Since all European royals appear to be related to one another (except for Monaco’s royals, who apparently get no respect), they clearly have a common ancestor. Who is it? Do all these scattered royals claim lineage from Caesar or Charlemagne or some comparable notable?
I know from another thread that all of Great Britain’s royals descend from one Sophia, Electress of Hanover. How about the Hapsburgs? The Bourbons? The Romanovs? Is there some great king all these lines spring from? What’s the straight dope?
I don’t think they all specifically trace their lineage back to one great ancestor but given the amount they have intermarried over the last thousand years they will all have common ancestors. Mind you, if you go back far enough so do we all!
Many of them have a fairly recent common ancestor in Queen Victoria - her nine children married into most of the European Royal houses.
There’s no common ancestor for the European royals. Various barbarian kings, bastard sons & uppity stewards (“Stuarts”) founded royal houses. And they’ve been interbreeding for centuries.
A recent Vanity Fair detailed modern royalty–reigning or not. A lovely genealogic diagram was included, but it’s not online.
Start out with the British Royals & trace the various threads.
There almost certainly is a most recent common ancestor for the current European royals. It’s going to be someone earlier than Queen Victoria (because she’s not an ancestor of the Monaco royals), but someone more recent than Charlemagne (because he’s an ancestor of pretty well everyone in Europe, except recent immigrants. But between those two there’s a long time period, and a lot of potential ancestors.
Depends on what you mean by “common ancestor.” If you mean someone who can be found in all the family trees for the current royals, likely there is such a person, indeed, likely there are several. A Habsburg has the likeliest chance, I would imagine, as do certain of the members of the French and English royal houses.
But if you mean someone who gave rise to all the current royal houses, then there would not be any such person. You’d be looking at someone who was the progenitor of the current line in Britain (which you could variously consider beginning with the Tudors, the Stuarts, or the House Hannover), the Netherlands, Monaco, etc. How many royal families still exist anyway? Not too many, by my count…
I don’t think the OP asked that question, and I agree that it doesn’t make much sense. However, the most recent common ancestor is most likely to be royal, and not a commoner: probably a king or queen, or if not, senior nobility, like a duke or an elector of the Holy Roman Empire.
The various royal houses (and pretenders) of Europe share many common ancestors in female lines. But each traces its male lineage back to one or another minor Dark Age or medieval petty noble whose descendants got lucky.
Perhaps the closest thing to common male ancestors shared by multiple houses would be:
Robert the Strong, father of Hugh Capet, from whom the French monarchs through 1848 were descended, and likewise Spanish monarchs since 1700. (Modern representatives are the House of Bourbon/Borbon.)
Gorm the Old, King of the Danes, whose male descendants include the Queen of Denmark, the King of Norway, the heir apparent to the U.K. and all its affiliated countries, and the pretenders to the Greek throne. (Modern representatives are the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg.)
One ancestress common to many royal and noble houses and linking them to a number of early royal houses including the House of Rurik (Kievan Rus) and the Caroliginians (descendants of Charles Martel and Charlemagne) was Elizabeth (often listed as Isabel) de Vermandois.