Why HiveWings in canon do NOT have to be the result of tons of generations of detrimental incest (a hot take maybe)
@sarcasticrat @incorporeal-entity @daishitheprofessionalfool
It's a funny meme in the WoF community that HiveWings are incestuous abominations having all descended from a single dragon (Clearsight). But honestly I think a lot of the weirdness revolving around that idea is missing a fundamental piece of the way WoF genetics work.
It's relatively well known that when two dragon tribes hybridize, their offspring will primarily take after their mothers. Every. Single. Time.
At most, there may be somewhat-even mixes of both parents, but the mother's tribe is still largely apparent. We see this with Whiteout, Darkstalker, Typhoon, and Sunny.
Whiteout and Darkstalker appear primarily NightWing, like their mother Foeslayer (although Whiteout has a little more IceWing than Darkstalker).
Sunny is mostly SandWing in appearance like her mother Thorn; enough that most regard Sunny as a regular SandWing that may just have a rare genetic anomaly.
Typhoon confirms his mother as a SeaWing in his dialogue, when he mentions that his father is ill by the animus IceWing plague that Darkstalker caused.
What does this mean for HiveWings?
While it does still sound exhausting to have so many relatives, it's very plausible for her to have caused a branching new tribe with her genetics, WITHOUT inbreeding being involved in that process.
Because Clearsight is female, the VAST majority of her dragonets with BeetleWings would appear.... mostly NightWing! Mostly black scales!
Somewhat like this, if you assume this is relatively canon:
And, any of her daughters who decided to have dragonets themselves, would have ALSO had dragonets with primarily black scales, no matter WHO they married to.
The black scales would have easily passed along hundreds (if not thousands) of dragons, without a single instance of genetically problematic inbreeding, so long as the direct descendants of Clearsight were female and had black scales.
Regardless, no matter how many children Clearsight had, her daughters, granddaughters, great granddaughters and so on, would pass down her black scales to future generations; all of their Night/Beetle offspring would have taken after the mothers that appeared more NightWing-like, until eventually the form of HiveWings became most familiar because of the consistent mixing of the NightWing & BeetleWing physical traits.
Clearsight may well have only needed to EVER have 6 of her own dragonets total, for there to be a tribe split based on her genetics; depending on whether or not all of her dragonets chose to have families of their own (which we assume they all did). But, it is canon that Clearsight remarried several times, so we can assume she had more than 6; albeit probably not as many as your mind wanders into thinking. No slutshaming!!!! /j
Assuming she had 4 daughters and 2 sons, and each of her children had 3 dragonets of their own (predominantly female from her daughters and predominantly male from her sons), that would be 12 NightWing-dominant hybrids and 6 BeetleWing-dominant hybrids to kickstart the tribe splitting. It's perfectly plausible with the way canon genetics work.
BeetleWings were a spread-out tribe, not existing purely in one location for their kingdom. So, while it's fun to theorize about SilkWings also being descendants of Clearsight, it's improbable at best (and disprovable at worst) that they're related in any way.
It's theorized (and probably accurate) that BeetleWings had already been in the process of diverging into SilkWings, and Clearsight's arrival sped up that process significantly by reducing the population of non-diverging BeetleWings.
Incest had to happen at some point, didn't it?
I'm going to tentatively say, yes. But not in the way you're thinking.
At some point, after the BeetleWings had been bred out of existence and replaced by HiveWings and SilkWings, there HAS to be interbreeding of HiveWings at some point. And if ALL HiveWings are descended from Clearsight, that would mean that modern HiveWings are technically inbreeding by continuing to have eggs with other HiveWings, instead of more BeetleWings.
However, this is not as problematic as you'd think. (Stay with me here, this isn't proship territory. I promise.)
If we're looking at animals as a prospect, you'll notice that millions of extant species in REAL life are actually the result of similar conditions. Direct descendants of ancestors that they inherited their primary abilities and traits from, that have ultimately somewhat inbred.
You may be shocked (and even grossed out) to hear that we're actually all somewhat related, especially to those in our own countries. However, the reason incest between close relatives is considered immoral to people (and is illegal in many places, thankfully) is because of genetic anomaly.
There is always risk to pass down genetic anomalies, I happen to have one myself! (A congenital defect of the heart that gives me two aortic valve flaps instead of three. This is a standard defect though and I promise I'm not an incest baby.)
But the issue with inbreeding is just that it drastically increases the chances of such anomalies happening, the more closely related to an individual you are.
To put it more science-y, inbreeding only increases the chances of consequential or fatal anomalies if the offspring of two individuals contain alleles at the gene site that are identical from descent. In other words, there's a single ancestor shared from both the maternal and paternal sides. This becomes negligible when it's no longer probable to pass identical alleles from both sides; i.e, hitting about 6th degree (roughly second cousins once removed).
In other words, should someone interbreed with their second cousin-once removed, the chances of there being genetic anomalies or consequences are so low, that it's about as likely as if you had a child with any other person in the general population of your area. Your average shared DNA with that 2nd cousin-twice removed would be ~1.5%, which is actually lower than the default chance of any other average birth defect happening to the child of an unrelated couple (~3-4%).
Genetic counsellors themselves state that they completely stop worrying about the potential for inbreeding-related fetal anomalies (AND moral code) once the relativity is 4th degree or further, because there is simply such a low chance of any defects, and it would be substantially different from marrying & reproducing with your siblings, parents, grandparents, and other direct relatives.
Simply put, incestuous pairings are not black & white when it comes to more distant relation. Although direct relative pairings are inherently risky and therefore morally & ethically reprehensible by any means.
Dragons in Wings of Fire live to a maximum of about 130 years, and 2000 years had passed since Clearsight's arrival to Pantala. That's about 13 generations of dragons, give or take a few. We know based on the story told by Lady Scarab that a close relative of hers that she knew personally actually named the HiveWing tribe - implying that BeetleWings' extinction was actually relatively recent; within the last 200-400 years. Meaning that the genetic diversity of modern HiveWings is high enough that it would be incredibly unlikely for any random pair of HiveWings to pass down identical alleles to their child and cause significant issues.
So while, definition-wise, it is TECHNICALLY inbreeding, it is not a morally questionable issue because there are very few physically consequential results from their pairings; there have simply been FAR too many unrelated BeetleWings in their family trees for so long, that the VAST majority of HiveWings are as closely related to one another as the average city population in the United States.
Additionally, reptiles are not affected by incest the same way mammals are. The majority of unique pet trade reptile color morphs is a result of inbreeding for those colors; it's quite rare for them to have consequential anomalies as a result of such inbreeding as long as they aren't direct relatives only exclusively inbreeding with each other. Also these are magical fantasy dragons, so like. Shrug. I can't imagine incredibly distant relative consanguinity would affect them as badly as anything that's ever happened to British royalty.
(Also you didn't hear this from me, but MudWings are probably significantly more worrisome because of their monthly random breeding nights and no real semblance of family trees. I'd worry about them before worrying about tons of generations of hybrids with the genetic diversity of New York.)
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