Well, I he's inbred on his mother's side. Hmm. The problem with inbreeding is really all of those recessives, right? And humans tend to have a lot of dangerous recessives. Most people survive by having dominant genes. Does inbreeding really fix itself with a single generation of new blood?
Logic currently says yes, instinct says nothing is quite that simple.
Of course, the Riddle family appeared to be high-class enough that they might have been inbred too, although not quite as drastically. (Either way, I always felt pretty bad for the Riddle family. They got screwed literally and figuratively in a variety of ways.)
As a side note on inbreeding and the Malfoys: inbreeding is apparently quite useful for a family line as long as you have lots of kids and kill off all the ones showing traits you don't like. What you can eventually select for is someone with all the recessives (among other things, very pale hair and eyes), but then must be extremely careful not to marry anyone with dominant traits (ex. dark hair) because any kid would most likely take after that parent. So maybe Lucius is such a pisser because of all the girls he dated, his family only let him marry Narcissa, and then he had to kill six of his seven kids.
Although, now that I think on it, red-heads are pretty recessive too. I wonder what the Weasley and Prewitt family trees look like?
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timeasmymeasure
Re: *Waves hand like First Year!Hermione*
Date: 2008-12-21 01:35 pm (UTC)Logic currently says yes, instinct says nothing is quite that simple.
Of course, the Riddle family appeared to be high-class enough that they might have been inbred too, although not quite as drastically. (Either way, I always felt pretty bad for the Riddle family. They got screwed literally and figuratively in a variety of ways.)
As a side note on inbreeding and the Malfoys: inbreeding is apparently quite useful for a family line as long as you have lots of kids and kill off all the ones showing traits you don't like. What you can eventually select for is someone with all the recessives (among other things, very pale hair and eyes), but then must be extremely careful not to marry anyone with dominant traits (ex. dark hair) because any kid would most likely take after that parent. So maybe Lucius is such a pisser because of all the girls he dated, his family only let him marry Narcissa, and then he had to kill six of his seven kids.
Although, now that I think on it, red-heads are pretty recessive too. I wonder what the Weasley and Prewitt family trees look like?