Are all European royals closely related?

For centuries royalty tended to marry royalty, and only in the last 20 years or so have many European royals married non-royal spouses. I would believe that Britain’s Prince Charles is probably a fairly close cousin to any other European royal (including deposed ones such as the Italian royal family) .
Is this correct? Or are there any royal families that have remained somewhat aloof from the others?

As far as I know ALL European Royal families are very closely related, though I’m not sure about Lichenstein or Monaco.

For example the English royal family is related to the Belgium, Spanish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian royal families and also the defunct houses of Greece, Portugal, Russia and Serbia to name but a few.

Another interesting fact is the Queen of England can say that she is related in some way to almost every famous historical European monarch, for example she is the direct descendant of, Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Canute and William the Conquerer to name but a few.

Maybe i am wrong but … didn’t the royal family change several times due to the kings being over thrown or them losing a war ?

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but in the First World War, weren’t all the major monarchs involved closely related (like, cousins)?

Like China and Japan ? :stuck_out_tongue:

nah prolly dude

I take it you mean the royal family of England? Since William the Conqueror at least, even though the dynasties have risen and fallen, the bloodline remained essentially the same. If one family fell (say, the Tudors), it would be cousins and the children of cousins who took over (in this case, the Stuarts). That’s very simplistic, but you’ll find Elizabeth II has descent from William the Conqueror, and due to the marriages of her ancestors, descent from the likes of Charlemagne, etc.

Queen Victoria’s children and her children’s children married into the royal families of Europe, so that Wilhelm II of Germany and George V of England were first cousins. Nicholas II of Russia bore a striking ressemblance to George V. (Sorry I can’t add more detail, it’s late here, and my brain’s shutting down for the night).

As this report confirms, when bones were recovered from a grave in Siberia that were supposed to be those of the executed Romanovs, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was amongst those whose DNA was used for comparison.

The report also contains a picture of Czar Nicholas II, and here’s one of Prince Michael of Kent (the Queen’s cousin). Spot the resemblance?

Nicholas II and George V were first cousins-their mothers were sisters and daughters of the Danish King Christian IX.

And Nicholas’s WIFE, Alexandra was also George V’s first cousin-her mother and his father were brother and sister-both children of Queen Victoria. And Wilhelm of Germany was related to Nicholas through their grandparents. He was Alexandra’s first cousin-his mother was Queen Victoria’s first child.

(And Nicholas and Alexandra were second cousins through the family of Hesse).

They were all related. The Serbian family, which hadn’t been related to anyone except for the Montenegrin royals, joined when King Aleksander I married Princess Marie “Mignon” of Roumania-her mother was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and of Tsar Alexander II.

Then their eldest son, Peter II, married Princess Alexandra of Greece, etc.

Yeah, they’re all connected. And many monarchs who were elected when a newly independent nation wanted a King were from royal families-not natives. Thus, the Greeks, the Bulgarians and the Belgian royals.

Hence, a lot of royal families had (or have) incidences of haemophilia, correct?

Incorrect. Hemophilia was NOT caused by inbreeding. However, since it ran in some of Queen Victoria’s descendents, then they would pass it on to their children-no matter who they married.

I always wondered how Prince Philip of Greece could have married the Anglican “Defender of the Faith.” How could the Anglicans allow marriage to a Greek Orthodox? If what you’re saying is correct, then the Greek royal family wasn’t Greek Orthodox? (Some sort of Protestant? Or what?) I wonder how well that went over with the Greek subjects.

Firstly, the “Defender of the faith” title wasn’t originally meaning the monarch defended the Anglican faith, but rather the Catholic one (it’s a hangover from the days of Henry VIII, before his dispute with the Pope over Catherine of Aragon.)

That aside, this site on the Felixstowe Orthodox Church claims Prince Phillip as Greek Orthodox, although he lapsed for around 40 years. There is nothing in the 1701 Act of Settlement, which banned heirs to the throne marrying or becoming Roman Catholic, that deters heirs to the throne from marrying those of Orthodox faith – just so long as their children remain Church of England. This is an interesting point, though – how did the marriage of (then) Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip of Greece go ahead without any murmer of disapproval? Seems the bete noir was Roman Catholicism, rather than the older, Orthodox, church.

Just found this site. It answers a few questions.

I believe that Prince Philip’s family would have originally been Protestent and had to convert to Orthodoxy in order to get the Greek job. There is quite a history of royals converting in order to take a new position or marry- think of all the German princesses absorbed into the Russian family.

Here are the first 348 persons in the line of succession for the British royal thrown. Note the various countries that some of the royals are from.

The following is a list of people that I have found that are all related. At that bottom I will provide a few links. (note: some are by marriage)

[ul]Orson Welles
Lewis Caroll
Winston Churchill
Princess Di
Charles Darwin
Napoleon
Celine Dion
Nancy Reagan
Walt Disney
General Colin Powell
Bob Dole
Nelson Rockefeller
Brooke Shields
Robert E Lee
FDR, U.S. President
Teddy Roosevelt, U.S. President
Calvin Coolidge, U.S. President
George Washington, U.S. President
Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. President
James Garfield, U.S. President
Franklin Pierce, U.S. President
James Buchanan, U.S. President
William Howard Taft, U.S. President
Bill Clinton, U.S. President
James Madison, U.S. President
William Henry Harrison, U.S. President
Benjamin Harrison, U.S. President
Grover Cleveland, U.S. President
Zachary Taylor, U.S. President
Gerald Ford, U.S. President
George H.W. Bush, U.S. President
George W. Bush, U.S. President
Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President
John Quincy Adams, U.S. President
James Monroe, U.S. President
Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia
Sarah Ferguson
Charlemagne
Every French monarch from Louis IV, King of France (succ 936) onwards.
Every English monarch from William the Conqueror (acceded 1066) onwards.
Every Scottish monarch from Malcolm IV, King of Scotland (succ 1153) onwards.
David, King of Israel
[/ul]

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/fh111despatch.htm
http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm297678.html
http://members.tripod.com/~ntgen/bw/sp_engl_pres.html
http://www.dagobertsrevenge.com/index.html?articles/royalpres
http://asis.com/~stag/uspres.html
http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~humphrys/FamTree/Royal/famous.descents.html

The Grimaldis of Monaco appear to be relatively isolated (no pun intended) from the other royal families of Europe. I don’t recognize all of the names in the Grimaldi family tree I have (from the late 11th-c. to present), but none of them appear to be major royals from other European royal houses.

However, in 1999 Princess Caroline of Monaco married (he as her third husband, she as his second wife) Ernest Augustus von Hanover, Prince of Hanover, a descendant of King George III of Great Britain and thus fifth cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. You can learn more about his genealogical descent at the following link:

http://www.dcs.hull.ac.uk/cgi-bin/gedlkup/n=royal?royal01040

This marriage required the approval of Queen Elizabeth because Ernst Augustus is an heir to the British throne, according to the same Act of Succession (1712) which put George I on the throne.

The royal family of England (and thus most other royal houses, since most have had an English progenitor in the past 7 centuries) can also trace their direct ancestry to Satan through his daughter Melusine. She married into the noble house of Angou of which Count Geoffrey, father of Henry II and ancestor of QE2, was a member. Ironically, some members of this line became kings in the Holy Land even though at that time the alleged Satanic bloodline was only a few generations old, and the monarch of England today is of course the Defender of the Faith. Does explain Prince Charles’ ears, though.

Sounds a bit like you’re going all Holy Blood, Holy Grail on us, there, Sampiro.

“Melusine’s” story is related in summary here – but you’ll find that the story you relate is debunked as a confusion between that name, and Melesand, Queen of Jerusalem, who married Falk V (but was unrelated to Geoffrey Plantagent and all the so on and so forths that came after him.)

some of the british royals have recanted to rome.:slight_smile: