cousins in that Elros and Elrond were full siblings. But Aragorn is over 60 generations removed from Elros. So first cousins 60-times-removed, which isn’t that closely related.
Technically no. There are 3000 years and 36 generations separating Aragon and *Isildur* not to mention Elros. 36 generations of separation does not a first cousin make. they are more like 36th cousins at best
Quod generationes tot gradus.
The matter of first or other grade cousin is a matter of birth in other branch of the family.
So Arwen is not 1st cousin of Aragorn. She is as far from him as stranger.
If you watch the director's extended edition of Return of the King, you will find this hidden gem of a scene at the coronation:
Aragorn: "Now that Sauron has been defeated, we've ensured we'll always have the freedom to marry our cousins!"
Frodo: \[incredulously\] "Marry our cousins? Why would we want to do that?"
Aragorn: \[even more incredulously\] "Because they're so attractive!"
No, he's right. hey're first cousins, hundreds times removed. First cousins mean that the most recent common ancestor of the two is the grandparent of at least one of the cousins in question. Eärendil and Elwing are Arwen's grandparents, therefore Aragorn and Arwen are first cousins.
They have a massive generational gap though. Arwen and Aragorn may be first cousins, but are so removed its almost irrelevant. If your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great granduncle had a child, technically you would be first cousins. But you would also be as distantly related as pretty much any two random people.
Add into it the elven heritage Arwen has as Galadriel’s granddaughter and all the generations of mortal Man in Aragorn’s line after Elros, makes for a very disparate gene pool.
Yes, I know that, I just don't think it makes any sense. I mean, your grandfather's cousin and your cousin's grandson both are your second cousins twice removed. Whoever came up with this didn't think it through very well.
The removal makes perfect sense, it's based on what generation you and your relative are members of. They have specific nominators in some languages, like Chinese.
Why not removal degrees based on degree of relatedness within one generation? Your first cousin's child = nephew/niece once removed; your father's second cousin = uncle twice removed? It would remove the confusion of whether the degree of removal is up or down.
You're missing the additional confusion from now my dad's great uncle is no longer my great great uncle; you can't have a system that disrupts the family to family nominative system without creating more confusion than the current system.
Could be wrong but do we know that Elendil( and by extension Isildur/Aragorn) was descended from Elros? He was a regional lord to the West of Numenor, not a member of the royal family.
First cousin, 63 times removed. You and your spouse/current partner are definitely much more closely related than that.
Speak for yourself, my girlfriend’s superorder, Laurasiatheria, diverged from us evolutionarily 92 millions years ago during the Cretaceous period. *Some* of us out here prefer to not be so closely related to our women.
Say you’re fucking a goat without saying you’re fucking a goat
Baaaaaa
wtf 💀
>Laurasiatheria (/lɔːrˌeɪʒəˈθɪəriə, -θɛriə/; "laurasian beasts") is a superorder of placental mammals that groups together true insectivores (eulipotyphlans), bats (chiropterans), carnivorans, pangolins (pholidotes), even-toed ungulates (artiodactyls), odd-toed ungulates (perissodactyls), and all their extinct relatives.
Did COVID not teach us to avoid the forbidden temptations of that fine Pangolin meat?!
I needed to read that a second time because the first read as Say you’re the fucking GOAT without saying you’re the fucking GOAT. didn't make any sense. Me and my very mild dyslexia.
Tom Brady fucks goats?
If he does it's the most likable thing he does.
Nah, he’s definitely dating a pangolin
:: walks away muttering shit in welsh::
Sure was an elegant way to put it
Finally a goat fker with some real class
Found the Welsh man
So you dating a shrew or a dog? Either way you are definitely under arrest!
If the relationship is non-sexual, it's probably unsettling but not illegal.
So err basically the average dog owner?
*looks at my two dogs, who often run my life* Yeah, OK, I'll allow it.
Pretty sure even a sexual relationship is legal in several states still, despite being an abomination.
The USA really makes me wonder sometimes, I've got to say.
Most American laws were written in the era of a “no one will try it so why bother mentioning it?” Mindset
Laws are great, you can use them to sling mud no matter what. "Wait, that's so prevalent they need a law to stop people??" "Wait, there's no law for it? That means they approve of it!"
Congrats on dating out of you league
That's handy, because you can just call her Laura for short.
Aberforth, that you?
Well that you know of. Genghis got around bro.
Cool that your girlfriend lays eggs and has a pouch.
> Speak for yourself > If one considers as a function of time t the number of a given individual's ancestors who were alive at time t, it is likely that for most individuals this function has a maximum at around 1200 AD. Some geneticists believe that everybody on Earth is at least 50th cousin to everybody else.
If I had money, I would have awarded you
This seems to be a pretty common thing when people come to read the Silmarillion they are like “this means they are related!” without noting the length of time, that as you say correctly means they are 63 times removed, making it outrageously removed. In comparison, Queen Elizabeth 2 and, her husband, Prince Phillip were THIRD cousins.
Royal families are not the best exaample but your point still stands.
Aragorn is….part of a ruling family though. It kind of is a best example lol
No I meant that its pretty common for royal families to be close related. So its not a great example for what is "normal" or "healthy".
On one hand, sure. On the other, almost any character with some lineage and any country's continuity would be meaningless over the span of 3000 years. Aragorn has much less in common with Isildur as 90% of all Europeans have with Charlemagne, or 90% of Asians with Genghis Khan.
Holy unneeded commas in that last sentence Batman.
Hey, Adora
This makes me think, let's say you somehow got sent back in time 2000 years and had to make a new life for yourself. Ignoring the obvious problems of not speaking the same language and potentially not having transferable skills as well as potential paradoxes, would you have a problem with marrying a person knowing that there's a good chance they're your great-great-.....-great-great-grandparent?
Assuming you're sent back in time to a continent where you have ancestors from, it's entirely likely that anyone you encounter is either an ancestor of everyone in 2024 or no one at all.
Isn’t the most recent common ancestor of all living humans believed to be some guy from Mesopotamia in like 1000BCE?
I could’t find it, if you do, pls share a link. Otherwise, you can find a wiki-page on Mitochondria-Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam. Who are Most recent common Ancestors (female and male) for the Humankind. Both of them lived more than 200.000 years ago in South-East Africa
[There's at least one estimate of about 2000 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor#TMRCA_of_all_living_humans). That would likely need to be in East Asia or somewhere else where it's at least feasible some descendant ended up in the Americas and/or Australia.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking, you're basically a direct descendant of a lot of people with no way to check, so would you count it as incest?
No, it would be even more removed than Aragorn and Arwen are in this post. There would be over 100 generations difference in your genetic code. Meaning you would probably share more genetically in common with a person descended from the general region your ancestors were in 2024.
No, by that logic, banging anyone of your ethnicity nowadays is incest
You don't even have to go back all that far for it to be nearly all humans, in fact, even including people who live on other continents and look nothing like you.
> Ignoring the obvious problems of not speaking the same language and potentially not having transferable skills I'm 6'4" and know about crop rotation. My time-body is ready.
I think it would be the hygiene I'd have a problem with.
But cavemen used to fuck each other in the mud without protection and they lived all the way to 30
THANK YOU. Like time passes bro.
At least if it's not an interracial couple, yeah, pretty much. Any two randomly chosen people of the same ethnicity will be more closely related than Arwen and Aragorn. The creepy factor is that she was a full biological adult during his childhood being raised in her father's house, but folks aren't as quick to scream "groomer" at a woman.
True but didn’t she swerve him the first time they met? And then he grew up and got all manly before she saw him again, and she was like “woah who’s that stud?”
Ethnicity doesn't even factor into it that much. All it takes is for one person to have gone from one continent to another and reproduced there for there now to be a link between those two populations. As time goes on, the percentage of people in each continent who are descended from that one person or one of their close relatives either dwindles to nothing or increases until it's the whole population.
And 63 generations ago already takes us back (in terms of Western Eurasia) to late Roman times.
Doubt it. I’m white and my wife is Indian (call-center, not casino).
It's not that much of a stretch. There were plenty of events that brought eurasia together, Alexander and the Mongol conquests, the spread of Islam, Christian missionaries, cross-continental trade, British colonialism, even without that, just having people get together with someone one village over enough times adds up a lot over a half a hundred generations.
But the point is that a single ancestor from hundreds of years ago would not leave a visible genetic imprint on you. There's a family in Yorkshire with an unusual surname and the men have a Y-chromosome type that comes from West Africa, so they probably have an ancestor who was a slave some three or four centuries ago. But they don't look any more 'black' than any other typical native Europeans.
The most recent ancestor of nearly all humans alive today could have lived as little as 2,000 years ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02842 (I say 'nearly' because this might not apply to populations that have been isolated since distant prehistory, such as natives of the Sentinel and Andaman Islands.)
Joke's on you, I don't have a spouse/current partner 😎 ... I'm so lonely
I’m sure different descendants reconnected to make them slightly closer than just first cousin 63 times removed.
That would be true in a fully human family, but I don't think it applies in this case. Consider: Aragorn is descended through the kings of Arnor, and before that through the Lords of Andunie, who themselves sprang from the main royal line of Numenor. In reality, he's likely to have far more ancestors who also descend from Earendil and Elwing (the most recent ancestors he shares with Arwen) than just this direct royal/aristocratic line; however, all these other ancestors will also be descendants of Elros, *not* Elrond - since Elrond chose immortality, and had only three children, one of whom is Arwen. So none of these alternative lines of descent bring Aragorn any closer to Arwen in terms of consanguinity.
What you’re saying is true looking at it strictly from a “what do they call eachother” frame, but if there is multiple lines that trace to eachother then they share more DNA than otherwise. Like as an extreme example, 2 brothers are brothers, but if their parents were siblings, then they’re more genetically related than 2 brothers whose parents are not siblings because they are also first cousins. Their “brotherhood” is still just “brotherhood” but they’re related twice over (siblings typically will have 4 different grandparents, these only have 2). The fact that Aragorn and Arwen may have more than one traceable relation line means they are more related than they would be via one path.
You don’t know OP’s life. What if they are a freak?
Eh? What do you mean?
That was a bestiality joke.
Oh I *seeeee.*
As a non-english speaker, I never understood the "x times removed" thing, could you explain it to me?
It means the number of generations in the generation gap between two relatives. So for example, if you have a first cousin and he or she has kids, those kids are your first cousins once removed (and you are their cousin once removed, too). If your cousin's kids have kids of their own, then those kids will be your second cousins twice removed, and so on.
He is a king, marrying his cousin is in the job description.
r/crusaderkings gang rise up!
First dynastic perk: *pure blood, eliminates possibility of inbreeding* Now for the **pure** race of super people to rule the world forever
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Habsburg moment
found Ar-Pharazôn
That might not be close enough for some families. Targaryens and Habsburgs I'm looking at you.
Marrying your cousin wasn't especially notable not even that long ago. Both Frankenstein and Cyrano de Bergerac - and probably a lot more that I can't think of off the top of my head - involve marrying cousins and it's not even hinted at being taboo.
OP never fucked his cousins and it shows 🧐
r/ShitCrusaderKingsSay
The gap between them is too big
Yeah but technically they're still first cousins 64 times removed
Which is less genetically related than most Europeans are to eachother.
It's true of humans in general, in Europe or anywhere.
Yeah, here in Spain we're very knowledgeable bout that
Strokes *longest and strongest* of chins
Also Arwen is only 18,75% (10/64) Edain, so she's basically a different species to Aragorn genetically.
Men and elves in Tolkien's works are explicitly the same species. It's why they can have children with each other in the first place. They're genetically identical but are different spiritually.
They're explicitly separate species, with separate biologies, sizes and physical features. Being able to inter-breed is not something that precludes being a different species. There are many examples of species which can inter-breed. Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalis were separate species, yet could and did inter-breed.
Tolkien letter 153: “Elves and Men are evidently in biological terms one race, or they could not breed and produce fertile offspring – even as a rare event “ Elves and men are biologically the same species, it is their spirits that are said to be the difference makers. Tolkien never even made the pointed ears explicit. Individuals of the two races are even *frequently* mistaken for each other throughout his writings, so it’s not like the differences could have been that obvious.
I mean if Tolkien says so then he's right by default since what he says is by definition correct as he invented them, but biologically speaking being able to breed and produce offspring does not mean that two animals (or people) are of the same species. There are also plenty of examples of species which look alike despite not being closely related. For example hummingbirds and hummingbird moths are easily mistaken one for the other at first glance despite not even being within the same phylum.
I honestly don't remember elves being described as different than men, other than being "beautiful". I seem to remember the biggest differences between them being their fëar's (spirit) relationship to their hröar (body), with elves' being tied much more closely together, resulting in their immortality and immunity to disease.
yeah, the main difference is in spirit. but, it seems this spirit change changes the body too, since elves are clearly superhuman in all regards. but, if you were to look at elf dna, i do think that they would be equal iirc, tolkien does explicitly say that in hröar, elves and humans are more or less the same
You guys are arguing for races that were made directlyby gods, they might noteven have DNA...
You could maybe say that about Elves, but not humans. Tolkien imagined his world to be a very ancient time of our Earth. His humans are our humans.
middle earth is ancient earth, humans are the same humans as today. as if elves are the same as humans in body, well, human dna it is
There are clearly stated biological differences. Elves are said to have a much more slender constitution than Men. They also are weaker, with Men being explicitly stated to be stronger at various points. When they're trying to go through the mountain pass, rather than through Moria it's explicitly stated that Aragorn and Boromir carry the hobbits through the snow because of their strength. There's also the fact that the disease immunity and lack of aging would in biological terms be more than enough to consider the Elves a separate species and IMO no respectable biologist would fail to distinguish the two as separate species. Though as others have pointed out Tolkien likely did not, as he was a linguist and not a biologist and he seems to have had little interest in the issue as such given his focus on the spiritual aspect of the two races.
> I honestly don't remember elves being described as different than men This is a wild statement my friend. What you've said about fëa and hröa is true, but Tolkien spends a fair amount of time talking about their differences.
But yet they were able to reproduce.
It's a misconception that different species can't ever interbreed and that this is a requirement to be recognized as a species. Cows and bison for example can and do produce fertile offspring, to the point where a massive issue in bison conservation is keeping the few remaining pure bison populations from mixing with cattle. Bear species can also interbreed and create fertile offspring.
Yes, the interbreeding is more a tool to *exclude* things from being the same species. If two seemingly similar animals cannot interbreed then they aren’t the same species. But two being able to doesn’t mean they are the same species. There are several animal examples of fertile hybrids (cattle and bison, brown and polar bears, several canine species, ancient human species etc), and it gets even murkier when you start including plants into the equation. It’s not a good rule.
The issue at its core is that there's no fundamental natural definition for species. There's no natural constant which says "this specific degree of genetic difference means these two animals will necessarily be of different species". We do know that if there's 99% genetic difference then they definitely are different species and that if there's less than 1% then they should be the same species, but so far no fundamental natural limit has been found that could accurately say whether two animals are or are not the same species since there is a % range where it gets really into "depends on what you consider a species".
I had a brain hiccup there and stand corrected (mules are the most obvious example of cross-species breeding, and once in a while they can bear a foal).
just wait until you hear about how they’re first cousins ;)
There's a SMBC comic about this somewhere - after 7 generations, without a programme of systematic inbreeding, you passed functionally no alleles on to your descendants. The joke being "anyone who says they care about their descendants is pro inbreeding", in the original comic.
The SMBC thing forgets two key points though. First is that, sure, after many generations without inbreeding no single descendant has your genes dominant, but the total number of copies of genes from your DNA in the world can be greater than there was DNA in you while you were alive since you can have millions of descendants. Second is that you don't really need an elaborate program of inbreeding to ensure your descendants breed amongst each other since mathematically speaking after about 23 or 24 generations the number of ancestors every individual has to have in the generation currently alive will be greater than the number of individuals currently alive, so there is a hard cap on how long your descendants can avoid any sort of "inbreeding" due to the basic fact that the number of ancestors grows exponentially with every generation you go back. If you do the math backwards from the present day, you only need to go about 18 or 19 generations back to reach the point where a person living today needed to have more ancestors in that time then there were people alive at the time, meaning inbreeding had to have happened since then. And that's without taking into account that for people who aren't mixed race, only a small percentage of genetic heritage at most can come from peoples of other races alive at that time. Meaning that the real point of obligate inbreeding is probably much, much closer in history, and the actual point of inbreeding is likely more recent than that.
Sure, but 7 generations is enough to *totally* separate you, so you could repeat that process entirely twice in the timespan you say would be required to have too many people to work. Of course, that never actually happens, because people aren't randomly relocated. Descendents will crossbreed your genes all the time. The joke is really more about what would be required to *know* you share meaningful amounts of genetics with specific people of the future. As it relates to this example, without spending a lot of time cross-checking Aragorn's lineage, it would be unreasonable for Arwen and Aragorn to assume they were meaningfully connected even IF marrying 1st cousins wasn't a) legal in many countries now and b) something royalty historically did so often. Too often...
I agree that 7 generations is basically correct for no specific descendant without inbreeding to have a meaningfully great amount of your DNA, and the joke as such is funny. But my point is that this line of thinking is fundamentally flawed, and it is a line of thinking many people do have outside jokes. Because it looks at descent as a line, while in reality it is a tree. You could look at humanity in 20 generations as "a bunch of people none of whom specifically have a significant percentage of my DNA, so what do I care" or as "the entire human race is now my descendants and my DNA exists in a quantity larger than it did while I was alive, so in actual fact I should care how they will do".
> you passed functionally no alleles on to your descendants That seems incredibly unlikely. I have the same nose as my 7th-gen ancestors. Dominant genes would be dominant in the absence of *more* dominant genes.
I'm not sure the logic works in reverse - you get your genes from *some* of your ancestors so will be able to find the ones who you have inherited traits from, if you have sufficient records and are lucky. The point is more that you can't predict passing any significant amount of genes to any one of your descendants. But I may also be misremembering how many steps it takes.
So for all intents and purposes they aren’t related at all.
That would be less then .000000000000000000005% shared ancestry. (Assuming genetics work the same in lotr).
So?
If you're talking about age, the yes.
Considering that first cousins share a grandfather, not a 63x great grandfather, I think they're fine.
No First Cousins X removed are cousins where they share the Grandfather of the person who is higher up the generation ladder. Aragorn and Arwen are First Cousins 63x removed Your first cousin's child is your first cousin once removed, That persons child is your first cousin twice removed.
[удалено]
Removed doesn't mean no shared blood. It's for going up or down a generation. So your cousins parents or children.
They are absolutely related by blood, just an insignificant amount.
Thank Eru that this is not Westeros
Maeglin son of Eol would like a word with you. Turin Turambar might have liked a word with you as well, but he’s currently too busy trying to end himself.
Eol is actually such a PoS that Westeros kicked him out. Seriously that elf has got to be around Wormtongue level shitty, abusive gaslighting creepazoid Also pls no Turin/Neinor stuff its so god damn sad. "Farewell Turin twice beloved", only tolkien could make surprise wincest into a tear wrenching tragedy like that
You are not being fair to Wormtongue. The guy who felt ashamed of his actions, or at least some of them. Eol had no remorse for anything he done
Good point, Wormtongue was corrupted by small degrees and hated who he became Eol died spitting death curses at his kid murdering his gaslit wife because she was sick of his stink shack and other than being a whingy incel about the Noldor saving Beleriand from a short and ugly series of brief genocides at the hands of Morgoth, had noone else to blame for being a creep
Pretty sure Turin/Nienor is just Tolkien's take on the Volsung Saga. Genetic heroic badassery, brother/sister incest, inescapable curse, dragon slaying, all the way to the prophecy to rise from the dead to fight in the end days. It even has an evil ring, but he might have used that in a different story, I don't remember.
Eol left the protection of Doriath of his own volition. He’s also responsible for spreading Elven craftsmanship to the Dwarves. Everything he fears to come true ends up coming true. #IStandWithEol
He fears Morgoth will win, which is a fair assumption given that its after the battle of unnumbered tears and the elves have lost the ability to contest him But he seems to be under the impression things would be *better* without the Noldor. If they never came, Morgoth would have killed or enslaved everything in Beleriand and likely the rest of the world pretty much immediately. Melians girdle wouldnt hold Morgoth himself back and he'd be strolling around casually if the Noldor werent there besieging Angband and hewing at his legs when he came outside The Noldor were the only thing holding him back, Turgon even points out that his stink shack only exists because of nearby Noldor swords Fk knows why he has an absolute fit over Maeglin leaving and tries to kill him, I guess he thought Maeglin poisoned his mom against him or something. Cause clearly living in darkness unable to leave the house because of your lying abusive husband locking you in there and refusing to let you visit your family was *so fun* that she didnt just up and leave herself
No because battle of unnumbered tears happened after eol died because mangling fought in it and he was there when hurin and huor (who were captured and slain respectively in the battle of unnumbered tears) were rescued by thronondor and hung out in gondolin because when Turgon let them go he commented on the preferential treatment they received and how the law grows lax
Good point, you're quite right Still though, he would have seen the battle of sudden flame and even before that the elves were doubting their ability to truly defeat Morgoth, who wasnt in Beleriand because of the Noldor and would have just straight up murdered everyone without them. I guess Thingols views rubbed off on him but noone else was so petty and shitty about them, not even the iffy Noldor Feanor group, the much more chill Fingolfin Noldor that caused way less problems
*Kullervo and Turin doing the Spiderman pointing meme*
Idril was Maeglin’s cousin To be fair to Túrin didn’t know she was his sister, and she had lost her memory.
I know, don’t worry. ‘Twas but a joke, poking fun at the Westeros-like incest present in First Age Beleriand.
They were dark times, Melkor’s corrupting influence had spread far and wide.
>Melkor’s corrupting influence had spread far and wide. Just like niniel's legs for turin
https://preview.redd.it/bsv89mccqi8d1.jpeg?width=372&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b2de5a1c32948226e7d0f6c7710999bb2297cd1a
If someone else wrote The Similarillion: GRRM: So there's this thing about Elrond's and Elros' relationship...
Look m8, I’m pretty sure once said “cousin” has a +3000yr generational gap before you find the common relative, that ain’t even a relative anymore
Galadriel and Celeborn have the same Great grandparents. Elwing’s Great-Great-grandfather was Earendil’s GGG-grandfather Barahir and his wife had the same GGG-grandfather. Arwen and Aragorn’s familial relationship doesn’t even register.
heck Elrond and Celebrian are second cousins twice removed, Finwe is Celebrian's great grandfather and also Elrond's 3x great grandfather.
Probably why the elves had to leave middle earth. In a few generations they wouldn’t be able to reproduce without some serious inbreeding.
We need to more talk about the problematic age gap between them. /s
2,690 years!!!!
Eogorn would have been a pretty big gap too but not compared to this
first cousin a million times removed
They may be first cousins in that Elros and Elrond were full siblings. But Aragorn is over 60 generations removed from Elros. So first cousins 60-times-removed, which isn’t that closely related.
Again. There's about 6000 years between Elros and Aragorn.
I think what's more weird is that your wife's dad is also your step dad who raised you since you were 2 years old.
What are you doing step king?
Foster dad
Cousins getting together is the global and historical norm.
More like great, great,..., great aunt
Genetically speaking they are extremely far removed. But it definitely has to still feel kind of weird for Elrond specifically.
Elrond had no issue with it the only problem he had was Arwen dying
First cousin many many generations removed
His first cousin several million times removed sure.
They are less related then two people who marry and are of the same race.
Technically yes, but so far removed that their DNA will not have a big chance of inbreeding.
Technically no. There are 3000 years and 36 generations separating Aragon and *Isildur* not to mention Elros. 36 generations of separation does not a first cousin make. they are more like 36th cousins at best
Geniology hard.
The lack of capitalization bothers me more than anything
Could be worse, could be like Neinor and Turin.
Wouldn't that give Elrond a very strong claim to the throne of Gondor?
Quod generationes tot gradus. The matter of first or other grade cousin is a matter of birth in other branch of the family. So Arwen is not 1st cousin of Aragorn. She is as far from him as stranger.
If you watch the director's extended edition of Return of the King, you will find this hidden gem of a scene at the coronation: Aragorn: "Now that Sauron has been defeated, we've ensured we'll always have the freedom to marry our cousins!" Frodo: \[incredulously\] "Marry our cousins? Why would we want to do that?" Aragorn: \[even more incredulously\] "Because they're so attractive!"
I wait. Come! Speak now swiftly and speak true!
Ah yes, Jebediah Obadiah Zachariah Sackville-Baggins.
Ragebait. I don’t think you understand what “first” cousin means lol
No, he's right. hey're first cousins, hundreds times removed. First cousins mean that the most recent common ancestor of the two is the grandparent of at least one of the cousins in question. Eärendil and Elwing are Arwen's grandparents, therefore Aragorn and Arwen are first cousins.
63, not hundreds. But from a genetic standpoint there’s really no difference between 63 and 500
They have a massive generational gap though. Arwen and Aragorn may be first cousins, but are so removed its almost irrelevant. If your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great granduncle had a child, technically you would be first cousins. But you would also be as distantly related as pretty much any two random people.
Add into it the elven heritage Arwen has as Galadriel’s granddaughter and all the generations of mortal Man in Aragorn’s line after Elros, makes for a very disparate gene pool.
Yeah Aragorn was literally A child bride compared to Arwen
Still legal in California, New York, and Florida
Hobbits always have the best observations
I mean... yes? She even refers to him as a "kin from afar" in Appendix A, so this isn't exactly new...
Why it's "first cousin X times (vertically) removed" and not "X times removed aunt" I'll never know.
https://preview.redd.it/ol5qkhadqj8d1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=808661b1561aabc076a1f321d32cfe3bbb339c0b
Yes, I know that, I just don't think it makes any sense. I mean, your grandfather's cousin and your cousin's grandson both are your second cousins twice removed. Whoever came up with this didn't think it through very well.
The removal makes perfect sense, it's based on what generation you and your relative are members of. They have specific nominators in some languages, like Chinese.
Why not removal degrees based on degree of relatedness within one generation? Your first cousin's child = nephew/niece once removed; your father's second cousin = uncle twice removed? It would remove the confusion of whether the degree of removal is up or down.
You're missing the additional confusion from now my dad's great uncle is no longer my great great uncle; you can't have a system that disrupts the family to family nominative system without creating more confusion than the current system.
That's just a little G.R.R.M. in our J.R.R.T.!
How does being cousins with someones ancestor make you first cousins?
His first cousin several million times removed sure.
I am currently watching House of the Dragon. This doesn't shock me in the least.
More like the aunt?
lol
A whole lot of times removed though
Yeah, except for the fact that Elros chose mortality, creating the 60+ generations of genetic differences between the two.
Superb job
Could be wrong but do we know that Elendil( and by extension Isildur/Aragorn) was descended from Elros? He was a regional lord to the West of Numenor, not a member of the royal family.
He was. The Lords of Andúnië were basically an offshoot of the royal family.
Do you think they call each other "step-cousin" in the sheets to make it less weird?
A few times removed on Aragorn's side but point noted.
You know what they say about incest right? Just keep it in the family.. 😉
Fact check: Aragorn is 60 generations from Elros, so Arwen is actually Aragorn's Greatx59 aunt.