General Chat

Depending on how you do the maths, you can say that between 80% and 99% of people with British lineage are descended from Edward III.

The further you go back, the higher the likelihood of descent from royalty or fame. One estimate puts 100% of people in the western world with a line back to Mohammed. In fact anyone you care to choose who had a recorded number of children will be an ancestor somewhere along the line.

Tracing the line is another matter, obviously. But it's an interesting proposition and makes me wonder about lots of things.

By the same token, you can say the same about the millions and millions of people whose births and progeny were never recorded, which seems to be the case with me.

All descended from 'Adam', whoever or whatever you perceive 'Adam' to be ;-)

It does make me laugh though when you see people going the DNA route to try and prove ( to themselves?) that they are '100% British', ignoring the obvious truth that they weren't born wrapped in a flag with 'British pat pending' stamped on their bottom :-)

I might be reasonably certain of a French Duke or so along the line, but have dug up no 'gateway ancestors' so far.

I think we are all related to Royalty
Depending on how wide and long

Your Family tree is :-D :-D

Rose, my nephew got his DNA analysed.
His father's surname was Murphy, I've traced my line quite a long way back - mainly Suffolk/Hampshire one side, Cornish the other.
Nephew's DNA came back 6% Italian! :-D :-D :-D

Sadly my Brother in law (nephew's dad) is dead, or there would have been fantastically hilarious 'discussions' on whose side of the family was responsible!! :-D :-D :-D :-D

Oh I've got Scots blood in me so good chance some French royalty as they've got cozy over the years haven't they :-D :-D

Italians = Romans we've discussed this before. :-D

Yeah, I had my DNA done and it was interesting - I suppose the point is, as Nyx so righty says, we are all from one common ancestor and taking it to the extreme there was once upon a time a newly formed single cell.....

Fascinating to think about :)

Genealogy also doesn't acknowledge the 'rights' of the Lord of the Manor in times gone by :-( :-(


.......but if you were a 'canny' peasant, you made sure you were pregnant before you got married!

A past time still followed by many it seems :-D

I had my DNA done too - as a Christmas present. It seems I have quite a lot of Scandinavian blood in my veins. I blame the Vikings!

I googled Scandinavian royalty and came up with King of Scandinavia - a cruise ferry. That about sums it up for me, as my mother used to say I had feet like barge boats! :-D

Me too, Cynthia. My east coast ancestors supplied the Viking blood! They have Scandinavian surnames so we sort of knew already.

Mostly the rest of me is Celt and Basque.

We are a nation of immigrants. :-D

'Whether King or commoner, you should be responsible for the child you have fathered'.

In the context of royalty, a morganatic marriage, sometimes called a left-handed marriage is a marriage between people of unequal social rank, which prevents the passage of the husband's titles and privileges to the wife and any children born of the marriage.

Generally, this is a marriage between a man of high birth (such as from a reigning, deposed or mediatised dynasty) and a woman of lesser status (such as a daughter of a low-ranked noble family or a commoner).

Usually, neither the bride nor any children of the marriage have a claim on the bridegroom's succession rights, titles, precedence, or entailed property. The children are considered legitimate for all other purposes and the prohibition against bigamy applies.

In some countries, a woman could also marry a man of lower rank morganatically.

(Copied from the Net.) Learn something new every day!

Practically everybody in the UK with a British grandfather will have a link to blue blood legitimate or otherwise. It is estimated that there are over 4 million descendents of Edward III. There are some public trees with over 100000 documented descendents of this king.

Maybe there are people with the blood of yeoman Saxons in their blood untainted with blue but not many. There are a few such villages in Leicestershire with records showing this going back to the C14. We have an ancient document for payment of fines ( rent ) nr Peterborough at that time. However our true Saxon claim is mucked up my descent from an impoverished illeg daughter of John of Gaunt not to forget my ggm born in Dublin. Her mother could not even speak English.

The Stuart kings had any number of children mostly out of wedlock many recognised and even enobled. A large part of the English middle class can document descent from the Stuarts. That is one reason that the Hanoverian monarchs got off to such a shaky start not being safe on the throne until Victoria.

Of course the Hanoverians also worked hard spreading their blue blood into the rest of the population. One such descendent was even on Chris Tarrant's millionaire quiz.

It is all a lot of fun but not to be taken seriously.

How did I know that you would have a direct link, meticulously researched, documented, verified and confirmed, to an illegitimate 14th C daughter of a son of Edward III, thereby being able to trace descent back to Henry II and your name derivative, Rollo the Viking (the son of Ketil flatnose, as I'm sure you know) where the line comes to a halt.

I bet you are waiting with bated breath for the transcription of the 9th C BDM records. I know I would be. Fascinating.

I do have one line, father's father etc back to Suffolk 1525, well researched ( not by me but a lifetime's work) I must check through it sometime.

from google " this is usually a surname of Scandinavian Viking, English, French-Breton or Irish origins."

Not exactly committing themselves there are they :-)

I'd be interested in knowing my DNA mix, but not enough to spend so much on finding out.

My breath is quite unbated but you are right about the moniker.
The line is well researched ( not by me ) with supporting documents such as wills, marriage contracts and fines. These are for the most part in public archives where cleverer people than I have deciphered the scrawly writing. Some are in the archives of the high and mighty. A year ago when the relevant archive was being sold off I was given access for a day which was fun.

I have the Norman side back as far as a village called, oddly, Eu. My own house in France is a tad more than an hour's drive away.

Imho a great many people have far better links to blue blood. Whether they can be traced is a mix of luck and a lot of effort by somebody to do the research. In my case the research was done by the mother of one of my sons. No, she was not my wife Dermot would not approve.

As none of this is of any material benefit my interest is limited. I did do the DNA test after a rellie paid for it. No surprises but the rumours about an ancestor who made his money out of sugar and slaves in Jamaica were confirmed.

The trouble with some of these research people you have to wonder if all of them are 100% accurate. I've found people with connections to my tree over the years who swear blind they have the tree going back to the year dot, and it must be right I paid for it type attitude. I've found mistakes in their tree without too much research. No I don't think I'm a master sleuth but sometimes they make a good educated guess and it can be wrong....and this is in the census so how good was their research before the census etc were available to check.

Illegitimacy was rife, any records that were kept even up to the present time have to be taken with a large dose of scepticism. I personally only ever say that so an so is recorded as being a relative. I think it's probably fair to say that the further back you go, the less reliable things are, to the degree that it's probably just a best guess. Bastardy records are useful on occasions where they exist, but unless someone can be dug up and some DNA found, all you can do is say its possible.

Mind, I agree, some folk are adamant they are directed descendants of some saxon chieftain.

Although I did not do the original work I did check it all out myself. Took three years.
In the process I found two serious errors which made some v cross indeed. I also found sister of a maternal gm line descendent had married the Earl of Harewood. Also an aristocat who married my GM sister. After first child he deserted her and went to Australia where he married bigamously 5 times!
Most of all I discovered that shortly before the Battle of Naseby Gen Monk's army burned the family house destroyed the animals and raped all the girls 12 and over inc one who was pregnant. Somehow a few of the men survived the actual battle. Needless to say I now have scant admiration for Cromwell & co.

Fh ... So interesting. Open with care.

How interesting. We must be related.