Incest: a constructed crime

Seeing as I seem to be biologically programmed to wake up at 2pm no matter what time I go to sleep and the first order of the day is idling until my tea finally wakes me up properly, perusing this post on fandomsecrets turned up secret 21 which seemed quite interesting. And by ‘interesting’ at a first glance I mean faintly stereotypical and bound to produce a flurry of comments along the lines of accusations directed at the poster of not being able to separate fantasy from reality. But surprisingly the comments seem to be more to the tune of reasoning that there are taboos against incest for a reason; namely due to the high incidence of inbreeding recession that it would cause.

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Sans progeny: Süleyman and the matter of being everybody’s uncle

Now bearing in mind that this is a theory that I’ve been meaning to flesh out for a while and that I may in fact be completely wrong, which is how I usually preface some of my best theories really, today in a fit of absolutely avoiding what I’m meant to be doing I’d like to pose a theory as to how exactly Süleyman may have maintained his position as un-attached ‘uncle’ to just about anyone of note. Or we could just call it a Boier’s guide to being gay in Byzantium, whichever suits.

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