Supposedly. That just confirms that it wasn’t generally known that Baratheons always had dark hair, since Arryn had to do extensive research before he figured it out. (And in the TV show it’s merely dark hair, rather than black, since all Baratheons including Gendryhave medium brown hair.) Possibly he only began to suspect after Cersei’s third blonde child in a row. This is really the only instance on the show in which hair color is supposed to be significant as an indication of ancestry.
In the real world, inheritance of hair color is complex. There are several different genes and pigments (and varieties of pigments) involved. In some cases alleles may have a dominant/recessive relationship, but the fact that many variants are involved tends to result in hair color being intermediate between those of the parents (though sometimes it could favor one or the other).
In the real world, one would expect the offspring Robert and Cersei to have an intermediate hair color, although they could conceivably be blonde. Children of Jaime and Cersei would almost certainly be blonde, since the blonde allele is supposedly recessive. One would not expect one brown haired parent to always have entirely brown haired offspring regardless of the hair color of the other parent. The Stark children’s hair show what would be expected in the real world, with a mixture of their father’s and mother’s hair colors.
Even among the Lannisters, who have a reputation for being blonde, hair color is variable. Tyrion’s hair is rather darker than that of his siblings and his beard is medium brown.
Since it’s now pretty well established than Rhaegar is Jon’s father, we know for a fact that Targaryen hair (and eye) color is not dominant. (We wouldn’t expect it to be in the real world, since light hair and eyes are mainly due to recessive alleles.) Whether people in the GoT world assume it to be is not established, but there’s no reason to think from available information that Jon’s coloring would cause his Targaryen ancestry to be questioned.
Gendry has very dark brown hair, but it’s not truly black. In fact, very few Westerosi except the Dornish have really black hair. The Dothrakiother people of Essos do.
The whole Faceless Men thing is weak. They are a cult of super duper assassins (when we first meet Jaqen he kills whoever he wants in the castle) who can changes faces. We don’t know how many FM there are but they appear to have enough to get involved in petty local squabbles for pay. Why isn’t every ruler in Westeros absolutely paranoid about being killed by a FM? Wouldn’t Cersei open the vaults to hand out a few contracts to FM?
Anyway, all that to ruminate on Arya’s upcoming role. She’s got to be more involved than just crossing off names on her little list, right? Outside of Cersei none of the names would have much narrative impact and few expect Cersei to die at her hand.
It sure seems like there’s a lot of narrative to wrap up in a single season, even if it’s a long one. However, I felt the same way before the release of the last Harry Potter book and it ended successfully.
Isn’t it because they (and their enemies, typically) don’t know about them? It’s a Braavos thing, and the face-changing-assassin part seems to be kept quiet, even for locals who know about the death-temple part.
Yeah, I think the whole Arya/FM storyline is a clusterfuck. If she’s now just a plot device that can show up at will to kill key people and resolve crises I have a feeling that it’s going to mean some lazy writing. There was no explanation at all how she got the face she was wearing to kill Frey (did she have to kill an innocent girl?), and how she managed to butcher two people and bake them into a pie in a busy castle. What are the rules - can she just look like anyone at will?
I don’t expect beards (or other body hair) to be the same color as head hair - I know guys with brown or blonde hair and reddish beards, and I’ve known women with blonde hair and reddish pubic hair.
Mark Addy has never had black hair. A much lighter shade of brown than mine.
Stephen Dillane has always had dark brown hair, now it’s going to grey. Until I looked him up I had no idea his son is on Fear the Walking Dead.
As Colibri points out the genetics of hair color don’t work that way. There are four children in my family. Three of us have dark brown hair. One was white blonde as a child and got darker into adulthood. It’s a convenient plot device that GRRM used to move things along. And who’s to say that genetics works the same in a world with magic and dragons?
The evidence suggests that heritability of hair color does not work the same way in the show world as in ours. And strictly speaking, we don’t know that “genetics” has anything to do with it.
His beard has gone gray, but his hair is medium brown. I see no grey in his head hair in that link, and little in his beard.
Stannis looked grayer in later seasons than he did in earlier seasons, but the picture I linked to was several seasons ago when he was still at Dragonstone. Here he is still earlier. His hair looks brown to me in your link as well (especially other versions of it on Google).
Like I said, if the Baratheons hair is considered black then most people in Westeros have black hair, because most of them have hair at least as dark as the Baratheons.
This struck me as highly incongruous when Ned was researching Robert’s lineage and they were stated as having black hair, since Mark Addy’s hair very clearly wasn’t black but a medium brown. I’ve never understood why the producers didn’t give him an obviously black wig when that was such a significant plot point. (The very fact that we’re arguing about it indicates that his hair is not clearly black.)
We have a statement that hair color is apparently consistent in one lineage (although how the people involved are depicted in the show is inconsistent with that). Without knowing the hair color of the spouses in the lineage, we don’t know whether the heritability of hair color is consistent with our genetics or not. It’s improbable that hair color would be that consistent, but not impossible. In all other cases we know of hair color is consistent with real-world genetics. In the “blonde” Lannisters Tyrion is not all that blonde, and Jon’s hair color is like his mother’s, not the silver-haired Targaryens.
While the show makes no point of it (at least as of now), Cercei is actually in line for the throne assuming all the Mad Kings decedent are ineligible: http://mashable.com/2016/05/03/game-thrones-heir/#yqsxm71y_uqq . Tywin Lanister had the next best claim after the Baratheons to the throne through decent from the Aegon line. Since all the Baratheons are dead in the show, that would put Jamie as the heir. Since Jamie became a member of the Kingsguard he may be ineligible, making Tyrion the heir. Since Tyrion is in exile for murdering (although innocent) Joffery, Cersei actually has a claim.
Jamie is not a member of the Kingsguard any longer. But the question: “Who has the best claim to the throne?”, is missing the point entirely in any case.
No matter who ruled, we have seen desastrous results. The particular reasons were different each time, but the cause was always the same: the feudal system.
Unless the show runners decide to turn the story on its head in its final stages*, no “L’état, C’est Moi”-sovereign is going to be the savior.
The black/dark brown argument makes me remember the saying that black hair is either the worlds most common hair colour or one of the rarest, depending on how you define “black”.
The show makes it clear that there have been good and just rulers, and long periods of peace and relative prosperity. So it’s not the fault of the ‘feudal system’ in the show or books. The problem in Westeros is that the Targaryans made mistakes (Rhaegar ‘abducting’ Lyanna, the Mad King wanting to burn King’s Landing) which caused them to be overthrown, and which in turn has caused a decade of instability as various unsuitable claimants to the throne fight for power.
