The pedigree collapse is really quite astonishing. Let me use one of my ancestresses, the venerable Eleanor of Aquitaine, as an example. She had ten children by two husbands, of whom I descend from the following:
From her first marriage to Louis VII, King of France:
Princess Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, born 1145. I descend from her son Thibault and her daugher Marie.
From her second marriage to Henry II, King of England:
Princess Eleanor of England, Queen of Castile, born 1162. I descend from her daughters Blanche and Berenguela.
King John of England, born 1167. I descend from his legitimate sons Henry and Richard, and his illegitimate daughter Joan and illegitimate son Richard (yes, there were two Richards!).
My last reigning ancestor, King Edward III, descends five times from Eleanor through her two marriages. His wife, Philippa of Hainault, is descended from Eleanor three times. Both Edward and Philippa were born roughly one hundred years after Eleanor’s death.
Oh, I can’t let this pass…I feel an irresistible compulsion to correct misquotes of Shakespeare:
This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious jewel set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…
That makes us about 30th cousins. Ed One was the last british king in my ancestry. Of course, you can follow established genealogies from Ed back to Odin, if you like. Or even Joseph of Arimathea. Note I said “established”, not “genuine”.
I hear a descendent of mine locked some princes in a tower and appears in some play by Shakespeare. Don’t know where that ranks in this competition though…
As for the limits of royal genealogy, that’s something of a hobby (obsession, hobby, what’s the diff?) of mine. The Irish and Chinese royal genealogies can be traced back to the late B.C.s with some authenticity, but there’s few Irish lines into the British royal family, and none whatsoever for the Chinese.
Another interesting thing is the more “exotic” ancestors among the medieval royals – one of the best examples is Erzebet, a Kuman princess who married a Hungarian king. The Kumans, by the way, were a nomadic Turkic people from North-West Asian Russia. One of Erzebet and her husband Istvan’s great-granddaughters was Philippa of Hainault, queen of Edward III. Malfia of Melitene, an Armenian princess, married Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem and their descendents are legion. Another Armenian princess was the Muslim Saracena, who’s Italian and French marriages brought her blood into the higher nobility and royalty of Europe. A little later on, Doña Isabel of Bragança, a relative of the King of Portugal, married a 17th century King of Sitawaka (Sri Lanka). Then, of course, there’s the Moorish mother of Alessandro dei Medici, the 1st Duke of Florence; one of his descendents was the very beautiful Empress Eugenie of France. It’s quite fascinating.
I am also a Direct descendant of King Edward the First, And 8 Knights that served under his rule. You are not the only one who can say that you are of royal blood of England.
Ummm…GlacierH, you may not have noticed, but this thread was first posted over 12 yrs ago. I haven’t seen Reuben (or Katisha for that matter) 'round these parts for eons.
There’s a chance at each generation the father on paper is not the father in real life…
So take the chance that the written info is correct… say 80%… or 0.8
Now multiply that together for each generation … 15 generations … 0.8 ^ 15 is 0.03… Just a 3% chance its correct… 1.5 % for the case of 18 generations… depending on your assumptions of course
Putative fatherhood is correct less than 100% of the time. This was no secret.
Wow! :eek: What culture do you come from? :smack: Researchers in England have done … well … research using surnames and Y-chromosomes to get a number higher than 97% and much higher than 80%.
I realize your “80%” was chosen arbitrarily to make a point. But what point? Why not use 10% instead of 80% ?
One part of mrAru’s ancestery were some of the Irish that got thrown off the boat before it hit shore without their meager belongings in the latter part of the 1700s off one of the Carolinas. They managed to slog ashore though I understand that there were a few in some of the other families that drowned. The family ultimately ended up in Missouri.
One thread of my lineage can be traced back to the late 1100s ultimately to a gravestone in an obscure small churchyard in northwestern France, though I find it amusing that the women involved seemed to be traded across what are now the borders between France, Belgium, Flanders, Germany and Holland as the girl of choice to cement agreements. [None of them seemed to be love matches - I don’t know many young girls who would move 200 km to marry some random boy they met who knows where.] The menfolk seemed to do a bit better, though all of the people involved were at best what you would call petty nobility - I don’t think any of them had more than 5 or 10 villages, a decent manor house and some good pigs. At best they would have been lord or lady in waiting to someone important rather than being important in their own right. <shrug> I suppose it is easier to trace us petty nobles instead of trying to link up to a king or queen. The Brit side was a bit more notable in his scoundrelous and scandalous ways. [Sorry for the witch trials …:(] though other threads of descent were Mayflower, and both mrAru and I joke about being cousins because we have some shared Mayflower blood.
[I will comment that I find it amusing to be thoroughly snubbed via the son of a roomie, we have a particularly annoying neighbor who refused to let her son play with Alan when she found out he lived here as we were apparently not good enough. I would stack my lineage against anybody else in the US. We joke about going ahead and joining the various societies we both are entitled to by our dubious claim of fame to simply being born to the right families and flying the associated banners out front just to fuck with the neighbors mind.]
[URL=“http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/”]
Most of us can probably claim a royal ancestor if we go far enough back. As for me, I know where my ancient ancestors came from—from the trees in Africa and I’m very proud of it.
