How much confidence is there in connection to kings and queens of the Middle Ages?

Question

Hi all,

I've started to make contributions from my own family tree that are ending up getting connected to well-researched people in the 1800s.  Some of those people have connections going back very far - 8th century and earlier in some cases.  When I click on my Featured Connections and when I search through my ancestry back that far, it seems there are many connections to kings and queens and the like.  For instance, my Featured Connections put me as a direct ancestor of Charlemagne (Carolingian-77).

My first reaction is that this and some other connections are highly suspect.  And, when I look at the lineage for this example there are a mix of "unknown confidence", "confident", and one "uncertain".

How confident should I be in connections like these?  I suppose the answer is self evident: it's uncertain.

My more general question, however, is: Do these sorts of connections occur a lot, with low or high confidence?  And, more sort of philosophically, should it not be surprising to find these interesting connections because the explosion in population over the last several hundred years means that many of "us" came from a lot fewer of "them"?

These are just some curiosities.  Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any thoughts/responses!

Comments

You're not Charlemagne's ancestor.  He's *your* ancestor.  You're his descendant.

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Oops, sorry, just a little early morning antiphrasis!

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How reliable are the lines of descent? I’d say it is a mixed bag, some lines are probably good on one side, and wishful thinking on the other. You need to look at the sources at each step of the way. If the source is somebody’s gedcom that you cannot see, I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. If is is “personal knowledge of events witnessed by …”, that is by someone who lived hundreds of years later, well, that pretty much speaks for itself.

There is a geneticist who stated that Western Europeans are all direct descendants of Charlemagne (current population of Western Europe is just under 200,000,000, which does include people who’s antecedents are not European). I have no opinion one way or another, but Charlemagne lived about 1200 years ago, and he had a fair number of known legitimate and illegitimate children. So a large number of descendants is to be expected. According to WikiTree, I supposedly have more than 23,000 lines of descent from Charlemagne.

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Oh wow, I just saw where that number is stated.  Mine says over 40,000.  This WikiTree thing is pretty expansive!

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Mine says "At least 100,000 different paths were found between Charlemagne and L" - I guess it makes sense on someone that far back!

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How did you calculate that number of lines from Charlemagne?

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What do you mean by that?

All I do is I enter my profile and Charlemagne’s profile into the relationship finder, and the box where you can select a path through a specific ancestor, (that usually gives you the first 100 paths but also tells you how many total paths it found between you and the other person) just happened to say at least “100,000” paths between me and Charlemagne.

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Much classier than the response I would have left, William Goodrich. Off to look for the definition of "antiphrasis" which I surely spelled wrong. I seem to lose 20 IQ points here regularly.

Answer 1

Yeah, follow the certainty trail. "Confident" means (or should be meaning, if it was selected correctly) that there is a valid source to back up the relationship. So if there's an Uncertain/Unknown link in the chain, that's a place to do some research to figure out if things are right by finding sources. (and/or marking the certainty)

That said, when you go back several hundred years, if someone still has living descendants, odds are there are millions of them. So, while we aren't all showing up to the same reunions, we're all related somehow.

Comments

Ha!  Well put.  Maybe the party is just *really* big.

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I do forget quite often to click that box - so that's always a possibility, at least I would think worth looking into.

Please don't send me email saying it's not. I'm already telling myself I'm wrong.

Answer 2

Not everyone seems to check the boxes even when there are credible sources - so I don't think that the "unknown confidence" necessarily means a lack of sources - either historical or parish records.

They say that most Europe is probably descended from  Charlemagne and probably most of English blood are descended from Edward I (from his legitimate and illegitmate children).

Documenting it is another thing but many of us can link back to English royalty (if you go back far enough or link to one of the noble families) and therefore basically European royalty (France, Spain etc) if we go back far enough.  Several of my ancestral lines go back to the Plantagenets & while other ancestors were connections with the Tudors.

Go back far enough and we are all cousins. But it' still a cool discovery to learn that much of the history I learnt in school is in fact family history.

Comments

OK, this is kind of what I was imagining as I asked the question, but it seemed too extreme.  After I read your reply I found this very appropros article.  The title is pretty comical to me now! :-)

"So you’re related to Charlemagne? You and every other living European…"

https://www.theguardian.com/science/commentisfree/2015/may/24/business-genetic-ancestry-charlemagne-adam-rutherford

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This is a great article! Thank you for sharing it!

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If you are interested, this site will compare your DNA to archaeological site DNA samples in Britain and Europe:
https://mytrueancestry.com/en
It's all a bit of fun

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I'm one of those that doesn't check the boxes. Unless I personally witnessed it, I'm not going to say for certain that that thing happened as described. I've just seen too many errors on census records, death certificates, etc.

Birth records are pretty good from what I've seen, but I've read that a small percentage (between 2% and 5% for instance) don't come from the father listed. The probability is low for any given generation, but after 8 or 10 generations...?  

Then there are adoptions that are never recorded, and sometimes with an older mother giving birth, you have to wonder if she's covering for a pregnant teen daughter. DNA will eventually sort most of that out I think, but that will take time.

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Okay, this was a fun site! I have some interesting matches, including several Scottish nobility/royalty samples (expected), and to Merovingian noble samples (not at all expected, LOL)!!

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Hi Jeanette, just wanted to say thanks for your answer in this thread.  Your last couple of sentences sum up two of the greatest lessons in genealogy,  "we are all cousins"  and the fact that much of the history we had to listen to in school, was in fact, "family history".  Guiding principles for my interest in genealogy for many decades.

As an example of the "cousins" principle, I found that we are 14th cousins, from a common ancestor 500 years ago in England, whose descendants wound up living on opposite sides of the planet.  Fascinating!

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I wonder about being a descendant of royalty. All royalty had many many subjects under them that did the farming, butchering, cooking, cleaning, soldiering and so many other things. They would have to have a lot of children to continue those jobs. All the different wars that have taken place over the thousands of years have created broken ties or more people from prisoners to rape to adoption. We know today how completely confusing it can be with our own families.

Answer 3

Excellent question. I have been curious about this myself.

Answer 4

I was able to prove my lineage to Charlemagne in 2019 with Membership in the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne through my Spanish Royal Gateway Ancestor Juan Montes Vigil. This was accomplished with Birth, Marriage, death records as well as wills.

Usually the problem in real Genealogy is finding a creditable proven & accepted Gateway Ancestor, as most ancestry errors are made at this transition point.

My Ancestor Juan Montes Vigil, was the first Spanish Royal Gateway Ancestor to be accepted by North American lineage Societies as an acceptable Royal Gateway Ancestor for Membership.

In my Wiki tee I still have to add 6 Profiles to connect,  FERNANDO PÉREZ PONCE DE LEÓN, (WikiTree ID: De_Leon-296) with my Maria de Quiros y Miranda (WikiTree ID:     De_Quiros_y_Miranda-1) to match my Approved OCC membership Application.

I have been unable to add the 6 profiles because of the Pre-1500 tag needed to add the profiles.

To check to see if you have a Gateway Ancestor that will be acceptable beyond any doubt, just look at the Gateway Ancestor list at: https://www.charlemagne.org/Gateway.html

If your Gateway Ancestor is not on that list, you would have to prove the whole line with period sources, once that has been done their names is added to the list as a proven Gateway.

Comments

"To check to see if you have a Gateway Ancestor that will be acceptable beyond any doubt, just look at the Gateway Ancestor list at: https://www.charlemagne.org/Gateway.html"

But "Gateway Ancestors" if you have ancestors that migrated TO America before some cut off date.  

If all your ancestors are in Europe, or your family migrated recently, you won't HAVE a Gateway Ancestor.

But the Magna Carta project has confirmed lines of descent from Magna Carta Barons to Magna Carta Gateway Ancestors.  If your ancestry goes back to someone on one of these confirmed Magna Carta lines, you only have to prove the part of your line that leaves that line.

Answer 5

Since royalty had family records kept there are better odds of linking to a royal far back in time than to non royal. But in certain periods of history records were created or tweaked to increase the standing of some nobles so I see these connections more as hints for doing more research. Than as givens.