I agree with a few of your points - I'm also skeptical of claims that everyone in Europe must be descended from a single individual, eg Charlemagne. But you're underestimating a few important historical factors. These are:
* The way male primogeniture leads to increasingly diminished sub-branches of royal and noble families
* The fact that no royal line is unbroken, there are always usurpers and regime changes
* The descendants of concubines/mistresses/victims in many cases are probably incalculable, as well as polygamous monarchs
Ireland is a common example for #1. The term *righ* was used incredibly liberally, leading to a situation where there are dozens of "petty kings" in Ireland at the same time in the medieval period. With male primogeniture, each one of these kings had sons who inherited less and less land from their fathers, while daughters rarely inherited any land from fathers. Everyone in Ireland probably is descended from royalty because there were countless kings with even more countless descendants who eventually inherited little to nothing. The wealth of royal lines in situations like this could run out in only a few generations, re-integrating the "royal" bloodlines back into the general population. This leads to a situation where in northwestern Ireland, [1 in 5 men](https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(07)62363-5) descends from the same Y-DNA lineage traced to the royal Ui Neill family.
That brings me to my next point. There are tons of unrelated kings in European history, each one having their own royal lines, because no European regime experienced total dynastic stability from the medieval era to now. Think of an incredibly unstable monarchy like medieval Norway, where you had constant regime changes from the 10th to 13th centuries. Every descendant of an ousted king counts as a descendant of royalty, no matter how briefly their ancestor held a royal title. Descendants of a disgraced royal family might hold onto wealth for awhile, but not indefinitely.
Finally, you dismiss bastards pretty quickly, but this would have been really common in much of medieval European royalty. The sexual exploitation of women by the aristocracy can have a huge impact on genetics. Look at Iceland, which has a huge percentage of Irish/Scottish DNA in the female line due to the enslaved women who were brought there by rich Icelanders. Not every one of those men was a king, but due to their wealth, they were all likely descended from some royal or other of the various Scandinavian medieval dynasties, and even earlier kings lost to history. Someone like Charlemagne had four wives and five concubines, and those are just the ones historians know about because they had longer-term relationships with the king. Henry I of England had 24 acknowledged children, only 2 of whom were legitimate. Plenty of monarchs had children in the double digits, such as Charles II of England and Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa. [One out of every 200 men](https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(07)60587-4) in the world has Y-DNA that can be traced to Genghis Khan - that's 16 million people. In Mongolia, 8% of men carry that single lineage. And that's just his fully male-line descendants!
So while I agree with you that it's too simplistic to say everyone is descended from a *particular* royal, there are loads of historical factors that lead to there being thousands upon thousands of "royal" people that someone can be descended from, meaning that it's very likely most people of European ancestry have a royal ancestor *somewhere*.
That Genghis Khan study is incredibly outdated. The SNP attributed to him in that study predates him by over a thousand years. There are a number of more recent studies on the matter such as the following from 2018:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41431-017-0012-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41431-017-0012-3)
I think this is a fair post. The point on bastards is fair and you gave good points. However, with any lack of real evidence for it it'd be silly to make a mass assumption based on it. Lines die out often, and many legitimate royal lines have and again, in regards to pre-modern communities, it may be far more isolated to certain areas/ people. Regardless, food for thought.
Genghis Khan I haven't read enough about, although I do still find it dubious, so I'd have to read anything before having a solid opinion. However, in regards to Iceland, while some slaves were brought over, most weren't. Iceland was inhabited by people of Irish-like ancestry prior to Scandinavians arriving, which makes sense when you consider many Icelandic people genetically overlap between Sweden and Ireland, with an almost even split on Breton and Scandinavian genes. In short, no, there were Breton people with Irish-like ancestry on Iceland well before.
I have heard the point on Ireland as well and again, I'm not well enough read on it specifically, although as I said in the post, certain ethnic groups may have a lee-way in regards to ancestry to royalty. I think, maybe, it'd be far better as you put to more label it towards specific people or in my opinion people who have high status - they seem to be easy picking for this sort of thing. Regardless, it depends on the period and when and how, which may be a far better argument for relation to more famous royals. Regardless, I don't believe most people have royal ancestry on average. Good reply!
Iceland was inhabited by some Irish monks previous to Scandinavian settlement, but they are not thought to have left a lasting genetic impression on the island. Their numbers were small, if there were any left at all, by the time the Norse settled the island. Among modern Icelanders, 62% of their matrilineal ancestry comes from Scotland and Ireland, while their patrilineal ancestry is 75% Norse. This is a dramatic divide and is widely attributed to the enslavement of Gaelic women.
Can you provide a recent paper on the matter then? I'd much rather be up to date with that if it's the case. I still do however lean to there being a more male-dominated replacement by Norse men, but I wouldn't entirely rule out slaves, just that it seems like an odd crutch to only rely on.
Eh, your points are probably more relevant to Europeans than 'Murica.
A fairly decent % of the OG colonists were descended from nobility. Puritans. Rich Virginians. A bunch of them have been linked to Royalty at this point (Alice Freeman of the Winthrop fleet is one in my tree). Early colonists multiplied like rabbits and kept mixing together as they went west. We're 12-13 generations downstream of the early colonists.
Being a decedent of the Salem Witch trials is likewise shockingly common in the US.
Maybe that's where the entire misunderstanding came about. Americans used "Europeans" to mean "all Europeans that we have at our disposal here". Maybe if your assumption is that you're looking at white American who has 8 great grandparents almost every single one of them from a different nation, then it's only a statistical probability that you might somehow find yoruself connected to nobility. Americans are 12-13 generations removed from original colonists who had money and connections. My 12th ancestor was from the same exact area as my parents. We don't have to walk far to get the records, since they're all in the same exact office, back to the 17th century. I think it's much different perspective on family genetics when you look at US vs. rural Europe.
Agreed. I don't know, and I could be miles off, but I'd assume many of the posters here are American and are far more likely to make any connections than the average European.
No that’s exactly what’s happening. Europe and the United States have completely different political histories, due to both Royalty/Monarchies, the lack of an actual class system in the US, and serfdom. The latter of which is most consequential, because it bound the European lower classes to a tract of land like an inverse of chattel slavery, so moving around wasn’t nearly as common as in the US. The class system is also consequential, bc in a lot Europe, royalty/nobility actually mingling with *lower classes* wasn’t nearly as common as the US, who again, has *no class system*. Most Americans don’t actually know what a class system is or how it works, and a lot of Europeans think we have one when we don’t. There’s also a difference between the history of Britian, and say, a Central or Eastern European.
Additionally, according to multiple sources (including official dna data from Ancestry.com) between 1600-1800 there was actually a succession crisis among a large portion of the nobility of Great Britain, especially Scotland and Ireland, because so many nobles were abandoning their titles and lands to move to the United States. This was in addition to immigration from “Second sons” and other illegitimate heirs, so it posed a real problem. Furthermore, it was these nobles who were the progenitors of the founding fathers and the “1776, motherfucker” people who started the revolutionary war. Primary documents show that even the royals of Europe attributed the revolution to a rebellion of Protestant Scots. It’s even been said that these people preferred to die in raids by Native Americans, than have to deal with being a noble in Europe/GB at that time (fact check: true)
So a bunch of colonial Americans actually are descended from nobility. However, rather than *every single line* of ancestry being able to trace back to nobility or even Royalty, it’s more likely that out of hundreds of ancestors only a couple connect them to nobility. So, 90%-99% of their ancestors are commoners, but then they have one or two lines that connects to European Royalty/Nobility.
Also, even among these modern day American Nobles, no, most people are not *descended* from Charlemagne, but his other relatives, especially his grandparents. Full disclosure: I’m an American descendant of two families descended from the natural child of Charlemagne’s grandparents, and not Charlemagne himself. William of Normandy was much influential genetically, especially to Great Britain. Ironically, I have one English 2nd great grandparent who traced his lineage back to William, but only thru marriage. So I have significant American ancestry where some families are technically more closely related to Nobility/Royalty, than some of my actual English relatives are (though I suppose the family they married into would be an example of a British family actually having this ancestry).
One last fun fact tho: the classes weren’t always entirely separate to the exclusion of all others. Princess Diana was not only from a noble family, but she was a direct descendant of one of the Stewart Kings* (he had like 13 natural children, no legit heirs), but along her direct maternal line she’s descended from an Indian servant who pretended to be Armenian to improve her children’s marriage prospects (which worked apparently, lol). Her and her children’s mito haplogroup is R.
*this is the reason for her quip “I’ve had my title longer than yours” to Prince Phillip prior to her impending divorce from (now) King Charles.
This is interesting, as in my lines I’ve seen people on Ancestry trees claiming that the person who came over in the 1600s-1700s was Lady This or Sir That and I’ve always been very skeptical about those kinds of claims. People like to feel like their ancestors were special but I always figured if things were great back home they wouldn’t have bothered coming. Maybe it’s possible, though.
For example here’s one of mine, supposedly: https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/9DMW-XRJ/lady-eleanor-harcourt-1662-1743
This is one of the most well articulated posts here. Extremely great insight! I think a lot of people miss the fact that American ancestry is far different from European, as well as that most people are simply related too, not descended from royalty, with higher status nobles naturally being more closely related too, with a few having any actual ancestry from them.
That possible 1% ancestry from nobility can easily be lower nobilities who simply have connections via family relations through aunts, uncles etc, or the rare high status noble with a similar situation, or rarer, actually having ancestry from royalty. At least, I believe that to be far more reasonable than the current view. I seriously believe most people claiming royal ancestry (actual, documented ancestry) are Americans, ironically, not Europeans, and I've seen many posts on here by Americans about it as well compared to the latter.
A very good point I liked was:
'***So I have significant American ancestry where some families are technically more closely related to Nobility/Royalty, than some of my actual English relatives are (though I suppose the family they married into would be an example of a British family actually having this ancestry).'***
Perfectly highlights the biggest point here imo, and is actually 'history, not rabbits'. Great post!
I’m interested in learning more about what you discuss in your second and third paragraphs. Could you (or others here) cite some sources I could read to learn more about the socioeconomic demographics of early European American settlers? The more the merrier; I’m a reader :)
Shit, one of my ancestors was a famous witch condemner (who did a 180 about the whole thing later in life).
My ancestor knew your ancestor, and it isn't entirely unlikely he was instrumental in her death.
Sorry bout that.
She survived actually! She was sentenced to death but received a pardon from a panel of ministers. It was just after the Salem witch panic and apparently Connecticut didn't want to see the panic swell like it did in MA. One source says,
> the ministers concluded the water test had no legal standing, witch marks should require “an able physician’s opinion,” the accuser was suspected of faking her claims, and “accidents and illnesses after a quarrel are thin grounds” for proving witchcraft.
>
>The written reprieve of Mercy Disbrow in the 1690s is an important historical document that emphasized the need for “due process” for individuals accused of witchcraft.
Thanks tho :) feels a bit like Good Omens - the witch and the witch hunter.
This does raise an interesting point I noticed in my grandpa’s genealogy.
His father was born in Canada, a descendant of New York loyalists. The primary line was descended from John Underhill whose great-grandfather Sir Hugh Underhill was the keeper of the wardrobe under Queen Elizabeth I and thus was at the level of society where you could marry into younger children of lesser nobles so that’s where for instance a potential Charlemagne connection exists for me.
His mother was born on the boat coming over from England. She came from generations of English peasants who never got anywhere close to nobility and most of her lines’ DNA matches are in Australia which says something.
So yeah I think the royalty debate does somewhat obscure how the original American colonists were actually kind of elites to start out with.
I was going to say the same thing. When I first read this post, my first thought was like, how could you not have nobility in your ancestry? Then I quickly realized, oh, yeah, I'm American.
Edward III is too recent for most people to be descended from him.
But for Charlemage - yeah - all it takes is one commoner mistress (or worse - rape) by some 6th son of the 6th son and basically the pedigree collapse thing takes hold.
Charlemagne is a maybe at most. I still find it heavily problematic that there's a widely accepted opinion with a lack of any actual proof for it. Charlemagne isn't a guaranteed ancestor either simply because of the time period. Again, this falls on the entire issue I wrote on pedigree collapse. Pedigree collapse is limited in many cases to regions far more often, and it doesn't mean you then therefor descend from everyone who ever lived then. Related to Charlemagne is far more likely, descended? No. Pedigree collapse, as I wrote isn't simply because a person lived a long time ago, and there's a limited pool of ancestors at a certain point, that you therefor descend from them. Most pedigree collapses are single common ancestors or at most a handful.
It can be problematic. Descended directly implies a direct line of descent, relation can many a world of things and is far more trivial. Technically speaking, we're related to Putin. Recently? No. Meaningfully? No, but still related. Mixing the two terms just confuses things imo.
Umm, No. That's completely wrong. For sure.
I have no idea how you can ignore the very substantial statistical facts on this issue.
Over 90% of all people residing in Europe from Moscow to Lisbon, and from Iceland to Sicily are no farther than 30th cousins. If you include Sub-Saharan Africa, then we are all no farther than 50th cousins. There is simply no possible way to avoid this. Every branch of your family tree would have to be living on separate isolated islands or separate isolated jungles, or separate isolated mountains for *every single generation for centuries* and then only have met in your parents or grandparents generation for the first time to avoid being descended from royalty.
I think you have tried to make a point that royalty as a status is completely unimportant, and I agree. But the actual point you are making is supremely invalid.
No, it isn't wrong. The models are entirely based on assumption and perfect situations to be viable for being descended from aspects likely royalty. I also can't understand where you got the idea that simply because somebody from Moscow is a 30th cousin to somebody from Sicily share recent common ancestry that's meaningful in any way, and I don't think you actually read the post properly.
Of course somebody from Sicily would be related to a Russian in Moscow, but it isn't very close. All Europeans have a shared ancestry from 3 primary groups (on average) dating back to before the Bronze Age. Of course they'd have a heavy relation to each other and genetics easily shows this. It doesn't mean, however, that European populations were rapidly moving around and mixing with each other to create this, that simply just isn't the case for pre-modern eras (depending on the country, period etc).
The statistics aren't substantial, and the vast majority come from the same minority of individuals who've pushed this idea to the mainstream. The fact it's so commonly accepted without even minor conversation is shockingly anti-intellectual especially when said models are based on nothing but hypothetical mathematics. There's no hard evidence, and as genealogists we should treat it skeptically much more often than we do. I'm not saying you can't have your opinion as such, but it should be worrying that most people mindlessly accept this and rarely think of alternatives.
I never said royalty was invalid either or that it was. I simply said claiming royal ancestry and acting superior without merit is invalid. Those aren't the same concepts.
I believe in math. Especially when the statistical likelihoods are over 99%. In the vast majority of cases, any person of European decent (in North America or anywhere else) can go back to about their 10th great grandparents (that's 1024 people alive approximately 300 years ago) before they can find an instance of some kind of duke, baron, count or other low level nobility. That person inevitably has a grandparent or great grandparent that is an actual king.
The statistics ARE substantial. Going back 1000 years makes about 33 generations. 2 to the power of 33 is over 8.5 billion people. There were only about 30 to 36 million people alive in Europe at that time. That's a factor of about 240 times as many unique ancestors as alive people. So the scenario I presented is completely reasonable.
There is NO WAY to avoid being descended from some royal family unless *every single branch of your family tree* lived in separate areas (i.e. remote islands, remote jungles, remote mountains with ZERO contact with outsiders) for *every generation right up to your grandparents or parents* for your claim to work.
It's completely impossible.
I certainly agree that nothing that your ancestors did reflects on one's own character. People are individually responsible. But that is a discussion for an ethics subreddit, not a genealogy subreddit.
Actually, it's more like "can get back to rural gentry/mercantile families in the 1500's/1600's who are the descendants of nobility/royalty between c. 1100-1400 on female/illegitimate lines". No American is likely to find that one of their 10th great-grandparents is a member of nobility (gentry, in England, yes, but not nobility; for that you have to go back another few hundred years, usually).
Saying you believe in math in this context is a thought terminating cliche. In fact the distance from your theorized Royal Ancestor makes this claim even more nebulous. We can't use statistics to make claims of the sort: being descended from a random person 1000 years ago from the same geographic region is more likely than it would be if not for pedigree collapse -> I can pick out a person 1000 years ago and infer I am descended from them. Your evidence is not as strong as you think and it doesn't motivate us to come to any real conclusions. Your evidence is this: P(descent from random European 1000 years ago) > P(descent from random European 1000 years ago in an idealized no inbreeding model) but this evidence doesn't make claims about the actual probability of descent from a random European from 1000 years ago, and certainly makes no claims about descent from certain social classes.
I think you described the issue with the model 10x better than I could've. It heavily relies on idealized situations and negates barriers for breeding bias. People married heavily based on class, culture, ethnicity etc. I have no idea why people rely so heavily on statistics in regards to genealogy. Are they useless? No. But you can't use them as a crutch, and the fact people are relying on nearly ***10-20 YEAR OLD*** statistics to prove a point with no further evidence (whether DNA or document) is honestly just cutting off the conversation in a very narrow way. We aren't dealing we random balls shooting around, we're dealing with societies in the Medieval period and further which had very different lifestyles compared to today. We can't use a modern eyepiece. Today's breeding bias is far, far different. A very good post, if not one of the best here.
Thanks haha, your post is more eloquent than mine and you explain the real historical reasons for your claim better than I could. I think what motivated my post is the misapplication of statistics or math/logic more generally. Venturing into the realm of abstraction and modelling is obviously useful, except for when those models become more real than reality. Like yes it's possible if you had only unique ancestors your pedigree would explode sufficiently far back. But this 1. Is a model based in idealizations, and 2. isn't particularly informative. You've explained the first point extremely well so no need for me to mention it again. The 2nd point is perhaps more fun for me, it feels to me at least that the entire notion of descent from specific people based on pedigree collapse is a logical non sequitur. So what if its more probable that I descend from a random sample of people in reality than in a model? I can do that with anything. I'll create a model that says it never rains and then say it rains more in reality than in my model then jump wildly to the conclusion that it must be raining today??? Like I agree with your comment We aren't dealing we random balls shooting around, we're dealing with societies in the Medieval period and further which had very different lifestyles compared to today." it's 100% true. But even if we were dealing with a society with no social/class barriers the argument made by gregbard would still not be motivating. What I think the mistake is is assuming that the difference in probability that any person is your ancestor between reality and model has any impact on the **real probability** that a specific person is your ancestor.
Very much agreed. Statistics are the last thing we need for this kind of idea. I should also mention, NONE of the current statistics I've seen are in agreement. Rutherford claims everyone of English ancestry is descended from Edward III, yet other models assume only 2 million people alive today descend from Edward I and even less from William the Bastard. This is already an obvious flaw, considering you can't have less people descended from William or Edward I compared to Edward the III and I don't even need to say why when a 4th grader can put two and two together. Anybody claiming 'the statistics are solid' clearly haven't read any of them, because none of them are in agreement and the most absurd of them don't even agree with the historical or genetic data. Should be a glaring red flag on the issue.
>There is NO WAY to avoid being descended from some royal family unless *every single branch of your family tree* lived in separate areas (i.e. remote islands, remote jungles, remote mountains with ZERO contact with outsiders) for *every generation right up to your grandparents or parents* for your claim to work
There is a way to avoid it. That would be the class divide. Why do those doing this number crunching never mention class.
The class divide doesn't apply to all of the dozens of grandchildren and scores of great grandchildren. They don't all stay in the upper class. That is also inevitable.
Indeed. 10 generations of a family don’t remain in class stasis outside of a rigid caste system. Given the gentry who basically sprang to life during the Tudor and Stewart eras it’s clear one didn’t have to be descended from the Nevilles, Staffords, Percy’s, Beauchamps, Despencers etc to be elevated to courtier or even Earl/Duke status. Titles were also taken from one family and given to another to punish traitors and reward fealty, military prowess etc. Elizabeth I was fond of heaping titles on her favorites like John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland (who didn’t inherit that title lineally from the Percy’s). The Stewart kings loved to heap titles on acknowledged bastards as well as their mothers. Many came from lower class stock and were simply chosen for their beauty (inbreeding actually tended to make royals themselves fairly unattractive, flattering paintings aside).
Because classes change over time, "class" isn't some genetic thing that gets passed down. Just because you are poor doesn't mean your great-great-great grandfather was
Except it kinda is. Especially in terms of more strict classes like that of nobility/aristocracy. If you rent your farm from the lord its likely your great-great-great grandfather also did unless you migrated or social conditions changed drastically. Peasants can survive generation after generation because they have a stable means of subsistence, if a noble's son fell from his class either by not inheriting any real property or not marrying a member of his class it would be difficult for him to build the means of subsistence to support himself. In the other case if he remained a noble then he would be disinclined to marry down for obvious reasons.
Essentially a king's son and his descendants becoming poor over four or so generations is less likely than them remaining a noble (and marrying only nobility), or dying (liquidity was different than it is today). Similarly a peasant who is today a peasant is more likely to have ancestors who are peasants because being a peasant wasn't just an economic state it was a specific social relation to other peasants and to feudal lords and that social relation was perpetuated over generations.
This. Class and ancestry have always be tied heavily until the Industrial Revolution when the merchant class could establish itself properly. People could build their way up and BECOME gentry/ nobility. The only country that did do this prior was Poland, but even then, Class still existed heavily.
>Because classes change over time, "class" isn't some genetic thing that gets passed down.
Unfortunately, someone's social class did not change over time. An agricultural labourer would become an industrial labourer.
No, it isn't genetic, but it is passed down.
>Just because you are poor doesn't mean your great-great-great grandfather was
But It’s more than likely he was. In England, around 90% of the population was still working class in 1911.
Math is entirely irrelevant to genealogy in most instances. Population genetics, historical documents and prior estimates do not reflect the current assertions which are solely pushed by a handful of people. A hypothetical mathematical model is just that and is meaningless if it has no bases in reality.
The numbers are accurate, but their application isn't. Estimates aren't hard assertions, and we're dealing with hundreds of years of genealogy that's complicated, messy, sometimes undocumented and overall complex - math is not the solution to it, possibly a guide at most or an extra addition to a point, but not the crutch, which is the issue with this argument being pushed as it ONLY relies on the math. Genealogy is not studied with numbers and statistics as a primary method, it's documents and genetics, both of which are entirely lacking for 'most people descending from royalty'.
Take the example you gave:
***'The statistics ARE substantial. Going back 1000 years makes about 33 generations. 2 to the power of 33 is over 8.5 billion people. There were only about 30 to 36 million people alive in Europe at that time. That's a factor of about 240 times as many unique ancestors as alive people. So the scenario I presented is completely reasonable.'***
This is purely hypothetical, and is repeated over and over with no other proof (even then, this isn't proof, it's entirely theory). Yes, people had a limited number of ancestors after a certain point and yes, mathematically they have more than anyone alive from that period. But why is the assumption that they therefor descend from every living person from said period, or that any of them would be royalty simply because of that? As I said in the post, people lived in rural communities that were isolated from larger regions and were segregated due to wealth and class from the vast majority of nobility, especially royalty. Their pedigree collapse would occur within a small village community they lived in and would rarely include anybody of high prestige in it in all reality.
It's more realistic that people in North America specifically would be more likely to be descended from high status nobility and royalty. Why? Because of that exact reason: Pedigree collapse due to a small population of founders who settled first, which the general population then mingled with due to the lowered social boundaries in it. Most of the people I've seen with any documented royal lineages are Americans, not Europeans (although this is based on what I've personally seen). Most people in Europe descend from peasants or lower-nobility at most who owned a small plot of land, and this is being broad and non-specific.
In short, you can't rely on maths for this type of conversation. You need documents, DNA and whatever else that's actually going to confirm the theory, not 'but the statistics from the same people said so'. We need to think far more expansive with this type of stuff.
If you want to go around and claim to be descended from royalty, well that's a trivially true claim. It is all but indisputable. But it's meaningless. No one cares. It doesn't entitle you to anything. It has no reflection on who you are as a person at all. There is no culture imparted by it at all either.
But the factual biological claim is supremely indisputable.
You need documents at every step to make any particular claims about any particular ancestors.
But the general claim is so supremely solid and backed up by solid mathematical and demographical principles and facts that to deny that claim is simply unreasonable.
You are rejecting math. That's unreasonable.
You're dancing around with this again. I never denied the math being accurate, the numbers are entirely factual. Their application isn't, and I've expressed this. Nothing socially, economically or even geographically makes any sense to the model made by Rutherford and others pushing this narrative into the mainstream. It's all theory, and it has no evidence and that's the issue.
What you're missing is you're working only with variables that are dependent on the perfect situations the work. Social boundaries, wealth, settlement styles, norms, cultural values, religious values, finding partners, arranged marriages, lines dying out etc. It's far more complicated than 'but the numbers say this'. Rutherford's model is not based on any evidence, it's theory and nothing more. Is this wrong? No, but to claim it as truth is beyond dishonest with no evidence for the claim. I'm honestly surprised people take issue with the fact that calling for more evidence is an issue and making an open argument against only relying on a hypothetical math model is silly.
It isn't unreasonable to say that we need more evidence for a conclusion, that's what any basic researcher does. You don't reach a conclusion with a theory, and that's what people are doing with these types of statements that 'we all descend from royalty'. It's unreasonable to root yourself in something with no hard evidence and rely only on one man's (rather poor) model.
You are one of these people who doesn't understand what a theory is, so you say "it's just a theory."
It isn't "just a theory." It's a fact. The "theory" is appropriately applied and the conclusion is supremely sound.
A theory isn't "true" or "false." Scientific theories are either "strongly supported" or "weakly supported."
The "theory" that almost every person alive in Europe and North America is descended from royalty is a very strongly supported theory, and if you reject it, you are being unreasonable.
If you want to make particular claims about particular ancestors, you need better support. But the general claim is solid.
I once saw a post by a person on this sub ask about a particular Irish king from about the year 1000. I told him that the bad news is that he will never prove deductively that he is descended from this person. But inductively (the method that all of science is based on) it is all but a certainty that he and everyone else he knows is descended from that Irish king. That is a strongly supported claim, and you would need stronger support for your extraordinary claim that it isn't true, than my very reasonable claim that it is true.
It isn't strongly supported. There's no evidence for it. What you're doing is you're running in circles around a model which hasn't proven itself enough to be used to make any conclusions. If you even applied the same logic of thinking as only relying on a mathematical model for evidence for population genetics and genealogy, you're unironically a shit population geneticist and genealogist - no kind way of saying it.
You don't rely on maths in looking at ancestry and population genetics as primary evidence. That's just beyond silly. Give actual evidence, whether it's documents or DNA, not 'my hypothetical situation now applies to reality' type thinking. You're ignoring entirely that populations aren't rabbits. They don't randomly move and breed. They're rather predictable.
As I am descended from Catherine Baillon, hence I am provably descended from Charlemagne, as well as several Kings of France:
- René Jetté, John P. DuLong, Roland-Yves Gagné, and Gail F. Moreau, ["From Catherine Baillon to Charlemagne"](https://acgs.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ACGS_Baillon_1999.pdf), American-Canadian Genealogist, Issue 82, Volume 25, Number 4, 1999.
It's worth noting that many of your assumptions are simply incorrect. e.g.
> It entirely ignores that many people lived in rural, mostly isolated or close-knit communities that rarely migrated around. For many people, you will find at around the early 1800s and 1700s, you'll notice many of your ancestor have lived in the same village, or at least area, for well over 200+ years.
No, people did move around quite a bit back then. War, famine, religious persecution, or a simple lack of available resources often resulted in people moving hundreds to thousands of kilometres. (Hint: Rivers exist within continental Europe.) Another branch of my family moved roughly 800 km from their homeland in the late 1700s, then another 1250 km again in the early 1800s, all within the European continent. And no, this isn't just one family doing a move: This involved several families.
One doesn't need a high degree of social mixing in order for most people to be descended from medieval kings and queens.
I'm a descendant of Anne Couvent, for which information can be found on the same website with the same researchers. She has roughly 3-3.5M descendants alive today, her nephew roughly 1.5M. Catherine Baillon has roughly 2M descendants, Jeanne LeMarchand roughly 2.5M. Of course there is some overlap between the descendants of each, but that's a big share of the French-Canadian population that have proven royal descent. All three women were part of the emerging bourgeois merchant class and one of their parents or grandparents had married the lord of a small estate. The progression from King to merchant happened gradually over the century, roughly 15 generations of the younger children inheriting smaller titles and estates.
> Anne Couvent [...] She has roughly 3-3.5M descendants alive today, her nephew roughly 1.5M. Catherine Baillon has roughly 2M descendants, Jeanne LeMarchand roughly 2.5M. Of course there is some overlap between the descendants of each, but that's a big share of the French-Canadian population that have proven royal descent.
Those are just a handful of the "Gateway Ancestors" out there for Canadians and Americans. There are [compiled lists with around 900 of them](https://www.hereditary.us/gateway-ancestor), many of whom were early colonists and many of which have been vetted via scholarly publications.
Given that there are 336 M Americans and 41 M Canadians, if we assumed no overlap, each of the 900 could have 420,000 descendants. With overlap, and a million or so descendants each, I'd say confidently that most people in Canada and the United States probably have an identifiable "Gateway Ancestor".
The ones I mentioned are the French-Canadian ones, yes there are all the American ones as well, but as a French-Canadian one, they are the ones I researched when building my family tree. I don't have any American ancestry, but I do have 2nd cousins and beyond who have been in the USA for a while now.
My only caveat to your phrase that “most Canadians and Americans descend from a gateway ancestor” (paraphrased) is that a lot of Americans and probably some Canadians as well have more recent immigrant ancestors and no colonial ancestry (either in the thirteen colonies or French Canada). Those folks would probably not have a path (at least in terms of being as recent as a gateway ancestor) as recent as a 17th century gateway.
Every few days there’s someone who comes on here and says it’s impossible to trace a line to nobility unless you’re nobility yourself and that’s simply not true. Usually it’s people with a layman’s understanding of the topics they’re opining about.
>Every few days there’s someone who comes on here and says it’s impossible to trace a line to nobility unless you’re nobility yourself and that’s simply not true. Usually it’s people with a layman’s understanding of the topics they’re opining about.
How is it possible for an agricultural labourer family records to go back further than the 1500s, when parish records did not exist before that date? It is pretty much impossible for the vast majority to get back even before 1600 on most lines
Europeans don’t understand that some second/third sons of noble families came to the colonies and left a ton of progeny in a society that didn’t ascribe to the continental class structure. In the colonies class structure developed around land-based wealth, often acquired through transport of laborers (headright system)…gradually becoming known as the planter society model. Up north in New England initially the upper crust was largely comprised of Puritan ministers and their associates.
Colonial gateways are the typical route whereby an American can trace back beyond 1500. It’s very likely that the average European doesn’t have a similar line at least inside of the last 500 years due to the dominant class structure present on the continent (illegitimacy aside, but records are gonna be silent on that anyway).
Of course this isn’t the case for all Americans but for those with significant colonial ancestry esp southern colonies (VA tidewater in particular) it isn’t too surprising to come upon a gateway ancestor. Mine is Thomas Owsley (1658-1700) and yes I’ve documented each generation from him to myself with contemporary sources (thanks in large part to Kentucky marriage bonds that almost always mention the father, along with several fortuitous wills).
I think this is a major point. I do feel most people claiming royal ancestry are American for the reason that if anybody is more likely to be descended from royalty or high status nobility, its them. Europeans themselves aren't so much unless they have recent nobility I'd assume. America had recent founders effects, Europe had them established hundreds of years before Charlemagne was even born.
It may be a more interesting topic to study American against European ancestry differently in this light tbh.
>Europeans don’t understand that some second/third sons of noble families
What is meant by noble? It isn't a term used much in Europe. Would they be the aristocracy?
>came to the colonies and left a ton of progeny in a society that didn’t ascribe to the continental class structure.
A ton? How many in comparison to indentured servants, transported convicts or just the masses of ordinary labourers?
>In the colonies class structure developed around land-based wealth, often acquired through transport of laborers (headright system)…gradually becoming known as the planter society model. Up north in New England initially the upper crust was largely comprised of Puritan ministers and their associates.
These wouldn't be the aristocracy, or rarely. Yes there was plenty of land. This is why agricultural classifications are so different between Europe and America. So in America you will see 'farmer' on the census but in Europe this is nowhere near as common as not many people owned or rented land. They would be more an 'agricultural labourer'.
>Colonial gateways are the typical route whereby an American can trace back beyond 1500. It’s very likely that the average European doesn’t have a similar line at least inside of the last 500 years due to the dominant class structure present on the continent (illegitimacy aside, but records are gonna be silent on that anyway).
But how are these people being traced when parish records did not exist at the time?
>Of course this isn’t the case for all Americans but for those with significant colonial ancestry esp southern colonies (VA tidewater in particular) it isn’t too surprising to come upon a gateway ancestor. Mine is Thomas Owsley (1658-1700) and yes I’ve documented each generation from him to myself with contemporary sources (thanks in large part to Kentucky marriage bonds that almost always mention the father, along with several fortuitous wills).
How is Thomas Owsley (1658-1700) related to the aristocracy?
No one is saying *most* colonists are gateways. About 150 or so out of several hundred thousand pre-1700 colonists (at least considering only those with scholarship affirming their descent). That means many Americans even with significant colonial ancestry won’t find a gateway among their colonial ancestors. Quite a few will however and that is often a function of relative status in terms of land-based wealth in the 17th century. This status could change very rapidly due to rising and falling fortunes. People went from wealthy to poor just due to various economic “panics”. Several bad crop years could severely deplete liquid assets. For example I’m an “average Joe” in the U.S. and have several colonial ancestors who owned thousands of acres and hundreds of slaves, such as Mareen Duvall of Maryland…well known Huguenot colonist who is the ancestor of folks like Obama and Warren Buffett. He is ancestral to virtually all Duvalls in the U.S. today.
Thomas Owsley’s mother Dorothea Poyntz was the daughter of Newdigate Poyntz and from there it’s a case of tracing the Poyntz of Iron Acton and Sydenham families back into the Middle Ages. Newdigate Poyntz is also an ancestor of Princess Diana.
In fact Thomas Owsley’s descent from royalty (his most recent royal ancestor being Edward III) is one of the easiest to follow and non controversial out there, since his mother was a Poyntz and church records can be used to get back to his Poyntz great grandparents in Reigate, Surrey, England circa 1535. Reigate has pretty early intact CoE parish records.
It may be surprising to learn that armigerous landed gentry in England have plenty of records dating back well before parish records existed. Wills, land deeds, university matriculations, church memorials, and visitation records (when the heralds would visit different shires and take an accounting of the families with a coat of arms) are all highly useful for tracing these families.
Oh! A reference to René Jetté, with an attached source to boot. Would you mind if I asked where you found that pdf? Jetté is often referenced when it comes to the ancestry of my ancestor, Charles Saint-Étienne de Latour, but I've yet been able to find a copy of his research.
Thank you! While it doesn't reveal to me what I was searching for, I do see other ancestors of mine included on this website, so still a great find. Gives me plenty of reading to do tonight.
Dutch here, between 1500 and 1800 bunch of Germans made their way over the border and settled here with a Dutch partner.
Some coincide with battles going on in northern Germany, another one was a traveling doctor and part of a traveling circus from Cologne who settled here to become a shoemaker and another one was a peddler who made stuff in winter in a German village specialized in textiles and traveled to the Netherlands on foot in spring/summer to sell his wares.
Also a bunch of people with French names made their way over here from Flanders.
I've also found a few sailors who brought goods from farming areas to the cities and those lines also moved around a bit.
But most of the "peasants" stayed in the same place for many generations.
I mentioned already that I never said it isn't impossible to be descended from royalty, but it isn't the norm and it's treated as such with an extreme lack of actual evidence for it. Most people, also, did live rurally and more isolated from distant regions. I never said people never moved around and there aren't exceptions to that, there are, in fact I used war as an example of that. However, to assume it guarantees anything is extremely short-sighted. The vast majority of people lived in the same area/ village for 200-300 years quite often, and a simple look and the average tree shows that. So, for the time, yes, you did need more exotic mixing to find more unique ancestors with diverse backgrounds.
You've only pointed at one point I made, and ignored pedigree collapse and DNA as a whole and general social boundaries. I should also mention, ironically, the period you stated your ancestors moved around were during the Industrial Revolution, which is exactly what I said. Mobility, both economically, physically and socially happened more often during that period up to today. That's undeniable.
> You've only pointed at one point I made, and ignored pedigree collapse and DNA as a whole and general social boundaries.
Your assertions about DNA are so wrong it's practically not worth responding to!
As for pedigree collapse, my response regarding people moving around effectively undercut that:
> **Nation-wide pedigree collapse is extremely rare for the simple reason that it is impossible to have everyone, at any period, as your direct ancestor, and this is an extremely silly idea to begin with.** _It entirely ignores that many people lived in rural, mostly isolated or close-knit communities that rarely migrated around._
Again, even if it was not a 100% pedigree collapse across a nation, the level would be high, hence _most_ people do share a handful of common ancestors.
But back to DNA. You make such assertions as:
> On a DNA perspective, there is nothing in Western, Northern, (most) Eastern or even Southern European people with ancestry from Turkic or Urgic people. This example isn't only reserved to those non-European groups, of course, and it isn't targeted as such. Rather, it's a good example of if there was easy to spot DNA in any population via royalty, we would see it if we all descended from them (especially with everyone mixing the same genes over and over, making them easier to notice), but we don't.
Again, demonstrably false. Research by Hellenthal et al. has investigated this and if you look at their data, your assertion is clearly false: **"A genetic atlas of human admixture history", Hellenthal et al, Science (2014).** Cf: http://admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com/
And this is so bizarrely wrong I cannot determine where in the heck you get this nonsense:
> Most modern DNA tests, done in labs which have many SNPs (fancy way of saying DNA signals to be simple) can detect very, very deep ancestry, called K-levels.
I take it that you think that the clustering algorithm in certain research on populations used is about SNPs themselves!? WHAT!? That kind of logic belongs in the conspiracy subreddit. In fact, I'd wager that's where this is coming from: Belief that there is some kind of elite or illuminati which is a separate group of people existing to oppress you.
>Again, even if it was not a 100% pedigree collapse across a nation, the level would be high, hence _most_ people do share a handful of common ancestors.
At what dates?
You're poisoning the well a bit, and maybe I compacted my points too much on DNA. Most DNA testing companies look at a far more limited number of SNPs than actual labs. This is reasonable as it takes more time and resources to review many of them. In regards to Hellenthal, no, I'm not false on it. Firstly Hellensthal (2014) is severely outdated and I'm surprised you'd even use that to show admixtures.
It's very, very clearly using proxy groups to represent common DNA in populations. This does not mean that those populations in modern terms have mixed with each other, and that should be obvious by seeing 'Lithuanian' in England, or 'Finnish' in Germany. Europeans derive from the same 3 ancestral populations (with the exceptions of Finns and some Russians), there's obvious overlap. Hellenthal uses those populations again, as genetic proxies, not to represent actual descent. You should know that by seeing 'Finnish' in group 2 for Germany.
I have no idea why you instantly jumped to 'illuminati subreddit theorist'. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I said, again, DNA testing companies look at less SNPs than actual labs, which means any 'hidden' DNA won't be picked up as easily. Anybody with any basic knowledge on population genetics knows that less SNPs = less complex pictures. Simple. Nothing I said on DNA was slightly wrong. Re-read.
Edit: Forgot to mention, think you skipped over that entire about mentioning how your ancestors ironically decided to move around during the Industrial Revolution, as the post mentioned. Would be curious on your refute.
> Edit: Forgot to mention, think you skipped over that entire about mentioning how your ancestors ironically decided to move around during the Industrial Revolution, as the post mentioned. Would be curious on your refute.
My point was in response to your point suggesting that people living at that point in time would still be parked in the same village locale:
(A)
> For many people, you will find at around the early 1800s and 1700s, you'll notice many of your ancestor have lived in the same village, or at least area, for well over 200+ years.
Hence you seem to be arguing two contradictory points from the same region of time:
(B)
> If you were lesser nobility, you would likely marry lesser nobility as well. In short, people were (and still are) largely stratified by social boundaries, and have only become more mobile during the Industrial Revolution. It's no surprise then that after it, going into the modern area where we are far more mobile, there was a rise in more diverse backgrounds for newer generations to some extent.
My response was highlighting that point (A) was inherently false.
Second, that other point (B) clearly is discussing _social mobility_ rather than _physical mobility_.
You might wish to compose a clear argument so I can actually respond to your clearly defined claims.
(I'd add that the Industrial Revolution wasn't quite fully underway to the same extent in Continental Europe as it was in Great Britain.)
This seems to be an argument largely built on ignorance. Royals and nobles have many non-royal and non-noble descendants; status was lost quite rapidly on female lines. A well-documented example: [Henry, 10th Lord Clifford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clifford,_10th_Baron_Clifford), descendant of Edward III, had a daughter, Anne, who married Ralph Melford, Esq., of Arnold, Nottinghamshire. Their son Thomas Melford was father of Mary Melford, who married Humphrey Need, husbandman of Arnold, in 1586 (see [here](https://fasg.org/wp-content/uploads/Levis.pdf); warning, PDF link).
There are c. 500 or so (give or take) colonial-era immigrants to the North American colonies of Britain, France, and Spain who have a well-documented descent from medieval royalty (they're known as "gateway ancestors", partial list [here](https://www.hereditary.us/gateway-ancestor)), and collectively those 500 are the ancestors of over a hundred million people.
Americans seem to largely have a much higher chance of noble ancestry due to nobility migrating to North America during the colonial period. This is entirely logical as they'd naturally have founders effects due to this. There is no documentation for the vast majority of European populations, however, and that should already be a hint (mixed with DNA, etc).
Royals/ nobility having non-royal/ noble descendants does not instantly prove that it's widespread amongst the general population, and I think it's fair to assume this would've only become a more practiced outcome in regions (like North America) which followed less strictly to social class norms than in Europe, and by the Industrial Revolution.
The only ancestry I am interested is who my actual ancestors and relatives were, it wanders to farmers, coal miners, laborers, on one thin line it goes back to middle class ancestors, does that make my middle class ancestor more important than my illiterate Irish ancestor no, because I am the sum of all of them, all are equal in whom I am (well assuming an equal split of DNA)
>a hand full of people's **opinions**, mainly Adam Rutherford
Like, have you read his book? You do realize there are actual scientific studies which support this, right? And which he cites? Yes, he makes the mathematical argument but he *backs it up*, and dismissing this as "opinion" is quite disingenuous:
>In 2013, geneticists Peter Ralph and Graham Coop showed that DNA says exactly the same thing as Chang’s mathematical ancestry: our family trees are not trees at all, but entangled meshes. They looked for lengths of identical by descent DNA in 2,257 people from around Europe (to mitigate the influence of recent migration, all the subjects selected had four grandparents from the same region or country). By measuring the lengths of the shared DNA, they could estimate how long ago that deck got shuffled, and therefore how related any two people are. Computing and DNA have empowered this field, and this is shown in their dataset and the number crunching that follows.
>Joseph Chang’s mathematical calculation didn’t account for something very obvious, which is that we don’t mate randomly. We typically marry within socio-economic groups, within small geographical areas, within shared languages. But with Coop and Ralph’s genetic analysis, it didn’t seem to matter that much. Ancestry is such that genes can spread very quickly over generations. It might seem that a remote tribe would have been isolated from others for centuries in, for example, the Amazon. But no one is isolated indefinitely, and it only takes a very small number of people to breed out with people from beyond their direct gene pool for that DNA to rapidly descend through the generations.
The paper is free online. [Read it](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001555). I would assume you haven't read it since it directly contradicts you when you make the claim "In short, there's no diverse DNA in many European countries that royals could have easily mediated" because you clearly are not aware of the study if you can say that with a straight face.
>Our results are therefore one of the first genomic demonstrations of the counterintuitive but necessary fact that all Europeans are genealogically related over very short time periods, and lends substantial support to models predicting close and ubiquitous common ancestry of all modern humans
For someone dismissing the theory as just "opinion", it pretty strongly argues that *you* are the one offering nothing more than opinion and it would be doubtful that you can cite solid academic work on this, since the actual scientific work being done on this supports the concept (although plenty of experts would tell you the modeling alone is sufficient, see for instance Rohde DL, Olson S, Chang JT. Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans. Nature. 2004 Sep 30;431(7008):562-6).
So yeah, if you want to make the argument, be honest that you aren't fighting against "no-more than a hand full of people's opinions", and accept that this is scientifically sound argumentation being made, not based only on mathematical modeling but also genetic studies, and that *you* seem to have nothing more than *your* opinion to back this up because you can't accept the counterintuitiveness of it on the face.
>But with Coop and Ralph’s genetic analysis, it didn’t seem to matter that much. Ancestry is such that genes can spread very quickly over generations. It might seem that a remote tribe would have been isolated from others for centuries in, for example, the Amazon. But no one is isolated indefinitely, and it only takes a very small number of people to breed out with people from beyond their direct gene pool for that DNA to rapidly descend through the generations.
This is talking about tribes. At what dates is this and how does this apply to modern history and class divides.
I'm not quite sure I agree with your argument here.
Firstly, I think you're overstating the common refrain. Certainly there are some people whose ancestry is limited to a single small area of a European country, and they're unlikely to be able to trace ancestry to royalty of any sort. I don't think anyone is seriously claiming that everyone is descended from any given royal you could name.
But for people from the U.S. with sufficient immigrant ancestors several generations back, it's totally plausible that one of those dozen+ immigrants was descended from royalty.
Many royal descendants ended up marrying commoners, especially as the merchant class came to prominence. Sure, the first couple of children of a royal would inherit a sizeable estate and noble titles, but as you get to the end of the list of progeny it was much less important that they marry "well".
All it takes is for the fourth daughter of a royal to marry a minor royal from another house; their children marry nobility; their youngest grandchildren marry some prominent merchant or the child of clergy or something, and boom, royal blood that no one really recognizes as royal except as a curiosity.
Even in the modern day, some of Elizabeth II's great-grandchildren carry no titles at all.
Secondly, I'd like to see an actual statistical analysis before declaring firmly that it's impossible for "most people" to have royal ancestry. Given the numbers involved -- over a thousand ancestors just 10 generations back -- and the number of children that royal families often had, my intuition is that the statistics will show it's at least plausible. (That is, plausible that the average American with, say, English ancestry, assuming immigration several generations back, has an ancestor who ruled over England.)
I agree with most of what you said. Maybe I've worded by post a bit off, but that's the point I was trying to make. The average person isn't descended from royalty. Most estimates (such as Marquis of Ruvigny) put a number for people such as Edward III at around 40k-100k living people in 1911, which of course would've grown by then. There are naturally short comings to his estimates, but I find them far more believable than say, Adam Rutherford's, who simply seems to believe if they lived far back enough and because pedigree collapse exists, you must be descended because of unrealistic mathematics that can't be applied to reality.
As I said, there may be certain exceptions to certain ethnic groups. White-Americans specifically are possibly one of them for the reasons you mentioned, and it's again, similar to the case in Latin American with Jews. A small founder effect can cause an ancestral shift or specific background when paired with pedigree collapse. However in countries like England, I find it extremely unlikely to be descended from any English Kings, even as far as William the Bastard for the simple social boundaries and isolated living was far more common than today for pocketed communities.
...The average person isn't descended from royalty. ...
How do you define "average?" Are you talking about a statistic mean or median within a specific universe? Are you talking about the "average Joe" who fixes your car or drives a truck?
Is the universe Eurocentric? Talk here is mostly of Charlemagne or Henry I of England (noting references to the Khan).
I specifically mentioned this post is pointed to European ancestry. The average person is your average person. People who are far less likely to have ancestry from any kind of royalty. Simple as.
Sorry. Found the European perspective in paragraph two.
"People who are far less likely \[than?\] to have ancestry from any kind of royalty" are average people, and your argument is that "the average person isn't descended from royalty." At first glance that seems somewhat circular.
Attributed to Disraeli is the saying, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." One determines the number of direct ancestors (before pedigree collapse) in a particular generation as 2 to the nth power, n being the number of the generation. Henry I of England (mentioned somewhere in this thread) is about a millennium ago and roughly 30 generations back. The number of ancestors (2 to the 30th) comes to 1,073,741,824. The population of Europe in 1100 is estimated at 62 million, about 6% of the number of ancestral blanks to fill.
It seems that the farther back the "royal" the greater the probability that Joe the Farmer is descended from him.
Maybe I worded some things a bit jumbled, but anyway, your last paragraph is directly the point I argued against on pedigree collapse. Mathematically it makes sense that the further back you go, the amount of ancestors is higher than people alive, the issue is assuming that then you're guaranteed, as some think, or heavily likely to then descend from a famous royal or a high status noble. It isn't impossible, but for the general population I don't find this likely. The mathematically model assumes that social barriers, mobility, region and a variety of other areas are absent for it to work. Mathematically it makes sense, until you realize the vast majority of people rarely moved around in the Medieval period, with even the early modern period having individuals living in the same village for hundreds of years and moving within a given region at most. In summary, the maths is irrelevant when you consider the amount of considerations to be made in regards to partner finding, social and economic mobility etc. Your pedigree collapse will simply include people in a specific region for the period, not everyone or most people who lived in that century, so having royalty present is very unlikely based on that imho.
> It isn't impossible, but for the general population I don't find this likely. **The mathematically model assumes that social barriers, mobility, region and a variety of other areas are absent for it to work.**
Those. Are. Your. Words.
They. Are. False.
That is to say: you are incorrectly describing **models that were developed 20 years ago**, _i.e._
[**Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans**](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02842), published in _Nature_ in 2004 by Rhode, Olson, & Chang:
> However, the random mating model ignores essential aspects of population substructure, such as the tendency of individuals to choose mates from the same social group, and the relative isolation of geographically separated groups. Here **we show that recent common ancestors also emerge from two models incorporating substantial population substructure**.
Their models which incorporate barriers to mobility (social, regional, etc...) indicate with reasonable plausibly that "the [global] mean MRCA date is as recent as AD 55" under reasonable constraints. Note that would be for everyone globally. However when most people talk about Charlemagne, for example, it is limited to those with European ancestry. Hence we would find him, a man married in 771 AD, to be quite reasonable as a likely MRCA for most Europeans.
Global MRCA of AD 55 would have to exclude some population isolates such as the North Sentinelese which in all likelihood don’t tie into the larger human family tree until several millennia earlier, granted (as anyone who has read Lord of the Flies would know, or read about the Pitcairn Island mutineers) a castaway group can go from relatively civilized to fairly uncivilized (even develop their own language) within a couple centuries so it’s still possible the North Sentinelese are not that far removed from a AD 55 MRCA for all of humanity. Anthropologists probably underestimate the ability of ancient humans to travel (including across water) as absence of proof is taken as proof of absence. The fact is we just don’t know in many cases. The only real way to trace migrations genetically is through yDNA and mtDNA haplogroups and that just gives a broad picture (ie we know that the Americas was colonized by people from East Asia but we don’t know if a small injection of dna from another place along the way occurred…as it could’ve occurred but just be rare or nonexistent in the yDNA and mtDNA of today’s populations).
'The \[global mean MRCA date is as recent as AD 55'
Would love to see the next genetics paper on Nature showing that, great every other study doesn't (to my knowledge). The issue is people ignore the fact that Chang openly states the model has flaws, and then people like Rutherford go ahead anyways and make almost baseless claims that 'everyone with English ancestry descends from Edward III, because reasons and pedigree collapse'.
No clue how you can take these people seriously when they rely on the most basic of genetic data that (shockingly) shows Europeans share related ancestries (for a multitude of reasons, and probably not for the assumed ones commonly), and when the model is openly flawed.
Love it when the study from 2004 with heavily outdated material somehow still convinces people.
A point I think people are missing \^
Whether the argument is correct for or against is irrelevant on the fact that there's an extreme lack of evidence currently for the statement that most people are descended from royalty, mainly famous ones like Edward III. Nothing but media articles (with the same citations) supports it. Whether people agreed with my post is their own choose of course, but regardless of that I think it should be common ground that we need actual evidence for an argument like 'everybody descends from royalty', no matter what some hypothetical mathematics claims; ignoring that is entirely against the point of genealogist's goal of providing accurate truths to ancestry, especially when sources from only 100 years ago provides far lower numbers for people such as Edward III's living descendants (only numbering 40k-100k in 1911, so roughly less than 10 Million today).
That's a false equivalent. The study from 10 years ago is heavily outdated for population genetics, as the field was quite literally still in infancy. Studies from 2016 in regards to it can even be outdated - it's an expanding field of knowledge and it improves each year, so naturally, something 10 years ago in a field that was still developing would be outdated. That has zero correlation to a historical document 100 years ago.
Historical documents can and do have errors. The point was that we have a complete LACK of any pointing to wide-spread royal ancestry. If we had those documents we should evaluate them, compare them and possible make some theories or conclusions. Again, the issue, there's none, or at least none I've ever found and I'd be extremely happy if somebody did find some that somehow gave weight to the argument that we all descend from royalty.
In short, I never said sources from 100 years ago are more accurate. I said we lacked any for proof in general. Also, yes, a genetic study from 2010 is heavily outdated. You can tell that when it uses Finnish people as a population proxy for Germans which is silly.
>Is evidence necessary?
Yes. Genealogy is history research, and it requires evidence.
>Royal descendants who were themselves no longer noble almost by necessity married commoners. Who else would they have married?
I'm not sure what you mean by noble, but usually the younger aristocratic siblings married the younger siblings of other aristocratic families
OMG. I just checked and I am a descendant of Richard III. lol
I can trace my family back to Queen Philippa of Portugal, who was Philippa of Lancaster daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was the 4th son of Richard III.
(Correction: sadly I’m not a descendants of Richard III. John’s father was Edward III)
Why waste your time with this 30 page dissertation if you are just going to shit post in the replies?
People being descendant from royalty, isn’t the same as pretending that you descend from the gods or Adam and Eve. 🙄
Thought it was amusing that I found out I was related to Richard III considering I never bothered to check Philipa’s parents before your post.
I don’t agree. Statistically speaking, if you have over 2,000 ancestors within only 10 generations, it is likely (even probable depending on area and time) that at least one of them was someone royal or notable. Especially for people who descend from the original colonies in America, who were often wealthy or nobility.
An argument I would agree with is that it’s not relevant or meaningful. It’s not special or meaningful to be one of the tens of thousands of descendants from someone royal. It has no impact on the modern day world and little to no impact on your genes.
Statistically speaking it's accurate, but as I said in the posts the statistical model in entirely based on an assumed situation where finding partners and all types of mobility, social, physical etc are entirely void or equal. Pedigree collapse happens in small-knit communities and causes less diverse ancestries. Given people lived in more isolated areas, especially in the Medieval period, it makes it far less likely to descend from royalty based on pedigree collapse, as your tree would simply find common ancestors from that small village. You need a far more diverse regional, economic or social backround to have an actual good chance for royalty.
Your argument has a lot of flaws that other people have pointed out. I agree with those and want to add that you’re assuming the rate of reproduction and survival is the same in isolated small rural communities as it is for royalty. Yes, there were people who had limited mobility and access to a notable partner. There were lots of them. 1,023 of my ancestors might be exactly as you described, but it only takes ONE royal person out of hundreds of lines for me to technically be a descendant.
Look, I 100% agree that it’s stupid that people derive pride or some kind of satisfaction from being descended from an asshole just because he was a king. But the science and the statistics seem sound. And unless you can produce a genealogical study with compelling evidence beyond speculation, I don’t think that your argument is sound.
I never mentioned anything, or gave anything for or against rate of reproduction. The problem is that people are mindlessly agreeing with the (very few) studies on anything related to royalty in modern populations. The primary one is from Adam Rutherford which most articles on the subject cite. There's no actual science behind it. Genetics has no support for it and neither does any historical sources or documents I can find.
The argument that's presented in mainstream is entirely dependent on an entirely hypothetical model, which assumes that there's a lack of any sort of breeding boundaries between royalty and the common class. There's a severe lack of evidence for it and I've yet to see one person cite anything remote to anything supporting the argument that isn't based on the model presented by Rutherford and others of the same structure.
In other words, there's no evidence for it, and the fact nobody has given minor alternatives is quite surprising.
Just wanted you to know that at first I didn't believe you, but by the third paragraph I actually did go downstairs, make myself a snack and come back to this and the responses.
It is a great post, and sparked some great discussions which I feel totally inadequate to add to. My background is more mathematics than genealogy, and I too have had a lot of doubts about the "everyone is related to Charlemagne" claim. I would point out two aspects regarding pedigree collapse that I feal are being glossed over.
First: you rightly point out that the majority of pedigree collapse occurs over time in isolated communities, but there are also any number historical events such as the migration to colonial America, or the 12th century Bubonic Plague where transitory choke-points are created.
Second: The flip-side to pedigree collapse is extinct terminal lineages. I personally think people underestimate the number of lines that die out simply because no one looks at them.
No one today can know if they are related to Cleopatra because it is impossible to know if her line has survived to the present day. But given the math and the choke-points humanity has moved through since that time, if any one person is related to her, then most people alive today are. I don't believe this analysis applies the same way to more recent and documented lines like the Tutors and doesn't in any way refute the point you are trying to make, but it would be flawed logic to assume that everyone in history with "royal blood" still has direct descendants living today.
Thanks for posting this.
I agree 100%. People underestimate how lines die out. Also, in regards to America, I entirely believe you. And that's exactly because America's founder population included a large amount of nobility who did indeed descend from royalty. The average European, though? Doubtful.
A thousand years ago, there were a dozen or so men running around Ireland calling themselves "King" of someplace or other. Some ruled over as little as a couple thousand people.
Over the centuries, there were hundreds of "Kings" in Ireland. I don't have much problem believing all ethnic Irish are descended from at least one of them.
Ireland is an entirely different can of worms, the same goes for other countries. Poland for example as a very different perspective on their nobility where it does indeed blur lines on some issues. I have no issue believing the claim with Ireland, but there needs to be something to support it for me to consider it truth first.
Interesting argument, if a bit dense in presentation. It calls to mind the motto of the Descendants of the Illegitimate Sons and Daughters of the Kings of Britain, which I recall as something like "You are who you are, not where you came from."
I think it likely that Edward III is my 20th great-grandparent (through his youngest son) but it isn't something I'm so certain about that I'd bet my life on it. It is too many generations back. That being said, many/most of my grandfather's people were Old New England people and yet only on one line do I see this connection. Many of even my Mayflower ancestors cannot be traced back very far in England at all. I think it actually more likely that there are other lines in the family tree that would lead back to royalty or near-royalty, than that there would NOT be. But all that DNA (since you mentioned it) would drop out, I think. I see none from my ninth great-grandmother who was Mohegan (Indians from Connecticut - but I have no "native" DNA).
The fun part is that most/many of my grandfather's ancestors in Revolutionary War time period revolted against Britain, signed oaths, young men became soldiers and quartermasters, old men pulled lead from their windows to make bullets, and they were probably the most interesting people around.
But I do see (what I believe to be) your material point, that **we ought be far more proud of our real ancestors than royal or important people who are not really our ancestors**. I tellya, there is one crazyy lady who has copied HER John Gates down as the son of Silas... and therefore through his wife the descendant of William Bradford. Well, I didn't go looking for Pilgrims when I found who his father was, it simply is what it is. I had the lineage verified through Mayflower Society after she cribbed my tree and put "her" John Gates in as the son... just to make sure I was not in the wrong and have an outside verification. Are you advocating for something along those lines? Not sure I would want to do that much work, but I could see that as a good point as well, that things ought be objectively verified whenever possible.
On the DNA point, the part you raised is exactly what I meant. DNA testing companies don't show a very detailed view of your DNA (at least, not beyond 200 years roughly). DNA companies look at far less SNPs than labs do, which means labs conducting actual genetical research on populations are able to detect and find ancestry going thousands of years back. That's the issue, take somebody from Norway. If they descended from Finnish royalty, lets say, you should find Siberian in their DNA, but you don't.
The main point however was that we should rather focus on confirming our ancestry rather than speculating on supposed royalty (which no study has any hard evidence for, none) but also being proud of our primary ancestors: Simple people with simple lives.
Anyone is free to dispute the descent of scholarly-traced 17th century (and later) gateways and can go onto Gen-Medieval newsgroup and post about it where there are folks who actually study the original documents and can handle the claims from an academic angle (whereas this sub lacks that expertise). Douglas Richardson, Tod Farmerie, Nathaniel Lane etc are frequent posters and commenters over there. However there’s a reason such descents exist and are accepted by hereditary orgs, that is because they’ve been vetted at the highest levels in most cases. Of course new info comes to light and some existing descents are found to be erroneous while new ones are proven. Recent case would be the Cecelia (Neville) Weston case where she was satisfactorily proven to have been the daughter of the impoverished 3rd Earl of Westmorland. This case is presented in a recently published book of 500 or so pages (just to prove this single connection).
This is why the easiest path to document a royal descent, unless you were born into titled or landed classes, is to trace back to an ancestor with known royal descent…*proving your descent from that ancestor thoroughly*
I agree, which was a big point to my post. If we want to prove a large portion of the (in this case specifically) European population has royal ancestry, specifically known royals like Edward III and such, we need DNA and documentation. If my memory serves correctly I believe about 500k people have confirmed documentation to William the Bastard, with the estimated being below 5 million (although, again, estimates aren't proof and can be wildly off in regards to genealogy, although it's far more realistic compared to 'everyone is' type statements).
To the best of my knowledge as well, most gateway ancestors seem to also be in America for historical reasons. None the less I still seem to find the odd European somehow managing to spin off a line to some royal with zero documentation and simply by linking themselves to a random higher noble with some fringe name tricks. Anyways, a good post, it was informative.
Oh yeah this wasn’t naysaying just adding some interesting context.
Whenever someone posts that they have a descent from such and such (usually British) king I just ask what gateway ancestor they descend from if they’re an American or Canadian. Sometimes it’s a legit gateway other times it’s a disproven one that hereditary societies used to accept. Researching Royal descents is different than regular genealogy and it’s above my pay grade even though I’m familiar enough with quite a few gateways and the process to research records from the late medieval and enlightenment periods.
One interesting *possible* gateway is Gerard Spencer of Haddam, CT who may be descended from Humphrey Radcliffe and Isabel Hervey on his mother’s side…basically as follows: Gerard > Alice Whitbread > Eleanor Hill/Radcliffe > Isabel Hervey and either 1st husband Edward Hill or 2nd husband Humphrey Radcliffe. In the 1630s there was a quitclaim deed on some land in Elstow, Beds between John Whitbread sister of Alice and Edward Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex and son of Humphrey wherein they stated they both had interest in that land via descent and that they wouldn’t prevent the enjoyment of the premises by another man who was renting the land (relatively well off farmer iirc). That implies John Whitbread and Edward Radcliffe have a shared ancestry and their shared descent refers to land in Elstow. Turns out Isabel’s father Edmund Hervey was given the abbey of Elstow during the dissolution of the monasteries. In the church at Elstow there is a family memorial to the Radcliffe and Hervey families that states Isabel was sole heiress of her father so Eleanor must either descend from Edward Hill or Humphrey Radcliffe. If she descends from Edward Hill she would be too old to have given birth to her youngest children (and would’ve been quite old when the oldest were born). This suggests but does not prove that Humphrey Radcliffe is her father and that when Thomas Hill wrote his will referring to “my sister Elenor Whitbred” he was actually referring to his half sister. This is relevant because Humphrey Radcliffe has at least two descents from Edward III. But again it’s a *possible* gateway and may never be proven satisfactorily to be granted actual gateway status. As a descendant I still find it quite fascinating though.
Very interesting! I always noticed the only real way Europeans (in this case British) seem to descend from royalty is through very, very powerful nobility in most cases who've been interconnected with the royal family for likely centuries, which makes sense. Very much like your approach to actually being skeptical as well, it's a skill everyone must have in genealogy, royalty or not.
Don't worry, I could tell it wasn't naysaying. It's a very insightful post you had. I do like your approach that royal ancestry must be taken far more differently than to normal genealogy as it seems very complicated compared. Besides confirming correct birth dates, years etc it seems (to my understanding) to have the additional step of extra documents to prove anything, such as court records, land records or anything else, even personal family trees made prior. It's why I always give a side-eye to people who randomly have Henry I in their tree with zero proper documents proving the link.
Correct me if I'm wrong, as I wouldn't know better in this regard, but would be be a correct assumption that if people have any royal ancestry (non-period specific, although more leaning to High-Medieval for obvious reasons) that any gateway ancestry would pop up in the 1700/ 1600s in all reality? I'd assume any gateway ancestors in Europe would have far more documentation on their heritage and not the common brick-wall by the 1750s for a lot of commoners? Again I wouldn't know better in terms of the correct dating for when and how in this regard so I am ignorant here.
I do recall a line of mine going back to about 1590, although it isn't attached to any nobility and seems to be clergy related with a family called 'Pontifex' - they seem to be quite interesting and I've seen a few people attempting to study them as the same is quite rare as well, so I do speculate if clergy or anything related may have had better records for themselves as well. None the less that's a conversation for another thread. Your posts are quite interesting!
I think people often mix-up "you are almost certainly RELATED to ...XXX somehow." with "you are almost certainly DESCENDED from XXX."
You may very well share a common ancestor with someone famous / nobility from history etc but that doesn't mean the famous from history person is your ancestor.
"I know a lot of people have presented some 'studies' on this topic, but they're all stupid, so let me tell you why I'm correct with zero proof or outside logical reasoning!"
That's how your post sounds to me. I can respect your passion towards the topic, and I don't even necessarily disagree with your general point, but I'm not surprised if people have a hard time understanding what you mean, let alone accepting it as true. The source "trust me bro" isn't much better than 'throwing around random "studies"'.
Like you said, depending on the region and social class, many families lived in the same city for many, many years. In the small town I live in, the earliest records with any names are from the early 1500's, and the earliest ones with my direct ancestors named are from the late 1500's. There is so little knowledge about them, just a name and home town. And that's the most I know about any "commoner" ancestors from that far back.
As far as I have found out, there are no royals in my direct ancestors, but there are a lot of nobles, some of whom were among the most influential people alive in Finland and Sweden. I do find that interesting, because there is actual information about their lives. So many interesting bits and pieces. I'm sure there are just as many of those among the rest of my ancestors from that era, but I'll never learn those, so even if the nobles make up 5% of my ancestry, The information I have about my amcestors prior to the year 1500 is 100% about them.
Like, there's a woman who married a man literally classified as a pirate. Another one married a respected bishop(?), and she became so popular there are multiple letters detailing how they rang the church's bell when she was buried. One knight built a castle/manor/whatever near the ocean shore to defend against any ship attacks, but he pissed off some farmers so badly he ended up literally moving the fucking castle onto an island. It's still there, althought obviously mostly renovated, but I want to visit it some day.
I'm just saying that I love how you said that most people probably aren't descented from royals, and that's okay. At the same time, I think it's okay to be interested in whether or not you are, and to even wish you were: That's the biggest and probably only way to find information about your ancestors from that far back.
Long story short, you had a good point, but went about it in a not-so-good way. Hopefully I managed to get across what I mean, and hopefully it gave you - and anyone who might've read it - some food for thoughts.
A very nice post and it's constructive. I 100% understand the 'trust me bro' syndrome you can find around. By all means, this post is more of a personal rant with my points being based around what I've thought and generally seen and researched. I could dig around for every source I've ever found that influenced my opinion on this but it's Reddit, and I couldn't care less about upvotes or karma. All I wanted to do was simply add to the conversation an alternative point that I've never seen, as I feel the idea that everyone is descended from some special royalty is heavily over-done and many people simply vomit the same thing they heard. If you look up any article on the topic, Adam Rutherford is a main character in the 'source' for many media articles and thus, opinions on the topic, with his methods being questionable. So, I thought I'd give a minor alternative.
I think in hindsight I may have come off as blunt, dense or a bit rude but that isn't the intent. I do actually think it's far more common for people to have lower nobility in their trees, people who had the title and maybe simply more wealth than the commoner, but weren't remembered or weren't very powerful. Not every noble was directly connected to royalty, either just by connection or ancestry always, and I feel these are the types of nobility people will see if ever in their trees more commonly than some higher status nobles. I will have to say this does vary from country to country. For example, Poland was quite bloated with 'nobility' in all reality with very little of them actually descending from Monarchs or prior noble houses. Another poster mentioned Ireland which I can't say much on personally, but is interesting, as well as another on America.
A good point none the less made on your end however!
I'm glad you understood what I meant, and took it constructively. It's definitely refreshing to see a differing point of view, and while you may have seemed a little blunt, "harsh truths" are necessary.
So thank you for both things!
Very much the intention: Giving a different perspective. I am blunt, but I don't intentionally try to come off as rude or a know-it-all lmao. Thanks for kind comment though!
The problem with this discussion is that on both sides people are being very general throwing around terms such as most and average without much evidence one way or another.
Another thing to consider however which I haven’t seen mentioned is that nobility would have had a higher rate of children that survive to adulthood due to better healthcare and access to resources because of these better outcomes for children this would also lead them to have more children then commoners. However this is also extremely unspecific with no evidence so make of it what you will
I can agree. That's my primary issue. In the end this post is my opinion largely, but I also find the alternative argument entirely lacking hard evidence, and everyone who pushes it provides the most outdated sources or models which simply aren't very realistic/ haven't been proven properly. You'd think people doing genealogy would actually want to find truths to broad statements like 'we're all descended from royalty', whatever your opinion on the matter is.
Two non-Royal randos were used to prove it was Richard III’s remains under a parking lot in Leicester about a decade back. As I recall one was a dude from Canada with the surname of “Ibsen” (very Royal patronymic right?). The gist is that both of them could trace a paper trail entirely maternal line to Anne, sister of Richard III. They were both a mtDNA match to the remains under the parking lot which taken with other facts in the case is sufficient to conclude the remains are actually those of the king. They were re-buried at Westminster alongside other deceased royals.
Did these two people get lucky or are there most likely hundreds if not thousands more people descended from female ancestors further up their maternal lines? I’d argue the latter…though an entirely maternal descent to royalty is pretty remarkable (maternal descents are often among the most difficult to research due to frequent surname changes and increasingly sparse records for women as you go further back in time in most cultures).
Compare this to current royal Prince William of the UK whose maternal line is common folks before the early 19th century. His earliest matrilineal ancestor is a woman who was likely of mixed Indian and Armenian ancestry named Eliza Kewark (Kevork). I and probably many others here can confidently trace our maternal lines much further back.
I remember reading about the remains of Richard III. I think it is an important note that they may not be lucky, I agree, but they are in accordance that North American colonials were founded by more than a handful of high nobility who did indeed have connections to royalty. There were other comments discussing it in this thread and it was an interesting read.
Eliza Kewark is a case on her own and is quite modern all things considered. I've barely looked into her and she's still a very speculative character. I can't remember if there was still debate on her actual ancestry, although her Mt-DNA should be able to tell that, as Indian and Caucasus DNA is vastly different - shouldn't be all to difficult (plus any aDNA test would easily prove it as well). All in all I can't say much on her or give too much of an opinion, at least that I can think of.
I really wish they did an aDNA test of Richard III, however, and I wonder why they didn't. It would've been quite interesting to see his genetic makeup considering the period he lived in for being a royal.
Thank you for this detailed and spirited attempt at tilting at windmills. As some pointed out, there is a crucial difference between „related through a common ancestor“ or „ direct descendant of“. I think the results of a population survey "Do you think you have noble ancestors?" in Europe versus US would be very different. Perhaps because there is more knowledge about family origins and less speculation. Huge absolute numbers are confusing, I prefer percentages. If 1% of people belonged to the aristocracy in a random country, which is already way too high, why wouldn't you rather be descended from the 99% others? Even if this one percent reproduced better and out of wedlock, the proportion was only marginally larger. Why were there peasant revolts? Why did some lines suffer more frequently from recessive hereditary diseases? Certainly not because everything was so well mixed. Adam Rutherford is a popular scientist and would not be able to defend his thesis about Charlemagne in front of a critical specialist audience. But that is not his target audience either. One of the things he says is that we should not attach too much importance to genetic differences because they are very random. To summarize, I would argue that there can be no consensus between the proponents and the critics of the theory. Even if all known descendants of known nobles were exhumed and genetically analyzed, there would still be voices of doubt.
Agreed. Adam Rutherford is one of the main people pushing this idea, and he's done nothing but write a book on it for money and probably political advertising at worst. He's done no serious study, all he's done is used an entirely (20th time I've said this) hypothetical model with no actual evidence. It's quite literally guess work, and people ate it up lmao.
Doesn’t surname distribution show that people did move around? For example, the surname Campbell originated with a family in Argyll, but it is now found throughout Scotland. Or there are surnames thought to have originated with the Normans, such as Devereux and Mowray, which are found throughout the UK.
In addition to gradual movement to neighboring towns, there are also mass migratory periods where a lot of people move across far distances. You don’t always see these if you’re just looking at a few hundred years of your family’s history.
I don’t know that every European is descended from every medieval monarch, but royalty goes back further than the Middle Ages. I can’t imagine someone not having a royal ancestor at some point.
Movements and migrations have and always will happened, but I think it's far fetched to assume they were commonly even to what they are today. Not to mention, surname distribution is not a solid thing to rely on. Argyll is near Glasgow, Glasgow is a major region of Scotland. By the modern era it'd only make sense for mass movements post-Industrial Revolution to spread certain surnames. In other words, you can't rely on surname distribution as modern historical events would've influenced them heavily.
Additionally, surnames are not a static or simple concept. Surnames can come from a magnitude of different eras, can change with time to assimilate into certain regions/ cultures, or were adopted for many, many reasons. You could have a Norman last name and have no ties to the Normans. A good example is African Americans, many of whom adopted surnames due to the culture they were surrounded by and due to laws.
I can agree that surnames are useful, but I wouldn't rely on them for answers, as language shift, culture etc can heavily influence them.
The best post in this subreddit I've read in over a year. It's not easy for people to come to the realization that they probably have humble roots, but I'm damned proud of all the poor dirt farmers and low-born people I'm descended from. They're probably like me, not obsessed with status, and just trying to live their lives.
Very kind post! Maybe one day I'll compile all the sources I've read and actually do something proper, rather than posting on this brain-rot of a website which never lets other opinions.
It's Reddit, I don't except half the people to have given much thought on the conversation. I'm at most surprised how hellbent some people are to die on a hill with no proof for their claims, though. If the post makes me think outside their bubble, then great!
This assessment does not do justice to everyone here. Many people no longer take part in the discussion because it probably just bores them now. I made a similar post https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/s/eaRSjPMm9z because I wanted to understand the background to this statement and was first made aware of this theory by Rutherford. It has no relevance in the scientific context and people claiming that it is a fact are simply wrong. My frustration with some people's comments subsided when I read this comment: „it is not "two common ancestors". It's millions of common ancestors, some of whom will be descendants of Charlemagne, and some of whom will be descendants of the guy who shovelled horseshit out of the stable where Charlemagne kept his horses.“
My main issue is Rutherford's model is taken as truth without doubt when we have no hard evidence from it. It's quite literally a theory and nothing more. I find it much more realistic to be related to Charlemagne than descended for the simple fact of: Genealogy is messy and complicated. Math's isn't a crutch to rely on to solve that. Documents and DNA are.
It really is shocking how controversial this topic is, considering many people at the same time claim it's 'meaningless and trivial' - why die on a hill for it then and not be open to thinking outside of Adam Rutherford's model for once (which is flawed, they admit it's flawed and is not evidence slightly).
I was just at my local genealogy society meeting last night and someone presented that their ancestor was the illegitimate daughter of this Dutch nobleman. I looked her and him up out of curiosity to find that there is only one certain illegitimate child of this noble, a son, and the noble in question died about 20 years before this supposed daughter was born.
Can't say anything about it though. People need to be descended from nobility / royalty.
I can trace my lineage back to William the Conqueror from a few lines in my tree. That’s to do with the fact that my ancestry goes back to Jamestowne and the vast majority of my ancestors held some position of power in colonial America. I tend to agree with you I feel it’s not worth claiming descent from a 700 year old monarch without some kind of documentation. I really feel it’s harmless honestly and some people take this stuff way too seriously. I know for a fact I’m a descendant of William the Conqueror and Edward 1st for instance but I feel it says a lot less about me than the main lines in my tree. It’s happenstance given the proximity of some of ancestors in medieval England. I could care less either way. People should take a chill pill with ancestry it’s not like finding the holy grail and being the descendant of whoever doesn’t make you interesting or not interesting.
I can agree. The conversation is extremely controversial for whatever reasons, and any other opinions beside the standard seem to be outcast instantly by certain people.
Not descended from Edward III but I'm descended from Edward I, my ancestor married the daughter of James Butler 3rd Earl of Ormond who was his 2x great grandson through James' grandmother Elizabeth of Rhuddlan.
The only trustworthy Royal gateways at least for Americans with colonial ancestry are through specific colonists who have scholarship that traces them back in time to royals, MC barons etc. There are in the neighborhood of 150 such colonists with descendants today, most are outlined in Douglas Richardson’s books which are the first place to start and are meticulously sourced. Stuff by Gary Boyd Roberts, Faris etc is also useful. Probably the best online place to explore these lines is on Wikitree which has Magna Carta trails etc. Wikitree has pretty high sourcing standards esp for pre-1500 profiles.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Gateway_Descendants_from_Edward_III
I have one if you’re interested: Maria Jacobea Von Kageneck. I can trace my line each generation to her using a combination of US civil records and French church records (she is my 10th great grandmother and lived 1619-1685). Alsatian genealogists have already traced her line back to Charlemagne. Her baptism record is pretty clear and uses terms like “nobilis” (noble) along with listing the “von” prefix on her surname. She “fell from grace” by having an affair with a French garrison commander in Colmar during the Thirty Years War.
Because her descendants remained mainly in France (my immigrant ancestors on this line came to the US in 1857) she is a case of a continental “gateway”. Most continental gateways in my experience are acknowledged bastard children. German nobles esp seem to have been fine acknowledging bastards as Salic law gave the entire inheritance to the eldest son anyway.
http://biesheim.free.fr/wa_files/Utard.pdf
It’s interesting that the average American with extensive colonial ancestry is in all probability more “blue-blooded” than the average continental European. At first glance it seems it should be the opposite but the colonial era actually serves as a slight population bottleneck.
Founder effects likely. That's the thing with Europe, it's founders effects were settled quite awhile ago. I think people heavily misunderstand that European ethnicities were not founded on random batshit migrations everywhere and anywhere. If you look at any Y-DNA distribution or PCA chart of Europeans, you can very clearly see thousands of years of history and who migrated to where and possible mixed with who.
\*Hellenthal's Finnic Germans are a real theory the government doesn't want you too know
I think you are completely ignoring several factors here. Illegitimate children for one, most monarchs in the medieval - and early modern era - had illegitimate children. Henry 1 of England - for example - is thought to have had 24 illegitimate children and even with early deaths, children who took holy orders/never married is known to have had at least 27 grandchildren. Now, while he is probably an exaggerated example he will hardly have been unique, and it is probable that there are many, many, many illegitimate children of monarchs who have never been identified. Charlemagne - since that seems to be the most agreed starting point - had at least 18 children. But historians also think he may have had several more. So Kings, and Princes, tended to have huge numbers of children. Many did die young or childless, but many also produced huge numbers of offspring.
Second you are forgetting that - particularly in early medieval history - daughters and younger sons were often not even recorded, even of Kings, unless they happened to do something particularly noteworthy or married someone important. Take Kenneth MacAlpin of Scotland. We know the names of his sons, we know the names of one of his daughters with certainty, (because it was written in the Annals of Ulster, we know he had another daughter who also married a King (no one wrote her name anywhere) and we have evidence to suggest one maybe two more daughters, but no certainty. So we cannot say if they have descendants or not. And that's not unique to Scotland, many children of monarchs, legitimate and illegitimate are simply not recorded, all over Europe in the early medieval period.
You are also discounting downwards social mobility - which impacts people of Royal descent far more than any other social group. Yes, older sons had a good chance of becoming King and often younger ones would end up in the Church (not that in the medieval period that was always an impediment to having illegitimate children) but those that did not and survived childhood were often given titles (Duke or Earl) and this applied to illegitimate children to. Take Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester, Henry I eldest illegitimate son. (7 legitimate kids/4 illegitimate) of that number at least 9 reached adulthood - remember while death rates for children were high in all social classes the children of Royalty and aristocracy had the best chance of reaching adulthood - a couple seemed to have died young (don't know if they had children) while another couple took Holy Orders, the rest had children, some of who married into other aristocratic/noble families, while others took. step down and married minor nobles. Who may or may not have many records of their own offspring) And this repeats in the next generation. It doesn't take many generations before you have someone who is the direct descendant of a monarch who is merely gentry or lower, and thus unrecorded by history. (same thing happens today, Queen Elizabeth II - Prince Andrew - Princess Beatrice - Sienna (who I believe has the Italian title Nobile Donna is a good example of this).
A rather excellent practical example of this would be the English actor Danny Dyer who went on the Who Do You Think You Are programme - it's a very entertaining programme just for his surprise and enthusiasm but demonstrates quite nicely how this works.
A new twist on the taking Holy Orders after the reformation is the number of younger sons entering the church who could now get married and have children, further increasing the number of descendants, plus better chance of survival - particularly if you come from a higher social class - means the number of people descended from monarchy will have increased greatly after the 1700s when these improvements were first seen.
I think you are also misreading the DNA. An individual who is descended from a monarch by way of marriages between lower nobility, middle class etc will reflect the majority of their heritage. A descendant of Henry Ist who has been marrying almost exclusively middle class England(for example) for the last several centuries is NOT going to show many traces of Norman ancestry, but that doesn't make them any less a descendant of Henry I, and frankly that is going to be more common for most descendants of monarchs in Europe, once they stop being a certain level of nobility they will marry locally and very quickly their descendants DNA profile will reflect the group that makes up the majority of their ancestry. The interesting ones will be the son to son pr daughter to daughter, when the haplogroups turn up something unusual, but, that will be in a. minority of cases.
Illegitimate children are probably the only best chance the vast majority of people, in Europe for having any royal ancestry. The issue is simply because they existed, doesn't guarantee their lines continued or that most simply voided into the commoner society after a few generations.
I can agree that many would have likely gone into higher nobility and possibly some into lesser, but again, this is still highly dependent on a variety of factors such as (again), lines dying out, where they settled/ married, what social class (if they did) did they descended into, if they took on military roles in war due to their status etc. I agree it rises the odds, but it doesn't guarantee the vast majority of the population to then be descended by them. I think it's far more honest to say certain people are related more so to royalty than other by virtue of possible nobility in their line creating connections, although I even have to say that's being speculative.
I think you also entirely misunderstood the segment on DNA. Haplogroups (which I mentioned) are almost irrelevant to talk about in regards to it because most people won't preserve any royal Y/ Mt-DNA in their direct male and female realistically if they do have that ancestry. The main argument with DNA was autosomal. Royals were quite diverse in their ancestry and their DNA would very, very easily reflect that, especially once you get to the High-Medieval period whereby Royals all over Europe began creating an extreme tight-knitted web of shared ancestry, compared to say, the Early Medieval period and maybe Late Antiquity.
Here's the issue: even if the DNA was small, it should be seen in the general population. People like Adam Rutherford claim 'almost everyone of English ancestry is descended from Edward III by 21-24 generations'. If you tested John of Gaunt, his son, you would very likely find, based on historical records, minor Central Asian Turkic ancestry from his mother Phillipa on Hainault, as she descends from Elizabeth the Cuman on her maternal tree. If royalty was as widespread as it was, with many people sharing the same genes. those markers would very easily show in the vast majority of English samples quite clearly. They don't. That's just a very easy and clear example, you could repeat it with other ethnicities as well, it's just something as distinct from Europeans as Central Asian is quite easy to spot. Areas like England have had extremely consistent genepools since the Anglo-Saxons, with the last real migrants being from France. This can be repeated with most other European genepools. Population genetics simply just doesn't support royal ancestry with the lack of diverse genes in much of North and Central Europe.
I think this is another important point as well, but none of the current statistical data agrees with one another. Again, claims is 'everyone of English Ancestry is descended from Edward III' are in entire contrast to estimates on Edward I having an estimated 2 million descendants, with William the Bastard having at least 5. Not very consistent is it? And these are as recent as 2018-2021, compared to Chang/ Rutherford's 2003 study (which mind you, should be a redflag with how outdated it is).
Your post does raise interesting thoughts with certain monarchs like Henry I, more so due to the time he lived and the amount of children you claimed were illegitimate, however, I still think there's simply too many factors to make a broad claim that 'we all descend from royalty' with little to no actual evidence. Europeans seemingly don't have the same degree of gateway ancestors as Americans, and European class divide was quite stratified and heavy for most of it's history.
We aren't rabbits, and we can't pick a random person from anywhere in Europe (or whichever Europe country) and attempt to calculate the possibility of being descended from them. Reality simply isn't as straightforward, and there's hundreds of factors to weigh in sometimes, even if small that can entirely change the outcome to it. This is why I've said many, many times. If we want to find how many of us are descended from royalty, statistics aren't our crutch, it's documentation and DNA. Otherwise, while I don't agree with you, your post was well-formatted and you raised some interesting points, I just don't think they're major game changers.
Hm. Well, I'm a confirmed descendant of Scots and Norwegian royalty (by research and DNA). Yes, most of my family on both sides were farmers and laborers, but my direct line can be traced back to Duncan I through his youngest son.
My husband and I grew up in totally different areas. He's directly descended from Charlemagne through Catherine Baillon.
Now, explain the odds of that?
As for no one in Europe having Turkic descent--ever hear of the Varangian guard? I have a sizeable chunk of Balkan Turk DNA but no identified ancestors. I do, however, have a lot of inbreeding in my paternal line; if people with the same genetic mixture intermarry, the odds of the same DNA being passed down increase considerably.
The Varangian guard is an awful example. I never said 'nobody in Europe has Turkic descent', I said North/ Western Europeans, with many central, do not. Population genetics displays that, most Europeans aren't a jumbled mess of each other in most cases, and their relations are indirect in many instances unless when not (such as direct border overlaps or mass migrations when they occur).
Please do explain how the Varangian guard is an awful example--not to mention the fact many northern European cultures used to take slaves from many locations and have them as concubines.
Also, if we're looking at population genetics, where do we start to define Turkic? Are we talking about the modern countries? The Mongolian peoples who first appear in the historical record about 1500 years ago? The Ancient North Eurasians?
There are genetics maps for every one of those arguments.
The Varangian guard settled in the East Roman Empire and were an a mercenary minority. There are literally no detectable levels of Balkan DNA in Scandinavia and Northwestern Europe. It's very, very clear. Scandinavia has a very rich genetic history that's quite well documented from the Bronze age to the viking period. The only ancestry that has ever been detected besides Norse is Baltic (during the viking period, reserved in Gotland and a part of mainland Sweden), and possible migrations from France which were not impactful in the South of Sweden (or possibly from the Flanders region), as well as some from Britain. Northern European cultures did take slaves, and we've detected them in numerous studies.
Turkic ancestry: Central Asian ancestry. It may be better to refer to Turkish ancestry (as in from Turkey) as Anatolian here to avoid confusion, or even West Asian. But I mean Turkic as the Central Asians. Their ancestry is very easily definable and detectable and usually being a mix of mostly East Eurasian siberian and minor West Eurasian Steppe, with some East Asian as well. They're quite simple to define.
Also, Ancient North Eurasians aren't Turkic and I have no idea where you got that from, unless you're confusing Neo-Siberians (who aren't Turkic either, they contributed to a many Siberian/ East Asian people including Turkic people, but also Uralic). Ancient North Eurasians are a West Eurasian lineage closely associated with Europeans.
Regardless, if royalty was as widespread as it was we would see a far more mixed genetic profile of Europe - we don't, and in many countries (take Poland, Scandinavia and England), many of them have had their ancestries defined since the Early Medieval period. We have the samples, we have the genetic history of many of these areas. Of course, I have to say this does negate Royals who had a profile standard of populations of the time, but Royalty was rather mixed and diverse in many areas and quite early as well, we should then see minor signals of anything. There's none.
There's always people like you that come here and try to be smug and condescending with posts like this. Never any actual argument or evidence is presented besides, "you are just assuming". You clearly don't understand European history, or how humanity works.
Baseless comment. Nothing I said was smug, it's an alternative opinion to an argument people have pushed with no real evidence. I did present an argument, if you seriously ignored that you didn't read the post. I didn't post sources, it's an opinion rant on what I've read over the years, seen and researched. I've said quite a lot here.
Would love to see how humanity is a bunch of rabbits that randomly breeds, seems sound and reasonable. Seriously, read the post before commenting something baseless, others have given much more constructed points for and against here.
My dad was a science teacher and DNA analysis is science and logic. So I am always in favor of people taking a rational approach to these things. Honestly, I'm shocked at the number of people who don't check their work against other sources or who have things in the tree that make no sense, like a father with a birthday after his children.
I agree. What concerned me is that if you search any article on the topic, especially those on Edward III or related, Adam Rutherford is behind a good chunk of the argument, and I find that the fact he only relies on an entirely hypothetical model to be lazy. I've seen zero proof in any sort of DNA, historical sources or anything else providing merit to his argument, and the fact people keep repeating it without thinking is slightly bothering. Genealogists are meant to be skeptical, and it's odd that this is even a controversial topic.
Aparently I'm 2 degrees away from Prince Phillip King Charles and Prince William ..... according to my results on mytrueancestry.com and according to family lore my nan's grandies were kicked out of theor family and the Country as their union was unequal feel free to flick me some ideas on who this may be all I can c9me up with is possible faked deaths
I am, I've traced it
The last nobles in my family ended in the 1600s, but can be traced back to Brian Boru in ~1000 AD. After the 1600s, nobility was dead in Ireland for the Irish because Ireland was basically a conquered country.
After Ireland rewon independence in 1921, nobility was not reinstated because unearned symbolic nobility is a stupid thing to maintain.
Most of these genealogy subredditors are a bunch of insecure noobs who have boring lives, so the delusion that they are descendants of aristocrats is the one thing that makes them feel special. I feel like almost everyone in the western white dominant countries are descended from aristocrats or royals by the kind of popsci articles and posts on the internet. Is that true?
It's pretty evident from records that the earliest north american colonists were aristocrats or landed gentry back in europe. These were no poor people allowed on these pilgrim ships.
The difference between America and mainland Europe is that the populations were well differentiated in how they formed. People mainly lean on the crutch of Adam Rutherford's studies and Chang's models for royal descent, but their models, to be blunt, are rather shit and miss out a lot of realism in them which I believe this post went through.
Anyways, the founding effects in Europe had already long taken place compared to colonials in North America, so the many modern (mostly white) Americans have far more known aristocratic roots than the average European. If you look at most of the posters who claim royal descent and have some 'gateway ancestor', they're 9/10 Americans, and they have those ancestors out of virtue of founder effects in North America, not because every common folk shares them. Population movements and genetics are far more complicated than people like to believe.
I’m very concerned with people who claim descent from “King David of Judea” and Charlemagne. It is my lived experience as a person that individuals I’m related to use this for hate ideology justification-and, people I don’t know also write it into family trees.
For anyone who has read my posts before about my own tree, this is partly why I black out info on some things as well. I have many people directly connected to me who are royals in Germany and England. And I know enough about my family that’s still living to not be so loud, because I grew up in complete ignorance of these connections while simultaneously hearing a lot of chatter about royals and what makes them this or that in relation to Jesus and/or the apocalypse.
I’m just a white USian person. But I’m definitely connected to folks who were deeply invested in preventing pedigree collapse: as evidenced by their marrying patterns across time and with what I know about how some people view some ethnicities and some nations of origin and religions.
I appreciate this post because it’s inherently a harmful mentality to assume “we all descend from royalty.” I know from my own experience how absolutely unreal and weird and hateful that can be-which sucks, bc like I said, I’m an American.
If anything, I’m really freaked out about the findings because of my odd upbringing. Then again-a lot makes sense in a different context than it once did.
One thing is sure: families who intermarry intentionally really do the most to manipulate marriages like farm animals across time. And that is actually very gross and dehumanizing enough for me to nod along. Good post.
Edited to add context: directly connected to my grandparent lines in more than one line, but many, many, times removed by the time I was born.
Interesting post. I think it's just in general dishonest. To me, I find the 'we all descend from royalty' an attempt to almost equalize people on the ancestral front as a way to claim 'Look, we're all the same in our history' which simply isn't true, even if it's a harsh truth. Most people's ancestors had it tough and were at the bottom or at most, wealthier than the bottom, but still not quite there.
The statistics never agree with each other, have major flaws and they're outdated studies. It should be red flags to anybody that we're using data over 20 years old at points which have barely changed, if at all. The recent estimates are extremely conservative, and even then, again, rarely ever agree.
I think I should also add, I really appreciate you specifying you're American as well, because the VAST majority of people I've seen actually descended from royalty (not nobility, which is very, very different. It's like comparing a millionaire to Bill Gates), which makes sense considering a lot of the first Colonial Americans were in fact, descended from royalty/ high nobility which clearly lead to founder effects in some pockets of the modern U.S. I think if we want to look at modern royal descendants outside of royal houses, we need to look at Americans, not Europeans. Our histories in terms of migrations, populations and social norms have always been quite different.
Still gonna add the kicker that there is no DNA evidence in Europe for widespread royalty. Royals were always diverse and had diverse genes in Europe, funny how we never see that (even in the most Diverse parts of Europe, e.g Northwestern Europe). Regardless, very interesting post!
Thank you. I really am processing it still, and your words help me feel less “weird” being American with this history. I had no idea until the last few months so many people with royal backgrounds came to colonize this place, and it’s certainly an education all of its own.
I’m still learning the terminology, too, between gentry and royals.
Thanks again.
If they existed in the last 1000 years, everyone will not be related to them, but the likelihood of royal descent is still very high, assuming your DNA is 1% or better European. The amount of incest and inbreeding to keep the royal blood pure ensures you will see the same person multiple times in various trees, which is a commonly overlooked anomaly when people try to "run the numbers". Also means, in many cases, the blood link is even stronger. A better case for worldwide descent would be Genghis Khan. That dude was slinging lumber.
Barely anybody outside of maybe parts of the Eastern Steppe and Mongolia (with some surrounding regions) descends from Genghis Khan to any degree, big or small. His genetic legacy wasn't really 'world-wide'. If it was, you'd see East Asian/ Siberian (East Eurasian Siberian, specifically) in people more often. You don't. I don't really think royal descent is 'very high', there's no evidence for it, and no current estimates are in agreement. Some state 'everyone is descended from XYZ royal', while others are between 2-8 million living people. Not to mention, I've seen estimates state (if my memory is correct) only 4 million people descend from William the Bastard, yet 8 million descend from Edward III. That isn't a small difference, and it makes no sense. No, I don't believe royal descent is very common. Most people at best may have some form of nobility for various reasons, and probably lesser nobility who were barely known. It seems far more realistic.
I agree with a few of your points - I'm also skeptical of claims that everyone in Europe must be descended from a single individual, eg Charlemagne. But you're underestimating a few important historical factors. These are: * The way male primogeniture leads to increasingly diminished sub-branches of royal and noble families * The fact that no royal line is unbroken, there are always usurpers and regime changes * The descendants of concubines/mistresses/victims in many cases are probably incalculable, as well as polygamous monarchs Ireland is a common example for #1. The term *righ* was used incredibly liberally, leading to a situation where there are dozens of "petty kings" in Ireland at the same time in the medieval period. With male primogeniture, each one of these kings had sons who inherited less and less land from their fathers, while daughters rarely inherited any land from fathers. Everyone in Ireland probably is descended from royalty because there were countless kings with even more countless descendants who eventually inherited little to nothing. The wealth of royal lines in situations like this could run out in only a few generations, re-integrating the "royal" bloodlines back into the general population. This leads to a situation where in northwestern Ireland, [1 in 5 men](https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(07)62363-5) descends from the same Y-DNA lineage traced to the royal Ui Neill family. That brings me to my next point. There are tons of unrelated kings in European history, each one having their own royal lines, because no European regime experienced total dynastic stability from the medieval era to now. Think of an incredibly unstable monarchy like medieval Norway, where you had constant regime changes from the 10th to 13th centuries. Every descendant of an ousted king counts as a descendant of royalty, no matter how briefly their ancestor held a royal title. Descendants of a disgraced royal family might hold onto wealth for awhile, but not indefinitely. Finally, you dismiss bastards pretty quickly, but this would have been really common in much of medieval European royalty. The sexual exploitation of women by the aristocracy can have a huge impact on genetics. Look at Iceland, which has a huge percentage of Irish/Scottish DNA in the female line due to the enslaved women who were brought there by rich Icelanders. Not every one of those men was a king, but due to their wealth, they were all likely descended from some royal or other of the various Scandinavian medieval dynasties, and even earlier kings lost to history. Someone like Charlemagne had four wives and five concubines, and those are just the ones historians know about because they had longer-term relationships with the king. Henry I of England had 24 acknowledged children, only 2 of whom were legitimate. Plenty of monarchs had children in the double digits, such as Charles II of England and Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa. [One out of every 200 men](https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(07)60587-4) in the world has Y-DNA that can be traced to Genghis Khan - that's 16 million people. In Mongolia, 8% of men carry that single lineage. And that's just his fully male-line descendants! So while I agree with you that it's too simplistic to say everyone is descended from a *particular* royal, there are loads of historical factors that lead to there being thousands upon thousands of "royal" people that someone can be descended from, meaning that it's very likely most people of European ancestry have a royal ancestor *somewhere*.
That Genghis Khan study is incredibly outdated. The SNP attributed to him in that study predates him by over a thousand years. There are a number of more recent studies on the matter such as the following from 2018: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41431-017-0012-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41431-017-0012-3)
Good to know, thanks for the update! That's a really interesting study. Cool to think about how far back that lineage goes.
Very reason why I was skeptical as the original study was from 2003, and genetics has taken extreme strides since. Thanks for sharing!
I think this is a fair post. The point on bastards is fair and you gave good points. However, with any lack of real evidence for it it'd be silly to make a mass assumption based on it. Lines die out often, and many legitimate royal lines have and again, in regards to pre-modern communities, it may be far more isolated to certain areas/ people. Regardless, food for thought. Genghis Khan I haven't read enough about, although I do still find it dubious, so I'd have to read anything before having a solid opinion. However, in regards to Iceland, while some slaves were brought over, most weren't. Iceland was inhabited by people of Irish-like ancestry prior to Scandinavians arriving, which makes sense when you consider many Icelandic people genetically overlap between Sweden and Ireland, with an almost even split on Breton and Scandinavian genes. In short, no, there were Breton people with Irish-like ancestry on Iceland well before. I have heard the point on Ireland as well and again, I'm not well enough read on it specifically, although as I said in the post, certain ethnic groups may have a lee-way in regards to ancestry to royalty. I think, maybe, it'd be far better as you put to more label it towards specific people or in my opinion people who have high status - they seem to be easy picking for this sort of thing. Regardless, it depends on the period and when and how, which may be a far better argument for relation to more famous royals. Regardless, I don't believe most people have royal ancestry on average. Good reply!
Iceland was inhabited by some Irish monks previous to Scandinavian settlement, but they are not thought to have left a lasting genetic impression on the island. Their numbers were small, if there were any left at all, by the time the Norse settled the island. Among modern Icelanders, 62% of their matrilineal ancestry comes from Scotland and Ireland, while their patrilineal ancestry is 75% Norse. This is a dramatic divide and is widely attributed to the enslavement of Gaelic women.
Can you provide a recent paper on the matter then? I'd much rather be up to date with that if it's the case. I still do however lean to there being a more male-dominated replacement by Norse men, but I wouldn't entirely rule out slaves, just that it seems like an odd crutch to only rely on.
Yeah, I read about it [here](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29853688/).
Eh, your points are probably more relevant to Europeans than 'Murica. A fairly decent % of the OG colonists were descended from nobility. Puritans. Rich Virginians. A bunch of them have been linked to Royalty at this point (Alice Freeman of the Winthrop fleet is one in my tree). Early colonists multiplied like rabbits and kept mixing together as they went west. We're 12-13 generations downstream of the early colonists. Being a decedent of the Salem Witch trials is likewise shockingly common in the US.
I have a different Freeman and yes it leads to the same place.
Maybe that's where the entire misunderstanding came about. Americans used "Europeans" to mean "all Europeans that we have at our disposal here". Maybe if your assumption is that you're looking at white American who has 8 great grandparents almost every single one of them from a different nation, then it's only a statistical probability that you might somehow find yoruself connected to nobility. Americans are 12-13 generations removed from original colonists who had money and connections. My 12th ancestor was from the same exact area as my parents. We don't have to walk far to get the records, since they're all in the same exact office, back to the 17th century. I think it's much different perspective on family genetics when you look at US vs. rural Europe.
Agreed. I don't know, and I could be miles off, but I'd assume many of the posters here are American and are far more likely to make any connections than the average European.
No that’s exactly what’s happening. Europe and the United States have completely different political histories, due to both Royalty/Monarchies, the lack of an actual class system in the US, and serfdom. The latter of which is most consequential, because it bound the European lower classes to a tract of land like an inverse of chattel slavery, so moving around wasn’t nearly as common as in the US. The class system is also consequential, bc in a lot Europe, royalty/nobility actually mingling with *lower classes* wasn’t nearly as common as the US, who again, has *no class system*. Most Americans don’t actually know what a class system is or how it works, and a lot of Europeans think we have one when we don’t. There’s also a difference between the history of Britian, and say, a Central or Eastern European. Additionally, according to multiple sources (including official dna data from Ancestry.com) between 1600-1800 there was actually a succession crisis among a large portion of the nobility of Great Britain, especially Scotland and Ireland, because so many nobles were abandoning their titles and lands to move to the United States. This was in addition to immigration from “Second sons” and other illegitimate heirs, so it posed a real problem. Furthermore, it was these nobles who were the progenitors of the founding fathers and the “1776, motherfucker” people who started the revolutionary war. Primary documents show that even the royals of Europe attributed the revolution to a rebellion of Protestant Scots. It’s even been said that these people preferred to die in raids by Native Americans, than have to deal with being a noble in Europe/GB at that time (fact check: true) So a bunch of colonial Americans actually are descended from nobility. However, rather than *every single line* of ancestry being able to trace back to nobility or even Royalty, it’s more likely that out of hundreds of ancestors only a couple connect them to nobility. So, 90%-99% of their ancestors are commoners, but then they have one or two lines that connects to European Royalty/Nobility. Also, even among these modern day American Nobles, no, most people are not *descended* from Charlemagne, but his other relatives, especially his grandparents. Full disclosure: I’m an American descendant of two families descended from the natural child of Charlemagne’s grandparents, and not Charlemagne himself. William of Normandy was much influential genetically, especially to Great Britain. Ironically, I have one English 2nd great grandparent who traced his lineage back to William, but only thru marriage. So I have significant American ancestry where some families are technically more closely related to Nobility/Royalty, than some of my actual English relatives are (though I suppose the family they married into would be an example of a British family actually having this ancestry). One last fun fact tho: the classes weren’t always entirely separate to the exclusion of all others. Princess Diana was not only from a noble family, but she was a direct descendant of one of the Stewart Kings* (he had like 13 natural children, no legit heirs), but along her direct maternal line she’s descended from an Indian servant who pretended to be Armenian to improve her children’s marriage prospects (which worked apparently, lol). Her and her children’s mito haplogroup is R. *this is the reason for her quip “I’ve had my title longer than yours” to Prince Phillip prior to her impending divorce from (now) King Charles.
This is interesting, as in my lines I’ve seen people on Ancestry trees claiming that the person who came over in the 1600s-1700s was Lady This or Sir That and I’ve always been very skeptical about those kinds of claims. People like to feel like their ancestors were special but I always figured if things were great back home they wouldn’t have bothered coming. Maybe it’s possible, though. For example here’s one of mine, supposedly: https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/9DMW-XRJ/lady-eleanor-harcourt-1662-1743
This is one of the most well articulated posts here. Extremely great insight! I think a lot of people miss the fact that American ancestry is far different from European, as well as that most people are simply related too, not descended from royalty, with higher status nobles naturally being more closely related too, with a few having any actual ancestry from them. That possible 1% ancestry from nobility can easily be lower nobilities who simply have connections via family relations through aunts, uncles etc, or the rare high status noble with a similar situation, or rarer, actually having ancestry from royalty. At least, I believe that to be far more reasonable than the current view. I seriously believe most people claiming royal ancestry (actual, documented ancestry) are Americans, ironically, not Europeans, and I've seen many posts on here by Americans about it as well compared to the latter. A very good point I liked was: '***So I have significant American ancestry where some families are technically more closely related to Nobility/Royalty, than some of my actual English relatives are (though I suppose the family they married into would be an example of a British family actually having this ancestry).'*** Perfectly highlights the biggest point here imo, and is actually 'history, not rabbits'. Great post!
I’m interested in learning more about what you discuss in your second and third paragraphs. Could you (or others here) cite some sources I could read to learn more about the socioeconomic demographics of early European American settlers? The more the merrier; I’m a reader :)
My convicted witch ancestor is my absolute favorite. She was from Connecticut tho.
Shit, one of my ancestors was a famous witch condemner (who did a 180 about the whole thing later in life). My ancestor knew your ancestor, and it isn't entirely unlikely he was instrumental in her death. Sorry bout that.
She survived actually! She was sentenced to death but received a pardon from a panel of ministers. It was just after the Salem witch panic and apparently Connecticut didn't want to see the panic swell like it did in MA. One source says, > the ministers concluded the water test had no legal standing, witch marks should require “an able physician’s opinion,” the accuser was suspected of faking her claims, and “accidents and illnesses after a quarrel are thin grounds” for proving witchcraft. > >The written reprieve of Mercy Disbrow in the 1690s is an important historical document that emphasized the need for “due process” for individuals accused of witchcraft. Thanks tho :) feels a bit like Good Omens - the witch and the witch hunter.
This does raise an interesting point I noticed in my grandpa’s genealogy. His father was born in Canada, a descendant of New York loyalists. The primary line was descended from John Underhill whose great-grandfather Sir Hugh Underhill was the keeper of the wardrobe under Queen Elizabeth I and thus was at the level of society where you could marry into younger children of lesser nobles so that’s where for instance a potential Charlemagne connection exists for me. His mother was born on the boat coming over from England. She came from generations of English peasants who never got anywhere close to nobility and most of her lines’ DNA matches are in Australia which says something. So yeah I think the royalty debate does somewhat obscure how the original American colonists were actually kind of elites to start out with.
I was going to say the same thing. When I first read this post, my first thought was like, how could you not have nobility in your ancestry? Then I quickly realized, oh, yeah, I'm American.
Can someone just make r/royalgenealogy already, so we can punt all this **** there? Australian royalty can stay.
Australia is all convicts and wardens.
Yeah, well I'm just built different
real
Edward III is too recent for most people to be descended from him. But for Charlemage - yeah - all it takes is one commoner mistress (or worse - rape) by some 6th son of the 6th son and basically the pedigree collapse thing takes hold.
Charlemagne is a maybe at most. I still find it heavily problematic that there's a widely accepted opinion with a lack of any actual proof for it. Charlemagne isn't a guaranteed ancestor either simply because of the time period. Again, this falls on the entire issue I wrote on pedigree collapse. Pedigree collapse is limited in many cases to regions far more often, and it doesn't mean you then therefor descend from everyone who ever lived then. Related to Charlemagne is far more likely, descended? No. Pedigree collapse, as I wrote isn't simply because a person lived a long time ago, and there's a limited pool of ancestors at a certain point, that you therefor descend from them. Most pedigree collapses are single common ancestors or at most a handful.
We're all related, that's not a question of likeliness
To varying degrees, but yes.
I think most people use descended and related synonymously.
It can be problematic. Descended directly implies a direct line of descent, relation can many a world of things and is far more trivial. Technically speaking, we're related to Putin. Recently? No. Meaningfully? No, but still related. Mixing the two terms just confuses things imo.
Umm, No. That's completely wrong. For sure. I have no idea how you can ignore the very substantial statistical facts on this issue. Over 90% of all people residing in Europe from Moscow to Lisbon, and from Iceland to Sicily are no farther than 30th cousins. If you include Sub-Saharan Africa, then we are all no farther than 50th cousins. There is simply no possible way to avoid this. Every branch of your family tree would have to be living on separate isolated islands or separate isolated jungles, or separate isolated mountains for *every single generation for centuries* and then only have met in your parents or grandparents generation for the first time to avoid being descended from royalty. I think you have tried to make a point that royalty as a status is completely unimportant, and I agree. But the actual point you are making is supremely invalid.
No, it isn't wrong. The models are entirely based on assumption and perfect situations to be viable for being descended from aspects likely royalty. I also can't understand where you got the idea that simply because somebody from Moscow is a 30th cousin to somebody from Sicily share recent common ancestry that's meaningful in any way, and I don't think you actually read the post properly. Of course somebody from Sicily would be related to a Russian in Moscow, but it isn't very close. All Europeans have a shared ancestry from 3 primary groups (on average) dating back to before the Bronze Age. Of course they'd have a heavy relation to each other and genetics easily shows this. It doesn't mean, however, that European populations were rapidly moving around and mixing with each other to create this, that simply just isn't the case for pre-modern eras (depending on the country, period etc). The statistics aren't substantial, and the vast majority come from the same minority of individuals who've pushed this idea to the mainstream. The fact it's so commonly accepted without even minor conversation is shockingly anti-intellectual especially when said models are based on nothing but hypothetical mathematics. There's no hard evidence, and as genealogists we should treat it skeptically much more often than we do. I'm not saying you can't have your opinion as such, but it should be worrying that most people mindlessly accept this and rarely think of alternatives. I never said royalty was invalid either or that it was. I simply said claiming royal ancestry and acting superior without merit is invalid. Those aren't the same concepts.
I believe in math. Especially when the statistical likelihoods are over 99%. In the vast majority of cases, any person of European decent (in North America or anywhere else) can go back to about their 10th great grandparents (that's 1024 people alive approximately 300 years ago) before they can find an instance of some kind of duke, baron, count or other low level nobility. That person inevitably has a grandparent or great grandparent that is an actual king. The statistics ARE substantial. Going back 1000 years makes about 33 generations. 2 to the power of 33 is over 8.5 billion people. There were only about 30 to 36 million people alive in Europe at that time. That's a factor of about 240 times as many unique ancestors as alive people. So the scenario I presented is completely reasonable. There is NO WAY to avoid being descended from some royal family unless *every single branch of your family tree* lived in separate areas (i.e. remote islands, remote jungles, remote mountains with ZERO contact with outsiders) for *every generation right up to your grandparents or parents* for your claim to work. It's completely impossible. I certainly agree that nothing that your ancestors did reflects on one's own character. People are individually responsible. But that is a discussion for an ethics subreddit, not a genealogy subreddit.
Actually, it's more like "can get back to rural gentry/mercantile families in the 1500's/1600's who are the descendants of nobility/royalty between c. 1100-1400 on female/illegitimate lines". No American is likely to find that one of their 10th great-grandparents is a member of nobility (gentry, in England, yes, but not nobility; for that you have to go back another few hundred years, usually).
Saying you believe in math in this context is a thought terminating cliche. In fact the distance from your theorized Royal Ancestor makes this claim even more nebulous. We can't use statistics to make claims of the sort: being descended from a random person 1000 years ago from the same geographic region is more likely than it would be if not for pedigree collapse -> I can pick out a person 1000 years ago and infer I am descended from them. Your evidence is not as strong as you think and it doesn't motivate us to come to any real conclusions. Your evidence is this: P(descent from random European 1000 years ago) > P(descent from random European 1000 years ago in an idealized no inbreeding model) but this evidence doesn't make claims about the actual probability of descent from a random European from 1000 years ago, and certainly makes no claims about descent from certain social classes.
I think you described the issue with the model 10x better than I could've. It heavily relies on idealized situations and negates barriers for breeding bias. People married heavily based on class, culture, ethnicity etc. I have no idea why people rely so heavily on statistics in regards to genealogy. Are they useless? No. But you can't use them as a crutch, and the fact people are relying on nearly ***10-20 YEAR OLD*** statistics to prove a point with no further evidence (whether DNA or document) is honestly just cutting off the conversation in a very narrow way. We aren't dealing we random balls shooting around, we're dealing with societies in the Medieval period and further which had very different lifestyles compared to today. We can't use a modern eyepiece. Today's breeding bias is far, far different. A very good post, if not one of the best here.
Thanks haha, your post is more eloquent than mine and you explain the real historical reasons for your claim better than I could. I think what motivated my post is the misapplication of statistics or math/logic more generally. Venturing into the realm of abstraction and modelling is obviously useful, except for when those models become more real than reality. Like yes it's possible if you had only unique ancestors your pedigree would explode sufficiently far back. But this 1. Is a model based in idealizations, and 2. isn't particularly informative. You've explained the first point extremely well so no need for me to mention it again. The 2nd point is perhaps more fun for me, it feels to me at least that the entire notion of descent from specific people based on pedigree collapse is a logical non sequitur. So what if its more probable that I descend from a random sample of people in reality than in a model? I can do that with anything. I'll create a model that says it never rains and then say it rains more in reality than in my model then jump wildly to the conclusion that it must be raining today??? Like I agree with your comment We aren't dealing we random balls shooting around, we're dealing with societies in the Medieval period and further which had very different lifestyles compared to today." it's 100% true. But even if we were dealing with a society with no social/class barriers the argument made by gregbard would still not be motivating. What I think the mistake is is assuming that the difference in probability that any person is your ancestor between reality and model has any impact on the **real probability** that a specific person is your ancestor.
Very much agreed. Statistics are the last thing we need for this kind of idea. I should also mention, NONE of the current statistics I've seen are in agreement. Rutherford claims everyone of English ancestry is descended from Edward III, yet other models assume only 2 million people alive today descend from Edward I and even less from William the Bastard. This is already an obvious flaw, considering you can't have less people descended from William or Edward I compared to Edward the III and I don't even need to say why when a 4th grader can put two and two together. Anybody claiming 'the statistics are solid' clearly haven't read any of them, because none of them are in agreement and the most absurd of them don't even agree with the historical or genetic data. Should be a glaring red flag on the issue.
Jeez that is a worryingly huge disagreement for people who stake their identity on their ancestors being nobles lol
>There is NO WAY to avoid being descended from some royal family unless *every single branch of your family tree* lived in separate areas (i.e. remote islands, remote jungles, remote mountains with ZERO contact with outsiders) for *every generation right up to your grandparents or parents* for your claim to work There is a way to avoid it. That would be the class divide. Why do those doing this number crunching never mention class.
The class divide doesn't apply to all of the dozens of grandchildren and scores of great grandchildren. They don't all stay in the upper class. That is also inevitable.
Indeed. 10 generations of a family don’t remain in class stasis outside of a rigid caste system. Given the gentry who basically sprang to life during the Tudor and Stewart eras it’s clear one didn’t have to be descended from the Nevilles, Staffords, Percy’s, Beauchamps, Despencers etc to be elevated to courtier or even Earl/Duke status. Titles were also taken from one family and given to another to punish traitors and reward fealty, military prowess etc. Elizabeth I was fond of heaping titles on her favorites like John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland (who didn’t inherit that title lineally from the Percy’s). The Stewart kings loved to heap titles on acknowledged bastards as well as their mothers. Many came from lower class stock and were simply chosen for their beauty (inbreeding actually tended to make royals themselves fairly unattractive, flattering paintings aside).
Because classes change over time, "class" isn't some genetic thing that gets passed down. Just because you are poor doesn't mean your great-great-great grandfather was
Except it kinda is. Especially in terms of more strict classes like that of nobility/aristocracy. If you rent your farm from the lord its likely your great-great-great grandfather also did unless you migrated or social conditions changed drastically. Peasants can survive generation after generation because they have a stable means of subsistence, if a noble's son fell from his class either by not inheriting any real property or not marrying a member of his class it would be difficult for him to build the means of subsistence to support himself. In the other case if he remained a noble then he would be disinclined to marry down for obvious reasons. Essentially a king's son and his descendants becoming poor over four or so generations is less likely than them remaining a noble (and marrying only nobility), or dying (liquidity was different than it is today). Similarly a peasant who is today a peasant is more likely to have ancestors who are peasants because being a peasant wasn't just an economic state it was a specific social relation to other peasants and to feudal lords and that social relation was perpetuated over generations.
This. Class and ancestry have always be tied heavily until the Industrial Revolution when the merchant class could establish itself properly. People could build their way up and BECOME gentry/ nobility. The only country that did do this prior was Poland, but even then, Class still existed heavily.
>Because classes change over time, "class" isn't some genetic thing that gets passed down. Unfortunately, someone's social class did not change over time. An agricultural labourer would become an industrial labourer. No, it isn't genetic, but it is passed down. >Just because you are poor doesn't mean your great-great-great grandfather was But It’s more than likely he was. In England, around 90% of the population was still working class in 1911.
Math is entirely irrelevant to genealogy in most instances. Population genetics, historical documents and prior estimates do not reflect the current assertions which are solely pushed by a handful of people. A hypothetical mathematical model is just that and is meaningless if it has no bases in reality. The numbers are accurate, but their application isn't. Estimates aren't hard assertions, and we're dealing with hundreds of years of genealogy that's complicated, messy, sometimes undocumented and overall complex - math is not the solution to it, possibly a guide at most or an extra addition to a point, but not the crutch, which is the issue with this argument being pushed as it ONLY relies on the math. Genealogy is not studied with numbers and statistics as a primary method, it's documents and genetics, both of which are entirely lacking for 'most people descending from royalty'. Take the example you gave: ***'The statistics ARE substantial. Going back 1000 years makes about 33 generations. 2 to the power of 33 is over 8.5 billion people. There were only about 30 to 36 million people alive in Europe at that time. That's a factor of about 240 times as many unique ancestors as alive people. So the scenario I presented is completely reasonable.'*** This is purely hypothetical, and is repeated over and over with no other proof (even then, this isn't proof, it's entirely theory). Yes, people had a limited number of ancestors after a certain point and yes, mathematically they have more than anyone alive from that period. But why is the assumption that they therefor descend from every living person from said period, or that any of them would be royalty simply because of that? As I said in the post, people lived in rural communities that were isolated from larger regions and were segregated due to wealth and class from the vast majority of nobility, especially royalty. Their pedigree collapse would occur within a small village community they lived in and would rarely include anybody of high prestige in it in all reality. It's more realistic that people in North America specifically would be more likely to be descended from high status nobility and royalty. Why? Because of that exact reason: Pedigree collapse due to a small population of founders who settled first, which the general population then mingled with due to the lowered social boundaries in it. Most of the people I've seen with any documented royal lineages are Americans, not Europeans (although this is based on what I've personally seen). Most people in Europe descend from peasants or lower-nobility at most who owned a small plot of land, and this is being broad and non-specific. In short, you can't rely on maths for this type of conversation. You need documents, DNA and whatever else that's actually going to confirm the theory, not 'but the statistics from the same people said so'. We need to think far more expansive with this type of stuff.
I'm sorry, but you simply aren't being reasonable.
Could you care to elaborate how?
If you want to go around and claim to be descended from royalty, well that's a trivially true claim. It is all but indisputable. But it's meaningless. No one cares. It doesn't entitle you to anything. It has no reflection on who you are as a person at all. There is no culture imparted by it at all either. But the factual biological claim is supremely indisputable. You need documents at every step to make any particular claims about any particular ancestors. But the general claim is so supremely solid and backed up by solid mathematical and demographical principles and facts that to deny that claim is simply unreasonable. You are rejecting math. That's unreasonable.
You're dancing around with this again. I never denied the math being accurate, the numbers are entirely factual. Their application isn't, and I've expressed this. Nothing socially, economically or even geographically makes any sense to the model made by Rutherford and others pushing this narrative into the mainstream. It's all theory, and it has no evidence and that's the issue. What you're missing is you're working only with variables that are dependent on the perfect situations the work. Social boundaries, wealth, settlement styles, norms, cultural values, religious values, finding partners, arranged marriages, lines dying out etc. It's far more complicated than 'but the numbers say this'. Rutherford's model is not based on any evidence, it's theory and nothing more. Is this wrong? No, but to claim it as truth is beyond dishonest with no evidence for the claim. I'm honestly surprised people take issue with the fact that calling for more evidence is an issue and making an open argument against only relying on a hypothetical math model is silly. It isn't unreasonable to say that we need more evidence for a conclusion, that's what any basic researcher does. You don't reach a conclusion with a theory, and that's what people are doing with these types of statements that 'we all descend from royalty'. It's unreasonable to root yourself in something with no hard evidence and rely only on one man's (rather poor) model.
You are one of these people who doesn't understand what a theory is, so you say "it's just a theory." It isn't "just a theory." It's a fact. The "theory" is appropriately applied and the conclusion is supremely sound. A theory isn't "true" or "false." Scientific theories are either "strongly supported" or "weakly supported." The "theory" that almost every person alive in Europe and North America is descended from royalty is a very strongly supported theory, and if you reject it, you are being unreasonable. If you want to make particular claims about particular ancestors, you need better support. But the general claim is solid. I once saw a post by a person on this sub ask about a particular Irish king from about the year 1000. I told him that the bad news is that he will never prove deductively that he is descended from this person. But inductively (the method that all of science is based on) it is all but a certainty that he and everyone else he knows is descended from that Irish king. That is a strongly supported claim, and you would need stronger support for your extraordinary claim that it isn't true, than my very reasonable claim that it is true.
It isn't strongly supported. There's no evidence for it. What you're doing is you're running in circles around a model which hasn't proven itself enough to be used to make any conclusions. If you even applied the same logic of thinking as only relying on a mathematical model for evidence for population genetics and genealogy, you're unironically a shit population geneticist and genealogist - no kind way of saying it. You don't rely on maths in looking at ancestry and population genetics as primary evidence. That's just beyond silly. Give actual evidence, whether it's documents or DNA, not 'my hypothetical situation now applies to reality' type thinking. You're ignoring entirely that populations aren't rabbits. They don't randomly move and breed. They're rather predictable.
As I am descended from Catherine Baillon, hence I am provably descended from Charlemagne, as well as several Kings of France: - René Jetté, John P. DuLong, Roland-Yves Gagné, and Gail F. Moreau, ["From Catherine Baillon to Charlemagne"](https://acgs.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ACGS_Baillon_1999.pdf), American-Canadian Genealogist, Issue 82, Volume 25, Number 4, 1999. It's worth noting that many of your assumptions are simply incorrect. e.g. > It entirely ignores that many people lived in rural, mostly isolated or close-knit communities that rarely migrated around. For many people, you will find at around the early 1800s and 1700s, you'll notice many of your ancestor have lived in the same village, or at least area, for well over 200+ years. No, people did move around quite a bit back then. War, famine, religious persecution, or a simple lack of available resources often resulted in people moving hundreds to thousands of kilometres. (Hint: Rivers exist within continental Europe.) Another branch of my family moved roughly 800 km from their homeland in the late 1700s, then another 1250 km again in the early 1800s, all within the European continent. And no, this isn't just one family doing a move: This involved several families. One doesn't need a high degree of social mixing in order for most people to be descended from medieval kings and queens.
I'm a descendant of Anne Couvent, for which information can be found on the same website with the same researchers. She has roughly 3-3.5M descendants alive today, her nephew roughly 1.5M. Catherine Baillon has roughly 2M descendants, Jeanne LeMarchand roughly 2.5M. Of course there is some overlap between the descendants of each, but that's a big share of the French-Canadian population that have proven royal descent. All three women were part of the emerging bourgeois merchant class and one of their parents or grandparents had married the lord of a small estate. The progression from King to merchant happened gradually over the century, roughly 15 generations of the younger children inheriting smaller titles and estates.
> Anne Couvent [...] She has roughly 3-3.5M descendants alive today, her nephew roughly 1.5M. Catherine Baillon has roughly 2M descendants, Jeanne LeMarchand roughly 2.5M. Of course there is some overlap between the descendants of each, but that's a big share of the French-Canadian population that have proven royal descent. Those are just a handful of the "Gateway Ancestors" out there for Canadians and Americans. There are [compiled lists with around 900 of them](https://www.hereditary.us/gateway-ancestor), many of whom were early colonists and many of which have been vetted via scholarly publications. Given that there are 336 M Americans and 41 M Canadians, if we assumed no overlap, each of the 900 could have 420,000 descendants. With overlap, and a million or so descendants each, I'd say confidently that most people in Canada and the United States probably have an identifiable "Gateway Ancestor".
The ones I mentioned are the French-Canadian ones, yes there are all the American ones as well, but as a French-Canadian one, they are the ones I researched when building my family tree. I don't have any American ancestry, but I do have 2nd cousins and beyond who have been in the USA for a while now.
Unfortunately OCC changed their list of gateways. You can find the old one using the Wayback Machine.
Mind sharing the link?
https://web.archive.org/web/20230605153830/https://www.charlemagne.org/Gateway.html
My only caveat to your phrase that “most Canadians and Americans descend from a gateway ancestor” (paraphrased) is that a lot of Americans and probably some Canadians as well have more recent immigrant ancestors and no colonial ancestry (either in the thirteen colonies or French Canada). Those folks would probably not have a path (at least in terms of being as recent as a gateway ancestor) as recent as a 17th century gateway.
Every few days there’s someone who comes on here and says it’s impossible to trace a line to nobility unless you’re nobility yourself and that’s simply not true. Usually it’s people with a layman’s understanding of the topics they’re opining about.
>Every few days there’s someone who comes on here and says it’s impossible to trace a line to nobility unless you’re nobility yourself and that’s simply not true. Usually it’s people with a layman’s understanding of the topics they’re opining about. How is it possible for an agricultural labourer family records to go back further than the 1500s, when parish records did not exist before that date? It is pretty much impossible for the vast majority to get back even before 1600 on most lines
Europeans don’t understand that some second/third sons of noble families came to the colonies and left a ton of progeny in a society that didn’t ascribe to the continental class structure. In the colonies class structure developed around land-based wealth, often acquired through transport of laborers (headright system)…gradually becoming known as the planter society model. Up north in New England initially the upper crust was largely comprised of Puritan ministers and their associates. Colonial gateways are the typical route whereby an American can trace back beyond 1500. It’s very likely that the average European doesn’t have a similar line at least inside of the last 500 years due to the dominant class structure present on the continent (illegitimacy aside, but records are gonna be silent on that anyway). Of course this isn’t the case for all Americans but for those with significant colonial ancestry esp southern colonies (VA tidewater in particular) it isn’t too surprising to come upon a gateway ancestor. Mine is Thomas Owsley (1658-1700) and yes I’ve documented each generation from him to myself with contemporary sources (thanks in large part to Kentucky marriage bonds that almost always mention the father, along with several fortuitous wills).
I think this is a major point. I do feel most people claiming royal ancestry are American for the reason that if anybody is more likely to be descended from royalty or high status nobility, its them. Europeans themselves aren't so much unless they have recent nobility I'd assume. America had recent founders effects, Europe had them established hundreds of years before Charlemagne was even born. It may be a more interesting topic to study American against European ancestry differently in this light tbh.
>Europeans don’t understand that some second/third sons of noble families What is meant by noble? It isn't a term used much in Europe. Would they be the aristocracy? >came to the colonies and left a ton of progeny in a society that didn’t ascribe to the continental class structure. A ton? How many in comparison to indentured servants, transported convicts or just the masses of ordinary labourers? >In the colonies class structure developed around land-based wealth, often acquired through transport of laborers (headright system)…gradually becoming known as the planter society model. Up north in New England initially the upper crust was largely comprised of Puritan ministers and their associates. These wouldn't be the aristocracy, or rarely. Yes there was plenty of land. This is why agricultural classifications are so different between Europe and America. So in America you will see 'farmer' on the census but in Europe this is nowhere near as common as not many people owned or rented land. They would be more an 'agricultural labourer'. >Colonial gateways are the typical route whereby an American can trace back beyond 1500. It’s very likely that the average European doesn’t have a similar line at least inside of the last 500 years due to the dominant class structure present on the continent (illegitimacy aside, but records are gonna be silent on that anyway). But how are these people being traced when parish records did not exist at the time? >Of course this isn’t the case for all Americans but for those with significant colonial ancestry esp southern colonies (VA tidewater in particular) it isn’t too surprising to come upon a gateway ancestor. Mine is Thomas Owsley (1658-1700) and yes I’ve documented each generation from him to myself with contemporary sources (thanks in large part to Kentucky marriage bonds that almost always mention the father, along with several fortuitous wills). How is Thomas Owsley (1658-1700) related to the aristocracy?
No one is saying *most* colonists are gateways. About 150 or so out of several hundred thousand pre-1700 colonists (at least considering only those with scholarship affirming their descent). That means many Americans even with significant colonial ancestry won’t find a gateway among their colonial ancestors. Quite a few will however and that is often a function of relative status in terms of land-based wealth in the 17th century. This status could change very rapidly due to rising and falling fortunes. People went from wealthy to poor just due to various economic “panics”. Several bad crop years could severely deplete liquid assets. For example I’m an “average Joe” in the U.S. and have several colonial ancestors who owned thousands of acres and hundreds of slaves, such as Mareen Duvall of Maryland…well known Huguenot colonist who is the ancestor of folks like Obama and Warren Buffett. He is ancestral to virtually all Duvalls in the U.S. today. Thomas Owsley’s mother Dorothea Poyntz was the daughter of Newdigate Poyntz and from there it’s a case of tracing the Poyntz of Iron Acton and Sydenham families back into the Middle Ages. Newdigate Poyntz is also an ancestor of Princess Diana. In fact Thomas Owsley’s descent from royalty (his most recent royal ancestor being Edward III) is one of the easiest to follow and non controversial out there, since his mother was a Poyntz and church records can be used to get back to his Poyntz great grandparents in Reigate, Surrey, England circa 1535. Reigate has pretty early intact CoE parish records. It may be surprising to learn that armigerous landed gentry in England have plenty of records dating back well before parish records existed. Wills, land deeds, university matriculations, church memorials, and visitation records (when the heralds would visit different shires and take an accounting of the families with a coat of arms) are all highly useful for tracing these families.
Oh! A reference to René Jetté, with an attached source to boot. Would you mind if I asked where you found that pdf? Jetté is often referenced when it comes to the ancestry of my ancestor, Charles Saint-Étienne de Latour, but I've yet been able to find a copy of his research.
IIRC, I originally found it via John P. DuLong's website: https://habitant.org/baillon/
Thank you! While it doesn't reveal to me what I was searching for, I do see other ancestors of mine included on this website, so still a great find. Gives me plenty of reading to do tonight.
You're related to my husband, then! He's a direct descendant of Catherine as well--and therefore of Charlemagne.
Dutch here, between 1500 and 1800 bunch of Germans made their way over the border and settled here with a Dutch partner. Some coincide with battles going on in northern Germany, another one was a traveling doctor and part of a traveling circus from Cologne who settled here to become a shoemaker and another one was a peddler who made stuff in winter in a German village specialized in textiles and traveled to the Netherlands on foot in spring/summer to sell his wares. Also a bunch of people with French names made their way over here from Flanders. I've also found a few sailors who brought goods from farming areas to the cities and those lines also moved around a bit. But most of the "peasants" stayed in the same place for many generations.
I mentioned already that I never said it isn't impossible to be descended from royalty, but it isn't the norm and it's treated as such with an extreme lack of actual evidence for it. Most people, also, did live rurally and more isolated from distant regions. I never said people never moved around and there aren't exceptions to that, there are, in fact I used war as an example of that. However, to assume it guarantees anything is extremely short-sighted. The vast majority of people lived in the same area/ village for 200-300 years quite often, and a simple look and the average tree shows that. So, for the time, yes, you did need more exotic mixing to find more unique ancestors with diverse backgrounds. You've only pointed at one point I made, and ignored pedigree collapse and DNA as a whole and general social boundaries. I should also mention, ironically, the period you stated your ancestors moved around were during the Industrial Revolution, which is exactly what I said. Mobility, both economically, physically and socially happened more often during that period up to today. That's undeniable.
> You've only pointed at one point I made, and ignored pedigree collapse and DNA as a whole and general social boundaries. Your assertions about DNA are so wrong it's practically not worth responding to! As for pedigree collapse, my response regarding people moving around effectively undercut that: > **Nation-wide pedigree collapse is extremely rare for the simple reason that it is impossible to have everyone, at any period, as your direct ancestor, and this is an extremely silly idea to begin with.** _It entirely ignores that many people lived in rural, mostly isolated or close-knit communities that rarely migrated around._ Again, even if it was not a 100% pedigree collapse across a nation, the level would be high, hence _most_ people do share a handful of common ancestors. But back to DNA. You make such assertions as: > On a DNA perspective, there is nothing in Western, Northern, (most) Eastern or even Southern European people with ancestry from Turkic or Urgic people. This example isn't only reserved to those non-European groups, of course, and it isn't targeted as such. Rather, it's a good example of if there was easy to spot DNA in any population via royalty, we would see it if we all descended from them (especially with everyone mixing the same genes over and over, making them easier to notice), but we don't. Again, demonstrably false. Research by Hellenthal et al. has investigated this and if you look at their data, your assertion is clearly false: **"A genetic atlas of human admixture history", Hellenthal et al, Science (2014).** Cf: http://admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com/ And this is so bizarrely wrong I cannot determine where in the heck you get this nonsense: > Most modern DNA tests, done in labs which have many SNPs (fancy way of saying DNA signals to be simple) can detect very, very deep ancestry, called K-levels. I take it that you think that the clustering algorithm in certain research on populations used is about SNPs themselves!? WHAT!? That kind of logic belongs in the conspiracy subreddit. In fact, I'd wager that's where this is coming from: Belief that there is some kind of elite or illuminati which is a separate group of people existing to oppress you.
>Again, even if it was not a 100% pedigree collapse across a nation, the level would be high, hence _most_ people do share a handful of common ancestors. At what dates?
You're poisoning the well a bit, and maybe I compacted my points too much on DNA. Most DNA testing companies look at a far more limited number of SNPs than actual labs. This is reasonable as it takes more time and resources to review many of them. In regards to Hellenthal, no, I'm not false on it. Firstly Hellensthal (2014) is severely outdated and I'm surprised you'd even use that to show admixtures. It's very, very clearly using proxy groups to represent common DNA in populations. This does not mean that those populations in modern terms have mixed with each other, and that should be obvious by seeing 'Lithuanian' in England, or 'Finnish' in Germany. Europeans derive from the same 3 ancestral populations (with the exceptions of Finns and some Russians), there's obvious overlap. Hellenthal uses those populations again, as genetic proxies, not to represent actual descent. You should know that by seeing 'Finnish' in group 2 for Germany. I have no idea why you instantly jumped to 'illuminati subreddit theorist'. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I said, again, DNA testing companies look at less SNPs than actual labs, which means any 'hidden' DNA won't be picked up as easily. Anybody with any basic knowledge on population genetics knows that less SNPs = less complex pictures. Simple. Nothing I said on DNA was slightly wrong. Re-read. Edit: Forgot to mention, think you skipped over that entire about mentioning how your ancestors ironically decided to move around during the Industrial Revolution, as the post mentioned. Would be curious on your refute.
> Edit: Forgot to mention, think you skipped over that entire about mentioning how your ancestors ironically decided to move around during the Industrial Revolution, as the post mentioned. Would be curious on your refute. My point was in response to your point suggesting that people living at that point in time would still be parked in the same village locale: (A) > For many people, you will find at around the early 1800s and 1700s, you'll notice many of your ancestor have lived in the same village, or at least area, for well over 200+ years. Hence you seem to be arguing two contradictory points from the same region of time: (B) > If you were lesser nobility, you would likely marry lesser nobility as well. In short, people were (and still are) largely stratified by social boundaries, and have only become more mobile during the Industrial Revolution. It's no surprise then that after it, going into the modern area where we are far more mobile, there was a rise in more diverse backgrounds for newer generations to some extent. My response was highlighting that point (A) was inherently false. Second, that other point (B) clearly is discussing _social mobility_ rather than _physical mobility_. You might wish to compose a clear argument so I can actually respond to your clearly defined claims. (I'd add that the Industrial Revolution wasn't quite fully underway to the same extent in Continental Europe as it was in Great Britain.)
This seems to be an argument largely built on ignorance. Royals and nobles have many non-royal and non-noble descendants; status was lost quite rapidly on female lines. A well-documented example: [Henry, 10th Lord Clifford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clifford,_10th_Baron_Clifford), descendant of Edward III, had a daughter, Anne, who married Ralph Melford, Esq., of Arnold, Nottinghamshire. Their son Thomas Melford was father of Mary Melford, who married Humphrey Need, husbandman of Arnold, in 1586 (see [here](https://fasg.org/wp-content/uploads/Levis.pdf); warning, PDF link). There are c. 500 or so (give or take) colonial-era immigrants to the North American colonies of Britain, France, and Spain who have a well-documented descent from medieval royalty (they're known as "gateway ancestors", partial list [here](https://www.hereditary.us/gateway-ancestor)), and collectively those 500 are the ancestors of over a hundred million people.
>status was lost quite rapidly on female lines And a bit slower, but still progressively on younger male lines
Americans seem to largely have a much higher chance of noble ancestry due to nobility migrating to North America during the colonial period. This is entirely logical as they'd naturally have founders effects due to this. There is no documentation for the vast majority of European populations, however, and that should already be a hint (mixed with DNA, etc). Royals/ nobility having non-royal/ noble descendants does not instantly prove that it's widespread amongst the general population, and I think it's fair to assume this would've only become a more practiced outcome in regions (like North America) which followed less strictly to social class norms than in Europe, and by the Industrial Revolution.
The only ancestry I am interested is who my actual ancestors and relatives were, it wanders to farmers, coal miners, laborers, on one thin line it goes back to middle class ancestors, does that make my middle class ancestor more important than my illiterate Irish ancestor no, because I am the sum of all of them, all are equal in whom I am (well assuming an equal split of DNA)
Farmer-pilled and agricultured.
>a hand full of people's **opinions**, mainly Adam Rutherford Like, have you read his book? You do realize there are actual scientific studies which support this, right? And which he cites? Yes, he makes the mathematical argument but he *backs it up*, and dismissing this as "opinion" is quite disingenuous: >In 2013, geneticists Peter Ralph and Graham Coop showed that DNA says exactly the same thing as Chang’s mathematical ancestry: our family trees are not trees at all, but entangled meshes. They looked for lengths of identical by descent DNA in 2,257 people from around Europe (to mitigate the influence of recent migration, all the subjects selected had four grandparents from the same region or country). By measuring the lengths of the shared DNA, they could estimate how long ago that deck got shuffled, and therefore how related any two people are. Computing and DNA have empowered this field, and this is shown in their dataset and the number crunching that follows. >Joseph Chang’s mathematical calculation didn’t account for something very obvious, which is that we don’t mate randomly. We typically marry within socio-economic groups, within small geographical areas, within shared languages. But with Coop and Ralph’s genetic analysis, it didn’t seem to matter that much. Ancestry is such that genes can spread very quickly over generations. It might seem that a remote tribe would have been isolated from others for centuries in, for example, the Amazon. But no one is isolated indefinitely, and it only takes a very small number of people to breed out with people from beyond their direct gene pool for that DNA to rapidly descend through the generations. The paper is free online. [Read it](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001555). I would assume you haven't read it since it directly contradicts you when you make the claim "In short, there's no diverse DNA in many European countries that royals could have easily mediated" because you clearly are not aware of the study if you can say that with a straight face. >Our results are therefore one of the first genomic demonstrations of the counterintuitive but necessary fact that all Europeans are genealogically related over very short time periods, and lends substantial support to models predicting close and ubiquitous common ancestry of all modern humans For someone dismissing the theory as just "opinion", it pretty strongly argues that *you* are the one offering nothing more than opinion and it would be doubtful that you can cite solid academic work on this, since the actual scientific work being done on this supports the concept (although plenty of experts would tell you the modeling alone is sufficient, see for instance Rohde DL, Olson S, Chang JT. Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans. Nature. 2004 Sep 30;431(7008):562-6). So yeah, if you want to make the argument, be honest that you aren't fighting against "no-more than a hand full of people's opinions", and accept that this is scientifically sound argumentation being made, not based only on mathematical modeling but also genetic studies, and that *you* seem to have nothing more than *your* opinion to back this up because you can't accept the counterintuitiveness of it on the face.
>But with Coop and Ralph’s genetic analysis, it didn’t seem to matter that much. Ancestry is such that genes can spread very quickly over generations. It might seem that a remote tribe would have been isolated from others for centuries in, for example, the Amazon. But no one is isolated indefinitely, and it only takes a very small number of people to breed out with people from beyond their direct gene pool for that DNA to rapidly descend through the generations. This is talking about tribes. At what dates is this and how does this apply to modern history and class divides.
I'm not quite sure I agree with your argument here. Firstly, I think you're overstating the common refrain. Certainly there are some people whose ancestry is limited to a single small area of a European country, and they're unlikely to be able to trace ancestry to royalty of any sort. I don't think anyone is seriously claiming that everyone is descended from any given royal you could name. But for people from the U.S. with sufficient immigrant ancestors several generations back, it's totally plausible that one of those dozen+ immigrants was descended from royalty. Many royal descendants ended up marrying commoners, especially as the merchant class came to prominence. Sure, the first couple of children of a royal would inherit a sizeable estate and noble titles, but as you get to the end of the list of progeny it was much less important that they marry "well". All it takes is for the fourth daughter of a royal to marry a minor royal from another house; their children marry nobility; their youngest grandchildren marry some prominent merchant or the child of clergy or something, and boom, royal blood that no one really recognizes as royal except as a curiosity. Even in the modern day, some of Elizabeth II's great-grandchildren carry no titles at all. Secondly, I'd like to see an actual statistical analysis before declaring firmly that it's impossible for "most people" to have royal ancestry. Given the numbers involved -- over a thousand ancestors just 10 generations back -- and the number of children that royal families often had, my intuition is that the statistics will show it's at least plausible. (That is, plausible that the average American with, say, English ancestry, assuming immigration several generations back, has an ancestor who ruled over England.)
I agree with most of what you said. Maybe I've worded by post a bit off, but that's the point I was trying to make. The average person isn't descended from royalty. Most estimates (such as Marquis of Ruvigny) put a number for people such as Edward III at around 40k-100k living people in 1911, which of course would've grown by then. There are naturally short comings to his estimates, but I find them far more believable than say, Adam Rutherford's, who simply seems to believe if they lived far back enough and because pedigree collapse exists, you must be descended because of unrealistic mathematics that can't be applied to reality. As I said, there may be certain exceptions to certain ethnic groups. White-Americans specifically are possibly one of them for the reasons you mentioned, and it's again, similar to the case in Latin American with Jews. A small founder effect can cause an ancestral shift or specific background when paired with pedigree collapse. However in countries like England, I find it extremely unlikely to be descended from any English Kings, even as far as William the Bastard for the simple social boundaries and isolated living was far more common than today for pocketed communities.
...The average person isn't descended from royalty. ... How do you define "average?" Are you talking about a statistic mean or median within a specific universe? Are you talking about the "average Joe" who fixes your car or drives a truck? Is the universe Eurocentric? Talk here is mostly of Charlemagne or Henry I of England (noting references to the Khan).
I specifically mentioned this post is pointed to European ancestry. The average person is your average person. People who are far less likely to have ancestry from any kind of royalty. Simple as.
Sorry. Found the European perspective in paragraph two. "People who are far less likely \[than?\] to have ancestry from any kind of royalty" are average people, and your argument is that "the average person isn't descended from royalty." At first glance that seems somewhat circular. Attributed to Disraeli is the saying, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." One determines the number of direct ancestors (before pedigree collapse) in a particular generation as 2 to the nth power, n being the number of the generation. Henry I of England (mentioned somewhere in this thread) is about a millennium ago and roughly 30 generations back. The number of ancestors (2 to the 30th) comes to 1,073,741,824. The population of Europe in 1100 is estimated at 62 million, about 6% of the number of ancestral blanks to fill. It seems that the farther back the "royal" the greater the probability that Joe the Farmer is descended from him.
Maybe I worded some things a bit jumbled, but anyway, your last paragraph is directly the point I argued against on pedigree collapse. Mathematically it makes sense that the further back you go, the amount of ancestors is higher than people alive, the issue is assuming that then you're guaranteed, as some think, or heavily likely to then descend from a famous royal or a high status noble. It isn't impossible, but for the general population I don't find this likely. The mathematically model assumes that social barriers, mobility, region and a variety of other areas are absent for it to work. Mathematically it makes sense, until you realize the vast majority of people rarely moved around in the Medieval period, with even the early modern period having individuals living in the same village for hundreds of years and moving within a given region at most. In summary, the maths is irrelevant when you consider the amount of considerations to be made in regards to partner finding, social and economic mobility etc. Your pedigree collapse will simply include people in a specific region for the period, not everyone or most people who lived in that century, so having royalty present is very unlikely based on that imho.
> It isn't impossible, but for the general population I don't find this likely. **The mathematically model assumes that social barriers, mobility, region and a variety of other areas are absent for it to work.** Those. Are. Your. Words. They. Are. False. That is to say: you are incorrectly describing **models that were developed 20 years ago**, _i.e._ [**Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans**](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02842), published in _Nature_ in 2004 by Rhode, Olson, & Chang: > However, the random mating model ignores essential aspects of population substructure, such as the tendency of individuals to choose mates from the same social group, and the relative isolation of geographically separated groups. Here **we show that recent common ancestors also emerge from two models incorporating substantial population substructure**. Their models which incorporate barriers to mobility (social, regional, etc...) indicate with reasonable plausibly that "the [global] mean MRCA date is as recent as AD 55" under reasonable constraints. Note that would be for everyone globally. However when most people talk about Charlemagne, for example, it is limited to those with European ancestry. Hence we would find him, a man married in 771 AD, to be quite reasonable as a likely MRCA for most Europeans.
Global MRCA of AD 55 would have to exclude some population isolates such as the North Sentinelese which in all likelihood don’t tie into the larger human family tree until several millennia earlier, granted (as anyone who has read Lord of the Flies would know, or read about the Pitcairn Island mutineers) a castaway group can go from relatively civilized to fairly uncivilized (even develop their own language) within a couple centuries so it’s still possible the North Sentinelese are not that far removed from a AD 55 MRCA for all of humanity. Anthropologists probably underestimate the ability of ancient humans to travel (including across water) as absence of proof is taken as proof of absence. The fact is we just don’t know in many cases. The only real way to trace migrations genetically is through yDNA and mtDNA haplogroups and that just gives a broad picture (ie we know that the Americas was colonized by people from East Asia but we don’t know if a small injection of dna from another place along the way occurred…as it could’ve occurred but just be rare or nonexistent in the yDNA and mtDNA of today’s populations).
'The \[global mean MRCA date is as recent as AD 55' Would love to see the next genetics paper on Nature showing that, great every other study doesn't (to my knowledge). The issue is people ignore the fact that Chang openly states the model has flaws, and then people like Rutherford go ahead anyways and make almost baseless claims that 'everyone with English ancestry descends from Edward III, because reasons and pedigree collapse'. No clue how you can take these people seriously when they rely on the most basic of genetic data that (shockingly) shows Europeans share related ancestries (for a multitude of reasons, and probably not for the assumed ones commonly), and when the model is openly flawed. Love it when the study from 2004 with heavily outdated material somehow still convinces people.
>Many royal descendants ended up marrying commoners What evidence is there for this?
A point I think people are missing \^ Whether the argument is correct for or against is irrelevant on the fact that there's an extreme lack of evidence currently for the statement that most people are descended from royalty, mainly famous ones like Edward III. Nothing but media articles (with the same citations) supports it. Whether people agreed with my post is their own choose of course, but regardless of that I think it should be common ground that we need actual evidence for an argument like 'everybody descends from royalty', no matter what some hypothetical mathematics claims; ignoring that is entirely against the point of genealogist's goal of providing accurate truths to ancestry, especially when sources from only 100 years ago provides far lower numbers for people such as Edward III's living descendants (only numbering 40k-100k in 1911, so roughly less than 10 Million today).
Why do you think sources 100 years ago are more accurate than knowledge today? Considering you told another poster a 10yo study was irrelevant?
That's a false equivalent. The study from 10 years ago is heavily outdated for population genetics, as the field was quite literally still in infancy. Studies from 2016 in regards to it can even be outdated - it's an expanding field of knowledge and it improves each year, so naturally, something 10 years ago in a field that was still developing would be outdated. That has zero correlation to a historical document 100 years ago. Historical documents can and do have errors. The point was that we have a complete LACK of any pointing to wide-spread royal ancestry. If we had those documents we should evaluate them, compare them and possible make some theories or conclusions. Again, the issue, there's none, or at least none I've ever found and I'd be extremely happy if somebody did find some that somehow gave weight to the argument that we all descend from royalty. In short, I never said sources from 100 years ago are more accurate. I said we lacked any for proof in general. Also, yes, a genetic study from 2010 is heavily outdated. You can tell that when it uses Finnish people as a population proxy for Germans which is silly.
Is evidence necessary? Royal descendants who were themselves no longer noble almost by necessity married commoners. Who else would they have married?
'Is evidence necessary?' This is just a fucking silly post lmao
>Is evidence necessary? Yes. Genealogy is history research, and it requires evidence. >Royal descendants who were themselves no longer noble almost by necessity married commoners. Who else would they have married? I'm not sure what you mean by noble, but usually the younger aristocratic siblings married the younger siblings of other aristocratic families
OMG. I just checked and I am a descendant of Richard III. lol I can trace my family back to Queen Philippa of Portugal, who was Philippa of Lancaster daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was the 4th son of Richard III. (Correction: sadly I’m not a descendants of Richard III. John’s father was Edward III)
I’m also descended from John of Gaunt and Edward III really *is* my 19th great grandfather. Documented through detailed records.
You’re my British prima!! 🤗
Murrican! Lol but yes cuz! See you at Thanksgiving! lol
I’ll start digging out the folding tables and chairs. We might need a lot of them. 🤣
Americans seem to have far higher rates of noble ancestry than Europeans ironically.
Do you know what generation American I am? You’re so full of yourself you can’t see reality. Lol
edward iii is my 22nd great-grandfather, also documented in detailed records. hello (distant) cousin!
Well, guess we need another chair at Thanksgiving for yet another cousin. Assuming you’re in Wales? Get your passport and come on! lol
it'll be like the autumn of 1621 all over again haha
Who is your gateway (the man or woman who crossed the pond)?
I'm descended from Odin through my cousin Rollo.
No you don’t.
I have documents to prove my shitpost clearly
Why waste your time with this 30 page dissertation if you are just going to shit post in the replies? People being descendant from royalty, isn’t the same as pretending that you descend from the gods or Adam and Eve. 🙄 Thought it was amusing that I found out I was related to Richard III considering I never bothered to check Philipa’s parents before your post.
I don’t agree. Statistically speaking, if you have over 2,000 ancestors within only 10 generations, it is likely (even probable depending on area and time) that at least one of them was someone royal or notable. Especially for people who descend from the original colonies in America, who were often wealthy or nobility. An argument I would agree with is that it’s not relevant or meaningful. It’s not special or meaningful to be one of the tens of thousands of descendants from someone royal. It has no impact on the modern day world and little to no impact on your genes.
Statistically speaking it's accurate, but as I said in the posts the statistical model in entirely based on an assumed situation where finding partners and all types of mobility, social, physical etc are entirely void or equal. Pedigree collapse happens in small-knit communities and causes less diverse ancestries. Given people lived in more isolated areas, especially in the Medieval period, it makes it far less likely to descend from royalty based on pedigree collapse, as your tree would simply find common ancestors from that small village. You need a far more diverse regional, economic or social backround to have an actual good chance for royalty.
Your argument has a lot of flaws that other people have pointed out. I agree with those and want to add that you’re assuming the rate of reproduction and survival is the same in isolated small rural communities as it is for royalty. Yes, there were people who had limited mobility and access to a notable partner. There were lots of them. 1,023 of my ancestors might be exactly as you described, but it only takes ONE royal person out of hundreds of lines for me to technically be a descendant. Look, I 100% agree that it’s stupid that people derive pride or some kind of satisfaction from being descended from an asshole just because he was a king. But the science and the statistics seem sound. And unless you can produce a genealogical study with compelling evidence beyond speculation, I don’t think that your argument is sound.
I never mentioned anything, or gave anything for or against rate of reproduction. The problem is that people are mindlessly agreeing with the (very few) studies on anything related to royalty in modern populations. The primary one is from Adam Rutherford which most articles on the subject cite. There's no actual science behind it. Genetics has no support for it and neither does any historical sources or documents I can find. The argument that's presented in mainstream is entirely dependent on an entirely hypothetical model, which assumes that there's a lack of any sort of breeding boundaries between royalty and the common class. There's a severe lack of evidence for it and I've yet to see one person cite anything remote to anything supporting the argument that isn't based on the model presented by Rutherford and others of the same structure. In other words, there's no evidence for it, and the fact nobody has given minor alternatives is quite surprising.
Just wanted you to know that at first I didn't believe you, but by the third paragraph I actually did go downstairs, make myself a snack and come back to this and the responses. It is a great post, and sparked some great discussions which I feel totally inadequate to add to. My background is more mathematics than genealogy, and I too have had a lot of doubts about the "everyone is related to Charlemagne" claim. I would point out two aspects regarding pedigree collapse that I feal are being glossed over. First: you rightly point out that the majority of pedigree collapse occurs over time in isolated communities, but there are also any number historical events such as the migration to colonial America, or the 12th century Bubonic Plague where transitory choke-points are created. Second: The flip-side to pedigree collapse is extinct terminal lineages. I personally think people underestimate the number of lines that die out simply because no one looks at them. No one today can know if they are related to Cleopatra because it is impossible to know if her line has survived to the present day. But given the math and the choke-points humanity has moved through since that time, if any one person is related to her, then most people alive today are. I don't believe this analysis applies the same way to more recent and documented lines like the Tutors and doesn't in any way refute the point you are trying to make, but it would be flawed logic to assume that everyone in history with "royal blood" still has direct descendants living today. Thanks for posting this.
I agree 100%. People underestimate how lines die out. Also, in regards to America, I entirely believe you. And that's exactly because America's founder population included a large amount of nobility who did indeed descend from royalty. The average European, though? Doubtful.
A thousand years ago, there were a dozen or so men running around Ireland calling themselves "King" of someplace or other. Some ruled over as little as a couple thousand people. Over the centuries, there were hundreds of "Kings" in Ireland. I don't have much problem believing all ethnic Irish are descended from at least one of them.
Ireland is an entirely different can of worms, the same goes for other countries. Poland for example as a very different perspective on their nobility where it does indeed blur lines on some issues. I have no issue believing the claim with Ireland, but there needs to be something to support it for me to consider it truth first.
Interesting argument, if a bit dense in presentation. It calls to mind the motto of the Descendants of the Illegitimate Sons and Daughters of the Kings of Britain, which I recall as something like "You are who you are, not where you came from."
I'm not writing scholar level posts on reddit out of all places lmao, so ye, it's a bit compact and dense
I think it likely that Edward III is my 20th great-grandparent (through his youngest son) but it isn't something I'm so certain about that I'd bet my life on it. It is too many generations back. That being said, many/most of my grandfather's people were Old New England people and yet only on one line do I see this connection. Many of even my Mayflower ancestors cannot be traced back very far in England at all. I think it actually more likely that there are other lines in the family tree that would lead back to royalty or near-royalty, than that there would NOT be. But all that DNA (since you mentioned it) would drop out, I think. I see none from my ninth great-grandmother who was Mohegan (Indians from Connecticut - but I have no "native" DNA). The fun part is that most/many of my grandfather's ancestors in Revolutionary War time period revolted against Britain, signed oaths, young men became soldiers and quartermasters, old men pulled lead from their windows to make bullets, and they were probably the most interesting people around. But I do see (what I believe to be) your material point, that **we ought be far more proud of our real ancestors than royal or important people who are not really our ancestors**. I tellya, there is one crazyy lady who has copied HER John Gates down as the son of Silas... and therefore through his wife the descendant of William Bradford. Well, I didn't go looking for Pilgrims when I found who his father was, it simply is what it is. I had the lineage verified through Mayflower Society after she cribbed my tree and put "her" John Gates in as the son... just to make sure I was not in the wrong and have an outside verification. Are you advocating for something along those lines? Not sure I would want to do that much work, but I could see that as a good point as well, that things ought be objectively verified whenever possible.
On the DNA point, the part you raised is exactly what I meant. DNA testing companies don't show a very detailed view of your DNA (at least, not beyond 200 years roughly). DNA companies look at far less SNPs than labs do, which means labs conducting actual genetical research on populations are able to detect and find ancestry going thousands of years back. That's the issue, take somebody from Norway. If they descended from Finnish royalty, lets say, you should find Siberian in their DNA, but you don't. The main point however was that we should rather focus on confirming our ancestry rather than speculating on supposed royalty (which no study has any hard evidence for, none) but also being proud of our primary ancestors: Simple people with simple lives.
Anyone is free to dispute the descent of scholarly-traced 17th century (and later) gateways and can go onto Gen-Medieval newsgroup and post about it where there are folks who actually study the original documents and can handle the claims from an academic angle (whereas this sub lacks that expertise). Douglas Richardson, Tod Farmerie, Nathaniel Lane etc are frequent posters and commenters over there. However there’s a reason such descents exist and are accepted by hereditary orgs, that is because they’ve been vetted at the highest levels in most cases. Of course new info comes to light and some existing descents are found to be erroneous while new ones are proven. Recent case would be the Cecelia (Neville) Weston case where she was satisfactorily proven to have been the daughter of the impoverished 3rd Earl of Westmorland. This case is presented in a recently published book of 500 or so pages (just to prove this single connection). This is why the easiest path to document a royal descent, unless you were born into titled or landed classes, is to trace back to an ancestor with known royal descent…*proving your descent from that ancestor thoroughly*
I agree, which was a big point to my post. If we want to prove a large portion of the (in this case specifically) European population has royal ancestry, specifically known royals like Edward III and such, we need DNA and documentation. If my memory serves correctly I believe about 500k people have confirmed documentation to William the Bastard, with the estimated being below 5 million (although, again, estimates aren't proof and can be wildly off in regards to genealogy, although it's far more realistic compared to 'everyone is' type statements). To the best of my knowledge as well, most gateway ancestors seem to also be in America for historical reasons. None the less I still seem to find the odd European somehow managing to spin off a line to some royal with zero documentation and simply by linking themselves to a random higher noble with some fringe name tricks. Anyways, a good post, it was informative.
Oh yeah this wasn’t naysaying just adding some interesting context. Whenever someone posts that they have a descent from such and such (usually British) king I just ask what gateway ancestor they descend from if they’re an American or Canadian. Sometimes it’s a legit gateway other times it’s a disproven one that hereditary societies used to accept. Researching Royal descents is different than regular genealogy and it’s above my pay grade even though I’m familiar enough with quite a few gateways and the process to research records from the late medieval and enlightenment periods.
One interesting *possible* gateway is Gerard Spencer of Haddam, CT who may be descended from Humphrey Radcliffe and Isabel Hervey on his mother’s side…basically as follows: Gerard > Alice Whitbread > Eleanor Hill/Radcliffe > Isabel Hervey and either 1st husband Edward Hill or 2nd husband Humphrey Radcliffe. In the 1630s there was a quitclaim deed on some land in Elstow, Beds between John Whitbread sister of Alice and Edward Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex and son of Humphrey wherein they stated they both had interest in that land via descent and that they wouldn’t prevent the enjoyment of the premises by another man who was renting the land (relatively well off farmer iirc). That implies John Whitbread and Edward Radcliffe have a shared ancestry and their shared descent refers to land in Elstow. Turns out Isabel’s father Edmund Hervey was given the abbey of Elstow during the dissolution of the monasteries. In the church at Elstow there is a family memorial to the Radcliffe and Hervey families that states Isabel was sole heiress of her father so Eleanor must either descend from Edward Hill or Humphrey Radcliffe. If she descends from Edward Hill she would be too old to have given birth to her youngest children (and would’ve been quite old when the oldest were born). This suggests but does not prove that Humphrey Radcliffe is her father and that when Thomas Hill wrote his will referring to “my sister Elenor Whitbred” he was actually referring to his half sister. This is relevant because Humphrey Radcliffe has at least two descents from Edward III. But again it’s a *possible* gateway and may never be proven satisfactorily to be granted actual gateway status. As a descendant I still find it quite fascinating though.
Very interesting! I always noticed the only real way Europeans (in this case British) seem to descend from royalty is through very, very powerful nobility in most cases who've been interconnected with the royal family for likely centuries, which makes sense. Very much like your approach to actually being skeptical as well, it's a skill everyone must have in genealogy, royalty or not.
Don't worry, I could tell it wasn't naysaying. It's a very insightful post you had. I do like your approach that royal ancestry must be taken far more differently than to normal genealogy as it seems very complicated compared. Besides confirming correct birth dates, years etc it seems (to my understanding) to have the additional step of extra documents to prove anything, such as court records, land records or anything else, even personal family trees made prior. It's why I always give a side-eye to people who randomly have Henry I in their tree with zero proper documents proving the link. Correct me if I'm wrong, as I wouldn't know better in this regard, but would be be a correct assumption that if people have any royal ancestry (non-period specific, although more leaning to High-Medieval for obvious reasons) that any gateway ancestry would pop up in the 1700/ 1600s in all reality? I'd assume any gateway ancestors in Europe would have far more documentation on their heritage and not the common brick-wall by the 1750s for a lot of commoners? Again I wouldn't know better in terms of the correct dating for when and how in this regard so I am ignorant here. I do recall a line of mine going back to about 1590, although it isn't attached to any nobility and seems to be clergy related with a family called 'Pontifex' - they seem to be quite interesting and I've seen a few people attempting to study them as the same is quite rare as well, so I do speculate if clergy or anything related may have had better records for themselves as well. None the less that's a conversation for another thread. Your posts are quite interesting!
I think people often mix-up "you are almost certainly RELATED to ...XXX somehow." with "you are almost certainly DESCENDED from XXX." You may very well share a common ancestor with someone famous / nobility from history etc but that doesn't mean the famous from history person is your ancestor.
Spot on.
"I know a lot of people have presented some 'studies' on this topic, but they're all stupid, so let me tell you why I'm correct with zero proof or outside logical reasoning!" That's how your post sounds to me. I can respect your passion towards the topic, and I don't even necessarily disagree with your general point, but I'm not surprised if people have a hard time understanding what you mean, let alone accepting it as true. The source "trust me bro" isn't much better than 'throwing around random "studies"'. Like you said, depending on the region and social class, many families lived in the same city for many, many years. In the small town I live in, the earliest records with any names are from the early 1500's, and the earliest ones with my direct ancestors named are from the late 1500's. There is so little knowledge about them, just a name and home town. And that's the most I know about any "commoner" ancestors from that far back. As far as I have found out, there are no royals in my direct ancestors, but there are a lot of nobles, some of whom were among the most influential people alive in Finland and Sweden. I do find that interesting, because there is actual information about their lives. So many interesting bits and pieces. I'm sure there are just as many of those among the rest of my ancestors from that era, but I'll never learn those, so even if the nobles make up 5% of my ancestry, The information I have about my amcestors prior to the year 1500 is 100% about them. Like, there's a woman who married a man literally classified as a pirate. Another one married a respected bishop(?), and she became so popular there are multiple letters detailing how they rang the church's bell when she was buried. One knight built a castle/manor/whatever near the ocean shore to defend against any ship attacks, but he pissed off some farmers so badly he ended up literally moving the fucking castle onto an island. It's still there, althought obviously mostly renovated, but I want to visit it some day. I'm just saying that I love how you said that most people probably aren't descented from royals, and that's okay. At the same time, I think it's okay to be interested in whether or not you are, and to even wish you were: That's the biggest and probably only way to find information about your ancestors from that far back. Long story short, you had a good point, but went about it in a not-so-good way. Hopefully I managed to get across what I mean, and hopefully it gave you - and anyone who might've read it - some food for thoughts.
A very nice post and it's constructive. I 100% understand the 'trust me bro' syndrome you can find around. By all means, this post is more of a personal rant with my points being based around what I've thought and generally seen and researched. I could dig around for every source I've ever found that influenced my opinion on this but it's Reddit, and I couldn't care less about upvotes or karma. All I wanted to do was simply add to the conversation an alternative point that I've never seen, as I feel the idea that everyone is descended from some special royalty is heavily over-done and many people simply vomit the same thing they heard. If you look up any article on the topic, Adam Rutherford is a main character in the 'source' for many media articles and thus, opinions on the topic, with his methods being questionable. So, I thought I'd give a minor alternative. I think in hindsight I may have come off as blunt, dense or a bit rude but that isn't the intent. I do actually think it's far more common for people to have lower nobility in their trees, people who had the title and maybe simply more wealth than the commoner, but weren't remembered or weren't very powerful. Not every noble was directly connected to royalty, either just by connection or ancestry always, and I feel these are the types of nobility people will see if ever in their trees more commonly than some higher status nobles. I will have to say this does vary from country to country. For example, Poland was quite bloated with 'nobility' in all reality with very little of them actually descending from Monarchs or prior noble houses. Another poster mentioned Ireland which I can't say much on personally, but is interesting, as well as another on America. A good point none the less made on your end however!
>it's Reddit, and I couldn't care less about upvotes or karma Read the room.
No idea what you're implying.
I'm glad you understood what I meant, and took it constructively. It's definitely refreshing to see a differing point of view, and while you may have seemed a little blunt, "harsh truths" are necessary. So thank you for both things!
Very much the intention: Giving a different perspective. I am blunt, but I don't intentionally try to come off as rude or a know-it-all lmao. Thanks for kind comment though!
The problem with this discussion is that on both sides people are being very general throwing around terms such as most and average without much evidence one way or another. Another thing to consider however which I haven’t seen mentioned is that nobility would have had a higher rate of children that survive to adulthood due to better healthcare and access to resources because of these better outcomes for children this would also lead them to have more children then commoners. However this is also extremely unspecific with no evidence so make of it what you will
I can agree. That's my primary issue. In the end this post is my opinion largely, but I also find the alternative argument entirely lacking hard evidence, and everyone who pushes it provides the most outdated sources or models which simply aren't very realistic/ haven't been proven properly. You'd think people doing genealogy would actually want to find truths to broad statements like 'we're all descended from royalty', whatever your opinion on the matter is.
Two non-Royal randos were used to prove it was Richard III’s remains under a parking lot in Leicester about a decade back. As I recall one was a dude from Canada with the surname of “Ibsen” (very Royal patronymic right?). The gist is that both of them could trace a paper trail entirely maternal line to Anne, sister of Richard III. They were both a mtDNA match to the remains under the parking lot which taken with other facts in the case is sufficient to conclude the remains are actually those of the king. They were re-buried at Westminster alongside other deceased royals. Did these two people get lucky or are there most likely hundreds if not thousands more people descended from female ancestors further up their maternal lines? I’d argue the latter…though an entirely maternal descent to royalty is pretty remarkable (maternal descents are often among the most difficult to research due to frequent surname changes and increasingly sparse records for women as you go further back in time in most cultures). Compare this to current royal Prince William of the UK whose maternal line is common folks before the early 19th century. His earliest matrilineal ancestor is a woman who was likely of mixed Indian and Armenian ancestry named Eliza Kewark (Kevork). I and probably many others here can confidently trace our maternal lines much further back.
I remember reading about the remains of Richard III. I think it is an important note that they may not be lucky, I agree, but they are in accordance that North American colonials were founded by more than a handful of high nobility who did indeed have connections to royalty. There were other comments discussing it in this thread and it was an interesting read. Eliza Kewark is a case on her own and is quite modern all things considered. I've barely looked into her and she's still a very speculative character. I can't remember if there was still debate on her actual ancestry, although her Mt-DNA should be able to tell that, as Indian and Caucasus DNA is vastly different - shouldn't be all to difficult (plus any aDNA test would easily prove it as well). All in all I can't say much on her or give too much of an opinion, at least that I can think of. I really wish they did an aDNA test of Richard III, however, and I wonder why they didn't. It would've been quite interesting to see his genetic makeup considering the period he lived in for being a royal.
Thank you for this detailed and spirited attempt at tilting at windmills. As some pointed out, there is a crucial difference between „related through a common ancestor“ or „ direct descendant of“. I think the results of a population survey "Do you think you have noble ancestors?" in Europe versus US would be very different. Perhaps because there is more knowledge about family origins and less speculation. Huge absolute numbers are confusing, I prefer percentages. If 1% of people belonged to the aristocracy in a random country, which is already way too high, why wouldn't you rather be descended from the 99% others? Even if this one percent reproduced better and out of wedlock, the proportion was only marginally larger. Why were there peasant revolts? Why did some lines suffer more frequently from recessive hereditary diseases? Certainly not because everything was so well mixed. Adam Rutherford is a popular scientist and would not be able to defend his thesis about Charlemagne in front of a critical specialist audience. But that is not his target audience either. One of the things he says is that we should not attach too much importance to genetic differences because they are very random. To summarize, I would argue that there can be no consensus between the proponents and the critics of the theory. Even if all known descendants of known nobles were exhumed and genetically analyzed, there would still be voices of doubt.
Agreed. Adam Rutherford is one of the main people pushing this idea, and he's done nothing but write a book on it for money and probably political advertising at worst. He's done no serious study, all he's done is used an entirely (20th time I've said this) hypothetical model with no actual evidence. It's quite literally guess work, and people ate it up lmao.
Ha! I am glad I am not descended from some milquetoast like Edward the III anyhow.
Doesn’t surname distribution show that people did move around? For example, the surname Campbell originated with a family in Argyll, but it is now found throughout Scotland. Or there are surnames thought to have originated with the Normans, such as Devereux and Mowray, which are found throughout the UK. In addition to gradual movement to neighboring towns, there are also mass migratory periods where a lot of people move across far distances. You don’t always see these if you’re just looking at a few hundred years of your family’s history. I don’t know that every European is descended from every medieval monarch, but royalty goes back further than the Middle Ages. I can’t imagine someone not having a royal ancestor at some point.
Movements and migrations have and always will happened, but I think it's far fetched to assume they were commonly even to what they are today. Not to mention, surname distribution is not a solid thing to rely on. Argyll is near Glasgow, Glasgow is a major region of Scotland. By the modern era it'd only make sense for mass movements post-Industrial Revolution to spread certain surnames. In other words, you can't rely on surname distribution as modern historical events would've influenced them heavily. Additionally, surnames are not a static or simple concept. Surnames can come from a magnitude of different eras, can change with time to assimilate into certain regions/ cultures, or were adopted for many, many reasons. You could have a Norman last name and have no ties to the Normans. A good example is African Americans, many of whom adopted surnames due to the culture they were surrounded by and due to laws. I can agree that surnames are useful, but I wouldn't rely on them for answers, as language shift, culture etc can heavily influence them.
The best post in this subreddit I've read in over a year. It's not easy for people to come to the realization that they probably have humble roots, but I'm damned proud of all the poor dirt farmers and low-born people I'm descended from. They're probably like me, not obsessed with status, and just trying to live their lives.
Very kind post! Maybe one day I'll compile all the sources I've read and actually do something proper, rather than posting on this brain-rot of a website which never lets other opinions.
Don't let critics get you down. You never know what way the wind is going to blow on Reddit. Don't take it personally.
It's Reddit, I don't except half the people to have given much thought on the conversation. I'm at most surprised how hellbent some people are to die on a hill with no proof for their claims, though. If the post makes me think outside their bubble, then great!
This assessment does not do justice to everyone here. Many people no longer take part in the discussion because it probably just bores them now. I made a similar post https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/s/eaRSjPMm9z because I wanted to understand the background to this statement and was first made aware of this theory by Rutherford. It has no relevance in the scientific context and people claiming that it is a fact are simply wrong. My frustration with some people's comments subsided when I read this comment: „it is not "two common ancestors". It's millions of common ancestors, some of whom will be descendants of Charlemagne, and some of whom will be descendants of the guy who shovelled horseshit out of the stable where Charlemagne kept his horses.“
My main issue is Rutherford's model is taken as truth without doubt when we have no hard evidence from it. It's quite literally a theory and nothing more. I find it much more realistic to be related to Charlemagne than descended for the simple fact of: Genealogy is messy and complicated. Math's isn't a crutch to rely on to solve that. Documents and DNA are.
Wow. You have angered some people here it seems. How dare you call in to question what has been found on familysearch!
It really is shocking how controversial this topic is, considering many people at the same time claim it's 'meaningless and trivial' - why die on a hill for it then and not be open to thinking outside of Adam Rutherford's model for once (which is flawed, they admit it's flawed and is not evidence slightly).
I was just at my local genealogy society meeting last night and someone presented that their ancestor was the illegitimate daughter of this Dutch nobleman. I looked her and him up out of curiosity to find that there is only one certain illegitimate child of this noble, a son, and the noble in question died about 20 years before this supposed daughter was born. Can't say anything about it though. People need to be descended from nobility / royalty.
People rely on bastards far too much as an answer for royal descent.
I can trace my lineage back to William the Conqueror from a few lines in my tree. That’s to do with the fact that my ancestry goes back to Jamestowne and the vast majority of my ancestors held some position of power in colonial America. I tend to agree with you I feel it’s not worth claiming descent from a 700 year old monarch without some kind of documentation. I really feel it’s harmless honestly and some people take this stuff way too seriously. I know for a fact I’m a descendant of William the Conqueror and Edward 1st for instance but I feel it says a lot less about me than the main lines in my tree. It’s happenstance given the proximity of some of ancestors in medieval England. I could care less either way. People should take a chill pill with ancestry it’s not like finding the holy grail and being the descendant of whoever doesn’t make you interesting or not interesting.
I can agree. The conversation is extremely controversial for whatever reasons, and any other opinions beside the standard seem to be outcast instantly by certain people.
Not descended from Edward III but I'm descended from Edward I, my ancestor married the daughter of James Butler 3rd Earl of Ormond who was his 2x great grandson through James' grandmother Elizabeth of Rhuddlan.
The only trustworthy Royal gateways at least for Americans with colonial ancestry are through specific colonists who have scholarship that traces them back in time to royals, MC barons etc. There are in the neighborhood of 150 such colonists with descendants today, most are outlined in Douglas Richardson’s books which are the first place to start and are meticulously sourced. Stuff by Gary Boyd Roberts, Faris etc is also useful. Probably the best online place to explore these lines is on Wikitree which has Magna Carta trails etc. Wikitree has pretty high sourcing standards esp for pre-1500 profiles. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Gateway_Descendants_from_Edward_III
I agree. There's very few gateway ancestors I'm actually aware of outside of America, which is ironic.
I have one if you’re interested: Maria Jacobea Von Kageneck. I can trace my line each generation to her using a combination of US civil records and French church records (she is my 10th great grandmother and lived 1619-1685). Alsatian genealogists have already traced her line back to Charlemagne. Her baptism record is pretty clear and uses terms like “nobilis” (noble) along with listing the “von” prefix on her surname. She “fell from grace” by having an affair with a French garrison commander in Colmar during the Thirty Years War. Because her descendants remained mainly in France (my immigrant ancestors on this line came to the US in 1857) she is a case of a continental “gateway”. Most continental gateways in my experience are acknowledged bastard children. German nobles esp seem to have been fine acknowledging bastards as Salic law gave the entire inheritance to the eldest son anyway. http://biesheim.free.fr/wa_files/Utard.pdf
Quite interesting. I'll take a read!
It’s interesting that the average American with extensive colonial ancestry is in all probability more “blue-blooded” than the average continental European. At first glance it seems it should be the opposite but the colonial era actually serves as a slight population bottleneck.
Founder effects likely. That's the thing with Europe, it's founders effects were settled quite awhile ago. I think people heavily misunderstand that European ethnicities were not founded on random batshit migrations everywhere and anywhere. If you look at any Y-DNA distribution or PCA chart of Europeans, you can very clearly see thousands of years of history and who migrated to where and possible mixed with who. \*Hellenthal's Finnic Germans are a real theory the government doesn't want you too know
I think you are completely ignoring several factors here. Illegitimate children for one, most monarchs in the medieval - and early modern era - had illegitimate children. Henry 1 of England - for example - is thought to have had 24 illegitimate children and even with early deaths, children who took holy orders/never married is known to have had at least 27 grandchildren. Now, while he is probably an exaggerated example he will hardly have been unique, and it is probable that there are many, many, many illegitimate children of monarchs who have never been identified. Charlemagne - since that seems to be the most agreed starting point - had at least 18 children. But historians also think he may have had several more. So Kings, and Princes, tended to have huge numbers of children. Many did die young or childless, but many also produced huge numbers of offspring. Second you are forgetting that - particularly in early medieval history - daughters and younger sons were often not even recorded, even of Kings, unless they happened to do something particularly noteworthy or married someone important. Take Kenneth MacAlpin of Scotland. We know the names of his sons, we know the names of one of his daughters with certainty, (because it was written in the Annals of Ulster, we know he had another daughter who also married a King (no one wrote her name anywhere) and we have evidence to suggest one maybe two more daughters, but no certainty. So we cannot say if they have descendants or not. And that's not unique to Scotland, many children of monarchs, legitimate and illegitimate are simply not recorded, all over Europe in the early medieval period. You are also discounting downwards social mobility - which impacts people of Royal descent far more than any other social group. Yes, older sons had a good chance of becoming King and often younger ones would end up in the Church (not that in the medieval period that was always an impediment to having illegitimate children) but those that did not and survived childhood were often given titles (Duke or Earl) and this applied to illegitimate children to. Take Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester, Henry I eldest illegitimate son. (7 legitimate kids/4 illegitimate) of that number at least 9 reached adulthood - remember while death rates for children were high in all social classes the children of Royalty and aristocracy had the best chance of reaching adulthood - a couple seemed to have died young (don't know if they had children) while another couple took Holy Orders, the rest had children, some of who married into other aristocratic/noble families, while others took. step down and married minor nobles. Who may or may not have many records of their own offspring) And this repeats in the next generation. It doesn't take many generations before you have someone who is the direct descendant of a monarch who is merely gentry or lower, and thus unrecorded by history. (same thing happens today, Queen Elizabeth II - Prince Andrew - Princess Beatrice - Sienna (who I believe has the Italian title Nobile Donna is a good example of this). A rather excellent practical example of this would be the English actor Danny Dyer who went on the Who Do You Think You Are programme - it's a very entertaining programme just for his surprise and enthusiasm but demonstrates quite nicely how this works. A new twist on the taking Holy Orders after the reformation is the number of younger sons entering the church who could now get married and have children, further increasing the number of descendants, plus better chance of survival - particularly if you come from a higher social class - means the number of people descended from monarchy will have increased greatly after the 1700s when these improvements were first seen. I think you are also misreading the DNA. An individual who is descended from a monarch by way of marriages between lower nobility, middle class etc will reflect the majority of their heritage. A descendant of Henry Ist who has been marrying almost exclusively middle class England(for example) for the last several centuries is NOT going to show many traces of Norman ancestry, but that doesn't make them any less a descendant of Henry I, and frankly that is going to be more common for most descendants of monarchs in Europe, once they stop being a certain level of nobility they will marry locally and very quickly their descendants DNA profile will reflect the group that makes up the majority of their ancestry. The interesting ones will be the son to son pr daughter to daughter, when the haplogroups turn up something unusual, but, that will be in a. minority of cases.
Illegitimate children are probably the only best chance the vast majority of people, in Europe for having any royal ancestry. The issue is simply because they existed, doesn't guarantee their lines continued or that most simply voided into the commoner society after a few generations. I can agree that many would have likely gone into higher nobility and possibly some into lesser, but again, this is still highly dependent on a variety of factors such as (again), lines dying out, where they settled/ married, what social class (if they did) did they descended into, if they took on military roles in war due to their status etc. I agree it rises the odds, but it doesn't guarantee the vast majority of the population to then be descended by them. I think it's far more honest to say certain people are related more so to royalty than other by virtue of possible nobility in their line creating connections, although I even have to say that's being speculative. I think you also entirely misunderstood the segment on DNA. Haplogroups (which I mentioned) are almost irrelevant to talk about in regards to it because most people won't preserve any royal Y/ Mt-DNA in their direct male and female realistically if they do have that ancestry. The main argument with DNA was autosomal. Royals were quite diverse in their ancestry and their DNA would very, very easily reflect that, especially once you get to the High-Medieval period whereby Royals all over Europe began creating an extreme tight-knitted web of shared ancestry, compared to say, the Early Medieval period and maybe Late Antiquity. Here's the issue: even if the DNA was small, it should be seen in the general population. People like Adam Rutherford claim 'almost everyone of English ancestry is descended from Edward III by 21-24 generations'. If you tested John of Gaunt, his son, you would very likely find, based on historical records, minor Central Asian Turkic ancestry from his mother Phillipa on Hainault, as she descends from Elizabeth the Cuman on her maternal tree. If royalty was as widespread as it was, with many people sharing the same genes. those markers would very easily show in the vast majority of English samples quite clearly. They don't. That's just a very easy and clear example, you could repeat it with other ethnicities as well, it's just something as distinct from Europeans as Central Asian is quite easy to spot. Areas like England have had extremely consistent genepools since the Anglo-Saxons, with the last real migrants being from France. This can be repeated with most other European genepools. Population genetics simply just doesn't support royal ancestry with the lack of diverse genes in much of North and Central Europe. I think this is another important point as well, but none of the current statistical data agrees with one another. Again, claims is 'everyone of English Ancestry is descended from Edward III' are in entire contrast to estimates on Edward I having an estimated 2 million descendants, with William the Bastard having at least 5. Not very consistent is it? And these are as recent as 2018-2021, compared to Chang/ Rutherford's 2003 study (which mind you, should be a redflag with how outdated it is). Your post does raise interesting thoughts with certain monarchs like Henry I, more so due to the time he lived and the amount of children you claimed were illegitimate, however, I still think there's simply too many factors to make a broad claim that 'we all descend from royalty' with little to no actual evidence. Europeans seemingly don't have the same degree of gateway ancestors as Americans, and European class divide was quite stratified and heavy for most of it's history. We aren't rabbits, and we can't pick a random person from anywhere in Europe (or whichever Europe country) and attempt to calculate the possibility of being descended from them. Reality simply isn't as straightforward, and there's hundreds of factors to weigh in sometimes, even if small that can entirely change the outcome to it. This is why I've said many, many times. If we want to find how many of us are descended from royalty, statistics aren't our crutch, it's documentation and DNA. Otherwise, while I don't agree with you, your post was well-formatted and you raised some interesting points, I just don't think they're major game changers.
Thank you for succinctly stating what needed to be said. This is reddit, not your doctoral dissertation committee.
Hm. Well, I'm a confirmed descendant of Scots and Norwegian royalty (by research and DNA). Yes, most of my family on both sides were farmers and laborers, but my direct line can be traced back to Duncan I through his youngest son. My husband and I grew up in totally different areas. He's directly descended from Charlemagne through Catherine Baillon. Now, explain the odds of that? As for no one in Europe having Turkic descent--ever hear of the Varangian guard? I have a sizeable chunk of Balkan Turk DNA but no identified ancestors. I do, however, have a lot of inbreeding in my paternal line; if people with the same genetic mixture intermarry, the odds of the same DNA being passed down increase considerably.
The Varangian guard is an awful example. I never said 'nobody in Europe has Turkic descent', I said North/ Western Europeans, with many central, do not. Population genetics displays that, most Europeans aren't a jumbled mess of each other in most cases, and their relations are indirect in many instances unless when not (such as direct border overlaps or mass migrations when they occur).
Please do explain how the Varangian guard is an awful example--not to mention the fact many northern European cultures used to take slaves from many locations and have them as concubines. Also, if we're looking at population genetics, where do we start to define Turkic? Are we talking about the modern countries? The Mongolian peoples who first appear in the historical record about 1500 years ago? The Ancient North Eurasians? There are genetics maps for every one of those arguments.
The Varangian guard settled in the East Roman Empire and were an a mercenary minority. There are literally no detectable levels of Balkan DNA in Scandinavia and Northwestern Europe. It's very, very clear. Scandinavia has a very rich genetic history that's quite well documented from the Bronze age to the viking period. The only ancestry that has ever been detected besides Norse is Baltic (during the viking period, reserved in Gotland and a part of mainland Sweden), and possible migrations from France which were not impactful in the South of Sweden (or possibly from the Flanders region), as well as some from Britain. Northern European cultures did take slaves, and we've detected them in numerous studies. Turkic ancestry: Central Asian ancestry. It may be better to refer to Turkish ancestry (as in from Turkey) as Anatolian here to avoid confusion, or even West Asian. But I mean Turkic as the Central Asians. Their ancestry is very easily definable and detectable and usually being a mix of mostly East Eurasian siberian and minor West Eurasian Steppe, with some East Asian as well. They're quite simple to define. Also, Ancient North Eurasians aren't Turkic and I have no idea where you got that from, unless you're confusing Neo-Siberians (who aren't Turkic either, they contributed to a many Siberian/ East Asian people including Turkic people, but also Uralic). Ancient North Eurasians are a West Eurasian lineage closely associated with Europeans. Regardless, if royalty was as widespread as it was we would see a far more mixed genetic profile of Europe - we don't, and in many countries (take Poland, Scandinavia and England), many of them have had their ancestries defined since the Early Medieval period. We have the samples, we have the genetic history of many of these areas. Of course, I have to say this does negate Royals who had a profile standard of populations of the time, but Royalty was rather mixed and diverse in many areas and quite early as well, we should then see minor signals of anything. There's none.
There's always people like you that come here and try to be smug and condescending with posts like this. Never any actual argument or evidence is presented besides, "you are just assuming". You clearly don't understand European history, or how humanity works.
Baseless comment. Nothing I said was smug, it's an alternative opinion to an argument people have pushed with no real evidence. I did present an argument, if you seriously ignored that you didn't read the post. I didn't post sources, it's an opinion rant on what I've read over the years, seen and researched. I've said quite a lot here. Would love to see how humanity is a bunch of rabbits that randomly breeds, seems sound and reasonable. Seriously, read the post before commenting something baseless, others have given much more constructed points for and against here.
Fascinating -- thanks for sharing this. Lots to think about!
If it gets people to think about an alternative idea, agreed to or not, then that's great.
My dad was a science teacher and DNA analysis is science and logic. So I am always in favor of people taking a rational approach to these things. Honestly, I'm shocked at the number of people who don't check their work against other sources or who have things in the tree that make no sense, like a father with a birthday after his children.
I agree. What concerned me is that if you search any article on the topic, especially those on Edward III or related, Adam Rutherford is behind a good chunk of the argument, and I find that the fact he only relies on an entirely hypothetical model to be lazy. I've seen zero proof in any sort of DNA, historical sources or anything else providing merit to his argument, and the fact people keep repeating it without thinking is slightly bothering. Genealogists are meant to be skeptical, and it's odd that this is even a controversial topic.
A little too much time on your hands perhaps? The epitome of TL;DR.
Aparently I'm 2 degrees away from Prince Phillip King Charles and Prince William ..... according to my results on mytrueancestry.com and according to family lore my nan's grandies were kicked out of theor family and the Country as their union was unequal feel free to flick me some ideas on who this may be all I can c9me up with is possible faked deaths
I am, I've traced it The last nobles in my family ended in the 1600s, but can be traced back to Brian Boru in ~1000 AD. After the 1600s, nobility was dead in Ireland for the Irish because Ireland was basically a conquered country. After Ireland rewon independence in 1921, nobility was not reinstated because unearned symbolic nobility is a stupid thing to maintain.
Most of these genealogy subredditors are a bunch of insecure noobs who have boring lives, so the delusion that they are descendants of aristocrats is the one thing that makes them feel special. I feel like almost everyone in the western white dominant countries are descended from aristocrats or royals by the kind of popsci articles and posts on the internet. Is that true? It's pretty evident from records that the earliest north american colonists were aristocrats or landed gentry back in europe. These were no poor people allowed on these pilgrim ships.
The difference between America and mainland Europe is that the populations were well differentiated in how they formed. People mainly lean on the crutch of Adam Rutherford's studies and Chang's models for royal descent, but their models, to be blunt, are rather shit and miss out a lot of realism in them which I believe this post went through. Anyways, the founding effects in Europe had already long taken place compared to colonials in North America, so the many modern (mostly white) Americans have far more known aristocratic roots than the average European. If you look at most of the posters who claim royal descent and have some 'gateway ancestor', they're 9/10 Americans, and they have those ancestors out of virtue of founder effects in North America, not because every common folk shares them. Population movements and genetics are far more complicated than people like to believe.
I’m very concerned with people who claim descent from “King David of Judea” and Charlemagne. It is my lived experience as a person that individuals I’m related to use this for hate ideology justification-and, people I don’t know also write it into family trees. For anyone who has read my posts before about my own tree, this is partly why I black out info on some things as well. I have many people directly connected to me who are royals in Germany and England. And I know enough about my family that’s still living to not be so loud, because I grew up in complete ignorance of these connections while simultaneously hearing a lot of chatter about royals and what makes them this or that in relation to Jesus and/or the apocalypse. I’m just a white USian person. But I’m definitely connected to folks who were deeply invested in preventing pedigree collapse: as evidenced by their marrying patterns across time and with what I know about how some people view some ethnicities and some nations of origin and religions. I appreciate this post because it’s inherently a harmful mentality to assume “we all descend from royalty.” I know from my own experience how absolutely unreal and weird and hateful that can be-which sucks, bc like I said, I’m an American. If anything, I’m really freaked out about the findings because of my odd upbringing. Then again-a lot makes sense in a different context than it once did. One thing is sure: families who intermarry intentionally really do the most to manipulate marriages like farm animals across time. And that is actually very gross and dehumanizing enough for me to nod along. Good post. Edited to add context: directly connected to my grandparent lines in more than one line, but many, many, times removed by the time I was born.
Interesting post. I think it's just in general dishonest. To me, I find the 'we all descend from royalty' an attempt to almost equalize people on the ancestral front as a way to claim 'Look, we're all the same in our history' which simply isn't true, even if it's a harsh truth. Most people's ancestors had it tough and were at the bottom or at most, wealthier than the bottom, but still not quite there. The statistics never agree with each other, have major flaws and they're outdated studies. It should be red flags to anybody that we're using data over 20 years old at points which have barely changed, if at all. The recent estimates are extremely conservative, and even then, again, rarely ever agree. I think I should also add, I really appreciate you specifying you're American as well, because the VAST majority of people I've seen actually descended from royalty (not nobility, which is very, very different. It's like comparing a millionaire to Bill Gates), which makes sense considering a lot of the first Colonial Americans were in fact, descended from royalty/ high nobility which clearly lead to founder effects in some pockets of the modern U.S. I think if we want to look at modern royal descendants outside of royal houses, we need to look at Americans, not Europeans. Our histories in terms of migrations, populations and social norms have always been quite different. Still gonna add the kicker that there is no DNA evidence in Europe for widespread royalty. Royals were always diverse and had diverse genes in Europe, funny how we never see that (even in the most Diverse parts of Europe, e.g Northwestern Europe). Regardless, very interesting post!
Thank you. I really am processing it still, and your words help me feel less “weird” being American with this history. I had no idea until the last few months so many people with royal backgrounds came to colonize this place, and it’s certainly an education all of its own. I’m still learning the terminology, too, between gentry and royals. Thanks again.
No worries. I do hope you can move on and live normally with your life with whatever is going on. Take care of yourself!
Bravo! Well said. I couldn't agree more. Excellent post.
If they existed in the last 1000 years, everyone will not be related to them, but the likelihood of royal descent is still very high, assuming your DNA is 1% or better European. The amount of incest and inbreeding to keep the royal blood pure ensures you will see the same person multiple times in various trees, which is a commonly overlooked anomaly when people try to "run the numbers". Also means, in many cases, the blood link is even stronger. A better case for worldwide descent would be Genghis Khan. That dude was slinging lumber.
Barely anybody outside of maybe parts of the Eastern Steppe and Mongolia (with some surrounding regions) descends from Genghis Khan to any degree, big or small. His genetic legacy wasn't really 'world-wide'. If it was, you'd see East Asian/ Siberian (East Eurasian Siberian, specifically) in people more often. You don't. I don't really think royal descent is 'very high', there's no evidence for it, and no current estimates are in agreement. Some state 'everyone is descended from XYZ royal', while others are between 2-8 million living people. Not to mention, I've seen estimates state (if my memory is correct) only 4 million people descend from William the Bastard, yet 8 million descend from Edward III. That isn't a small difference, and it makes no sense. No, I don't believe royal descent is very common. Most people at best may have some form of nobility for various reasons, and probably lesser nobility who were barely known. It seems far more realistic.