Absolutely special subvarieties and absolute Hodge cycles

We introduce the notion of dR-absolutely special subvarieties in motivic variations of Hodge structure as special subvarieties cut out by (de Rham-)absolute Hodge cycles and conjecture that all special subvarieties are dR-absolutely special. This is implied by Deligne's conjecture that all Hodge cycles are absolute Hodge cycles, but is a much weaker conjecture. We prove our conjecture for subvarieties satisfying a simple monodromy condition introduced by Klingler-Otwinowska-Urbanik. We study applications to typical respectively atypical intersections and $\bar{\mathbb{Q}}$-bialgebraic subvarieties. Finally, we show that Deligne's conjecture as well as ours can be reduced to the case of special points in motivic variations.