A genealogical lesson from Game of Thrones

On Sunday, August 13, 2017, night, Game of Thrones gave us a well hidden lesson about genealogy, and what I call "research blinders".  

You are thinking to yourself either "what are genealogy blinders," and either, "so" or "who watches that trash."

I'm not going to recap what the series is about - you can find that online if care to - but I do want to point out the lesson given, because unless you are a die hard GOT fan, you missed it.  

But there are a couple questions in GOT that do deal with genealogy, and all it involves who has the right to sit in the ultimate seat of power.  First, there are families, who intermarry, or not. There are alligences, or not.  There are those who claim birthright, and there are those who would kill anyone who stands between them and the crown.

Got it?

In the scene, Sam, the former Night's Watch member and good guy and Gilly, the wilding woman he rescued from her abusive father were together, seriptiously reading moldy tomes while everyone is asleep.  Sam is convinced that the books hold the secret to defeating the ice zombies that are about to lay waste to humanity.

Gilly, on the other hand is somewhat of innocent soul - she's sweet, but she's not cunning like everyone else.  Her only role to give Sam someone to care about, so he does.

So they are are pouring over the books, desperately looking for the secret to killing the undead and Sam is laser focused on this task.  Gilly picks up a book and begins to read it aloud:

"This High Septon Maynard, he recorded everything...What does 'annulment' mean?" 

Sam answers her in a distracted fashion, saying an anullment is a way of casting away a spouse.  Gilly continues:

"Maynard says here that he issued an annulment for a Prince 'Ragger' and remarried him to someone else at the same time in a secret ceremony in Dorne."

Thinking that this is just Gilly pattering on about expanding her vocabulary, Sam loses it, basically because he is desperate to find the secret of killing these cold loving zombies. 

What's important about this seeming small exchange is "genealogy", and "research blinders"

Often, a researcher is so fixated in finding "X" that they fail to see the answer to another fact that could be equally, or more important. 

Yes, Sam is so fixated on how to kill the undead, that he misses the importance of the clue that Gilly just exposed.  And that fact proves that Rheagar Targaryen was in fact married to someone, in this case the Lyanna Stark, before he married his "known wife".  And from the backstory, we know that Lyanna asked Ned to raise her son, known as Jon Snow.  Ned brings the baby boy home to his bride and says here, raise him.  Begrudgingly, she does.  

In other words, Gilly found the evidence that Jon Snow is the legitimate heir to the throne, which is huge, because this whole series is about finding who is the rightful heir to sit on the Iron Throne. 

But does Sam care?  Nope.  He brushes it off, loads Gilly, the child and some of those rare books into a cart and he leaves, assuredly to rejoin Jon Snow at Winterfel.

The lesson here is that clues for anything you research could be anywhere.  Are you looking for "Anna" daughter of "Susan" when someone says have you looked in this brown book?  Have you looked in the brown book before and failed to see that that a Suzanne had a daughter named Hannah?

Many a brick wall have been broken through because the answer was in front of us, but we had our research blinders on.

As for GOT, we won't know the final outcome until sometime next year.

But like in life, every moment counts, every scene has a purpose.  Take the blinders off.