Real life or fictional examples of this odd marital situation?

Factual Questions
21

Close but not quite a double relationship real life example:

My sister-in-law first approached my brother with the line, “I think your picture is/was on our refrigerator at home.” She married my brother several years ago now. But as to why his picture was on their fridge- our mom and her dad had dated for a year in college- just before they met their future spouses. The relationship had ended amicably and christmas cards were still sent resulting in my brother (well all of us) being on her parent’s fridge. The last picture one had been >6 years prior so the mystery as to how she recalled that tidbit and image add to the mystique.
The wedding was a bit amusing in that grandparents of the bride and groom recalled the former boyfriend and girlfriend quite favorably. Everyone else was completely silent on the previous relationship due to awkwardness.

22

Not quite what the OP is looking for, but there were two double-sibling marriages in my maternal line. My grandfather’s sister married my grandmother’s brother (Grandma went from Servello to Ciccarella, and Aunt Dana went from Ciccarella to Servello).

23

My grandfather was part of a double sibling type thing, two brothers from one family married two sisters from another. Since the boys were twins, family photos can get quite confusing. There was a little scandal at the time, becuase Grandma was originally engaged to the other brother, but my g’dad swooped in while his brother was away working. The “2nd choice” sister was the one who carried the grudge.

The sisters’ younger brother married (and later re-married) one of a set of twin girls and there are rumours that he’s been carrying on with the twin since his wife and sister-in-law’s husband passed on.

24

Another fictional example - as of the most recent episode of How I Met Your Mother, the widowed mother of character X is involved with the divorced father of Character’s wife.

25

Yes, exactly this. My friend’s mother died. His father-in-law died. His father then married his mother-in-law. We find it hilarious. My friend, who was never that found of his MIL, doesn’t find it quite as funny.

26

Abe Simpson (Homer’s father) once nearly married Jacqueline Bouvier (Marge’s mother), but then Mr. Burns almost swept her away. She ended up not marrying either one, and she fled what would have been her wedding to Mr. Burns and instead just got on a bus with Homer’s father.

27

I knew a couple where her widowed mother got together with his widower father.
The younger couple pushed up their wedding date so they could get married first because under the law step-siblings can’t get married to each other.
I didn’t know them personally but my 2 of my friend’s husband’s half-brothers got divorced and married each others ex wives. Then went on to have more children.
So the kids who were cousins were now step-siblings and their half siblings were also their cousins.

Wasn’t it Bill Wyman who was his own grandpa?

28

(I know I shouldn’t watch this show :smack:)

On Sister Wives, the father of Kody Brown married Kody’s second wife Janelle’s mother. Well after Kody married Janelle, but still.

29

How many of the grandparent couples mentioned were in The Old Country in a smallish town or village? Same question, shtetl or old-school Jewish?

My grandparents in a small town in Hungary were first cousins, by marriage, as I was pleased to find out only recently.

There’s a thread on incest going on now in GQ where the legal concept “affinity” figures in, which covers close calls (and creepier, Woody-Allen ones) like this.

30

My husband has a shirt-tail relative who married a man and had a child by him. Then she divorced him and married his widowed father and had 3 more children. The youngest of these was rumored to not have actually been fathered by her then-husband, but by his son, but not the son to whom she had been previously married.

So the child of the first marriage is both half-sibling and niece or nephew (or possibly cousin) of the children of the second marriage. I think.

The first, rather rudimentary, geneology software my husband had froze when he tried to input this part of the family tree.

31

Yes, but that was many years earlier. My grandmother was already married and had a 2-year-old when they came here. My grandfather didn’t meet his first wife until he was already here.

32

After my maternal grandfather’s father became a widower, he asked my maternal grandmother’s mother to marry him. She said no.

33

Assumed this is what the thread was ressurected for.

34

Film noir favorite Gloria Grahame married, had a child, then divorced her husband and (after an intervening marriage) married the husband’s son from a previous marriage and had children with him. So her children were half-brothers and also had an uncle/nephew relationship.

35

There was a case in my hometown where a woman married her deceased husband’s son. Now, this would’ve been weird had she married his father when he was, say, a 20-year-old college student and out of the house. But she’d married his father when he was about 12 or 13! Me and my kinfolks liked to crack jokes at their expense.

“Can’t find a good man, just raise one!”

A related, but more tragic, example from the extended Imperial Romanov clan is that of Prince Mikhail Romanov and his son, also named Prince Mikhail Romanov. Now, Mikhail Jr. had a daughter with his girlfriend, Mercedes, but if I’m not mistaken, either shortly before or shortly after her birth he was in an auto accident and left in a coma. His father, Mikhail Sr., married his son’s girlfriend and adopted her daughter, his own granddaughter.

36

Oooo remembered a good example from medieval history.

King Louis VII’s third wife was Adele of Blois, with whom he had his only son, Philippe Auguste, as well as one daughter, Agnes. From his first marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, Louis already had two daughters named Marie and Alix. From his second marriage to Constanza of Castile, he’d had two daughters named Alais and Marguerite. With me so far?

Now, Adele of Blois had a pack of siblings, but the important two were Henri of Champagne and Thibaut of Blois. It was arranged that Henri and Thibaut should marry Louis VII’s daughters from his first marriage – Henri married Marie and Thibaut married Alix. So Louis’ brothers-in-law were now his sons-in-law, as well as brothers-in-law to each other.

Louis and Adele’s son, Philippe Auguste, married as his first wife Isabel of Hainaut. And Isabel’s brother Baldwin married Henri and Marie’s daughter, also named Marie. So Philippe’s brother-in-law was married to his niece, who was also his cousin. Confused yet?

But it gets weirder. Louis VII’s first wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had remarried to King Henry II of England and gave him many children. Their son Young Henry married Marguerite, Louis VII’s daughter by Constanza. And Young Henry’s brother Richard (of Lionheart fame) was betrothed to Marguerite’s full-sister Alais but broke off the betrothal because… wait for it… he accused his own father of schtupping his fiancee! Yes, allegedly Henry II cheated on his wife with the daughter of her own ex-husband, while said daughter was engaged to their son!

Not to mention there have been suspicions about the nature of the, ahem, relationship between Philippe Auguste and Richard the Lionhearted, and for that matter, Philippe’s relationship with Richard’s *other *brother, Geoffrey. Remember, Geoffrey and Richard and Henry’s mother had been married to and had children with Philippe and Marguerite and Alais’ father. All these people had nieces and nephews in common. It’s about as twisted as you can get without invoking actual sibling incest.

37

True story from my own extended family: widowed parents of a married couple married each other. Well, they weren’t actually a married couple anymore, as they were in the middle of a nasty divorce. And to make things more fun, the brother and sister of the divorcing couple were also (still are) married to each other.

Awkward.

38

Excellent use of Yiddish colloqualism! Now you are officially a New Yorker.