Edward III descendants

Question

I see from past g2g questions that various calculations have been offered regarding the number of descendants of Edward III.

There was a recent radio programme (BBC so may not be available outside UK) which calculated that the likelihood of anyone with any significant ancestry in the UK NOT being descended from Edward III was effectively zero.

Just offered for interest.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001ts5b

"With the help of mathematician Hannah Fry and Habsburg Royal Historian professor Martyn Rady, population geneticist Dr Adam Rutherford sets out to prove that we're all descended from royalty, revealing along the way that family trees are not the perfect tool for tracing your heritage. But can it really be true? Can we all be descended from Henry VIII or Charlemagne!?"

Comments

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Plantagenet-70

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I am new here, and have some question, can I ask those?

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I am Edwards 19th great Granddaughter,I wish I could prove it.

Answer 1

This is an entertaining programme presenting these ideas accurately and in a clear manner. I did similar calculations back in 2008 (you can read them here on archive.org) which were a lot more conservative but came to the same conclusion.

Answer 2

It might be useful to add the link to Edward III's, profile.
He's my 20th great-grandfather according to Wikitree, I dip out on Charlemagne, but there appears to be an error on Wikitree and if that's fixed I likely am.
 And I've a swag of other royalty, Scottish, Spanish etc.
 It does demonstrate that genes get spread around down the generations.
 I also have King John and about 7 of the Surety Barons in my tree amongst my other disreputable ancestors.
 Basically  there are those who can document their descent from royalty or nobility, and those who can't find the records of their descent from those people.
 And it's a brave person who believes 22 generations of documents are a correct record of what really happened.

Comments

Well, I must be one of those 'zeroes'.  Although I am as English as English can be (according to DNA), according to WikiTree, I am not descended from Edward III (via bloodline), although I may be via several marriages to other people and their siblings!  I suppose it just means I have to work harder. sigh. I'm not that bothered, really.  We all came from somewhere.

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I am apparently also one of those rare people (according to WikiTree) that does not descend from Edward III, although we are cousins, very very distant cousins.

The BBC program is interesting, however, I would not consider it actually proof. A lot of assumptions are made, and in the end the conclusion is really a probability, a very high probability subject to the assumptions, but still a probability. This brings me back to a point I learned in statistics many years ago: correlation is not causation.

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Having done a post-graduate sciences qualification, we were taught absolute proof is a myth, it's all a matter of probability, and subject to revision.
 The paper trail may be certain that I'm descended from any given royal, but that's just proof of the paper trail, not of parentage at each generation.
 To know that we are not descended from a given royal (in the paper trail) requires tracing all our ancestors back to that generation, which for most of us is impossible.
 Given there used to be many more kingdoms and principalities than now exist, and how much smaller the population was, descent from some royal is near certain.

Answer 3

Are there any known Welsh gentry or noble families that directly descend from Edward III?