Why do Rosharians have the fancy hair/eyes

[Topaz]

I've been looking into the cosmere-lore for the past day-ish now, so I'm not that knowledgeable in how everything works, but from what I can understand, there hasn't been enough time for the people to evolve a new way of coloring their hair/eyes yet, but I also can't imagine that Honor or Cultivation would look at the previous humans and think "That looks great and all but I want everyone to have fancy eyes" I just don't get it

[+robardin he/him]

Also of interest to the how "light eyes" is part of the Rosharan sDNA, possibly inherited from the original Radiants, is that we've seen several instances of a lighteyes/darkeyes union resulting in a "one-eye", i.e., someone with one dark and one light eye. Moash mentions that his friend Graves (who he evidently valued over Kaladin... Grrr...) is a lighteyes "who doesn't care about eye color", marrying a darkeyes and who has a son who's a one-eye, and we also saw a Highprince with a "one-eyed" bastard son (presumably gotten on a darkeyed woman) who was sent to the Davar household to investigate the charge of murder.

Just so you know, that's not something that happens in the real world, or any other Cosmere world we've seen. There's something about eye color on Roshar, indeed.

 

Edited September 11, 2017 by robardin

[Yezrien]

Are you referring to the lighteyes? Because that's basically been explained.

Spoiler

Kaladin's dark eyes turn light when he uses large amounts of stormlight, and when he says his Radiant Ideals. So far, the effect is only temporary, but it seems to last longer and longer as he becomes a proper Radiant.

The implication is that the transformation will eventually be permanent. Presumably all Alethi were originally darkeyes, but many became lighteyes by joining Radiant orders, and passed the lighteye genes (or SpiritualDNA) on to their descendants, the modern-day lighteyes. 

It's not clear why the Radiant nahel bonds have this cosmetic effect, but at least we can conclude that humans of Roshar were not created with these variations.

The Iriali, who have yellow eyes, are not native to Roshar. Perhaps they were created that way.

Hope that helps.

[Calderis he/him]

It's something to do with Roshar. 

Beyond that, with the information we have, your guess is as good as mine 

[+Extesian he/him]

Hmm I'm not sure about fancy hair, though anyone you see with gold hair is probably of Iriali descent (if you're interested in them I have a thread here). But eyes are definitely significant on Roshar. They're referred to as a window to the soul. Eyes burn when a shardblade kills. Soulcasters' eyes change to look like the essence being soulcasted. Most significantly, anyone who bonds a Shardblade or becomes a Radiant will have their eyes change to match that order/essence. That indeed is why there is a lighteyes/darkeyes and division - lighteyes are descended from people who bonded blades. Why this applies is more of a mystery, but it seems to me you can essentially view a person's innate investiture, to an event, from their eyes. The windows to the soul. 

[Agent34]

If the question is in regards to uncommon colours by Earth standards Brandon could've just decided he liked them.

[Weltall]

'Investiture Did It' can explain the eye colors and the Lighteyes/Darkeyes social divide; Hoid thinks to himself that it's not the weirdest system he's seen and this one in particular has a good reason, even if people don't consciously remember it. We're not sure about why hair color works the way it does but it is presumably a quirk of Rosharan sDNA. We'll no doubt get an explanation in the fullness of time.

5 hours ago, Agent34 said:

If the question is in regards to uncommon colours by Earth standards Brandon could've just decided he liked them.

And this works for the Doylist explanation too, though there's probably more to it than just that. If nothing else, you need more exotic colors to match the associated colors of the Radiant orders because normal human eyes don't have quite enough colors to make that work. Though how the Skybreakers will work when their associated gemstone/color is black is anyone's guess.

On a simiar Doylist explanation, Brandon has said that he came up with Shardblades because he wanted a setting in which the ginormous swords so beloved of fantasy art and games would actually make sense and that he thinks the 'coolest magical swords' ever were the lightsabers of Star Wars and wanted to do something about that. Mission accomplished, I'd say

[Calderis he/him]

The reason I say it's something going on with Roshar in general, and not just the Shardblades, is that even in Darkeyes there is something funky going on. 

All Darkeyes have eyes that are described as black or brown, unless seen in the correct lighting. 

Shardblades lighten the eyes true, but Darkeyes have unnaturally dark eyes to begin with. Dunny for example, has Violet eyes, but the only person to have noticed was Sigzil. If violet eyes, or green, or amber, etc. exist among Darkeyes as well as Lighteyes, but are so dark as to be indistinguishable... 

There's more going on with the eye color than just what the blades explain. We only know what causes eyes to lighten, we have no clue why they're all so dark in the first place. 

[Nathrangking he/him]

The mystery deepens and plot thickens. Perhaps it was the "Darkeyes who were basically everyone that existed then through the use of the shards some became "Lighteyes" with the breaking of the oathpact perhaps there was a mystical after effect which made the normal eye colors even darker and harder to distinguish so as to have class systems. Maybe Odium was at play to sow chaos.

[Shadowmancer he/him]

I just want to jump in on this and mention how killing someone with a shardblade burns out their eyes. Basically, their cognitive or spiritual connection has been severed. Which leads me to think that the eyes being the window to the soul is eerily more accurate on Roshar -- or even in the Cosmere -- than I've thought about before. Could it be that the eyes represent the bond of the human to the CR/SR, which is why the parshmen and Parshendi get red eyes when they bond with voidspren?

[The One Who Connects he/him]

On 8/4/2017 at 6:57 PM, Shadowmancer said:

I just want to jump in on this and mention how killing someone with a Shardblade burns out their eyes.

That still bothers me. It doesn't make sense, but I can't pin down why.

Quote

Q: When, in Stormlight, Shardblade victims are described as having burned out eyes, do the eyes physically burn out leaving empty eyesockets, or is it closer to a surface burn, maybe just looking like they had burned?
 
A: Eyes actually burn. It is an oddity that I might some day explain.

[Yata he/him]

11 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

That still bothers me. It doesn't make sense, but I can't pin down why.

I believed (without an actual proof) that was a surgebinding thing.

The Surgebinding affects the eyes more than the rest and when you place a Surgebinding-Shardblade (both Sprenblade and Honorblade) you overcharge this effect.

So the whole body could be affected, but when you hit a critical place and the effect spreads in full body...The effect is greatly stronger in the eyes and they are also physical destroyed.

PS: Of course there is the plot reason, give a signature to the Shardblade's victim (or it could be confused with poison and other bloodless deaths)

[The One Who Connects he/him]

4 minutes ago, robardin said:

Just so you know, that's not something that happens in the real world,

Heterochromia exists in real life. It can even be an acquired trait(through injury or inflammation, so not late-blooming genetics)

It's quite rare, but it exists. Brandon has done something to Rosharan genetics that makes "light/dark" an inheritable trait, so it doesn't seem too out of place for someone to inherit both light and dark.

[FiveLate]

35 minutes ago, robardin said:

Also of interest to the how "light eyes" is part of the Rosharan sDNA, possibly inherited from the original Radiants, is that we've seen several instances of a lighteyes/darkeyes union resulting in a "one-eye", i.e., someone with one dark and one light eye. Moash mentions that his friend Graves (who he evidently valued over Kaladin... Grrr...) is a lighteyes "who doesn't care about eye color", marrying a darkeyes and who has a son who's a one-eye, and we also saw a Highprince with a "one-eyed" bastard son (presumably gotten on a darkeyed woman) who was sent to the Davar household to investigate the charge of murder.

Just so you know, that's not something that happens in the real world, or any other Cosmere world we've seen. There's something about eye color on Roshar, indeed.

 

It does happen, and I wrote a long essay on it somewhere here on the shard specifically dealing with chimeric heterochromia, but I can't find it now....

Edited September 11, 2017 by FiveLate
Lol ninja'd by one who connects while searching.

[+robardin he/him]

1 hour ago, FiveLate said:

It does happen, and I wrote a long essay on it somewhere here on the shard specifically dealing with chimeric heterochromia, but I can't find it now....

I meant that the child of a darkeyed person and a lighteyed one isn't how heterochromia happens. I'm fully brown-eyed and my wife has light green eyes, and we have three dark-eyed children, so I know this firsthand.   

[FiveLate]

16 hours ago, robardin said:

I meant that the child of a darkeyed person and a lighteyed one isn't how heterochromia happens. I'm fully brown-eyed and my wife has light green eyes, and we have three dark-eyed children, so I know this firsthand.   

Actually in human chimera that is exactly how it happens...fraternal twins with 2 different DNA sets absorb into a single blastosphere in which a single human being forms with 2 unique sets of DNA.  This can result at times with each eye being coded with a separate DNA set resulting in 2 different eye colors.  But it is so rare it doesn't really come into play more than 1 in a couple million.

[+robardin he/him]

10 minutes ago, FiveLate said:

Actually in human chimera that is exactly how it happens...fraternal twins with 2 different DNA sets absorb into a single blastosphere in which a single human being forms with 2 unique sets of DNA.  This can result at times with each eye being coded with a separate DNA set resulting in 2 different eye colors.  But it is so rare it doesn't really come into play more than 1 in a couple million.

Right, I meant it doesn't happen that way with any or even most lighteyed/darkeyed unions, while on Roshar we've seen or heard mention of "one-eyes" as a routine or at least very likely outcome of an infrequently seen union. It is a prerequisite for it to happen at all, of course.

 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

3 hours ago, robardin said:

Right, I meant it doesn't happen that way with any or even most lighteyed/darkeyed unions, while on Roshar we've seen or heard mention of "one-eyes" as a routine or at least very likely outcome of an infrequently seen union. It is a prerequisite for it to happen at all, of course.

Say we have a Punnett Square for the actual eye color(like normal), and have an additional Punnett Square for Light/Dark...

I'd have to run through the permutations to see if that would actually be a valid solution, but in the meantime: Would that seem more plausible to you?

[FiveLate]

2 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Say we have a Punnett Square for the actual eye color(like normal), and have an additional Punnett Square for Light/Dark...

I'd have to run through the permutations to see if that would actually be a valid solution, but in the meantime: Would that seem more plausible to you?

The frequency of light/dark dual eye combinations seems too low for that.

Edited September 12, 2017 by FiveLate
Clarification

[The One Who Connects he/him]

1 minute ago, FiveLate said:

The frequency of light/dark dual eye combinations seems too high for that.

Just to make sure I'm reading you right (and so that I can respond to you correctly), are you saying the in-world frequency seems to high, or the odds of a Punnett Square seem too high?

If it's the odds of the square itself, remember that the "odds" are just a percentage chance. I could have a 1 in 4 chance of blue-eyed children and a 3/4 for brown eyes, but the chance doesn't stack. I could have six blue-eyed kids in a row, because each of them has that chance.

If it's the in-world frequency, then I'm not sure how to fix my model.

I had considered making both traits normally have a Dominant and a Recessive Allele.   Light Eyes: Ll    Dark Eyes: Dd
The permutations from that would be LD, Ld, lD, and ld.  The dominant trait being dominant, that would give you Mixed, Light, Dark, and um..
Yea that's probably why I wasn't sure about trying that in the model. Not to mention what would happen with the ld later down the line. Maybe that's why real life doesn't have Mixed Dominance Traits.