Richard III - my 20 x great-grandparent

[Shona]

I like listening to More or Less on Radio 4, but was irked by the item on Richard III, which was broadcast on Friday - hence this thread.

I also contacted the show to say the assumptions they made rendered the stats meaningless.

This morning, the producers got back on touch and asked me email them to explain why there can't be 1,000,000 descendants of Richard III's nephews and nieces.

I was thinking of replying along the following lines. However, do GF moderators want me to put in a plug for GF? Also do members have personal examples by way of illustration that why wouldn't mind being quoted (no names mentioned of course!). Or would you prefer me to do a reply on behalf of GF?


Dear More or Less,

I was intrigued by your item last week where a 'back-of-the-envelope' calculation concluded there could be one million descendants of Richard III's nephews and nieces. The calculation may be correct, but the probability of there being 1,000,000 living descendants is zero.

Look at it the other way round. We each have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, etc.

If we take a generation as being 30 years and go back 1,000 years, there would be 1 billion ancestors - more than the population of the world at the time.

The reality it that, until relatively recently, people didn't marry random strangers.

Monarchy (and landed gentry) were the most likely to marry someone with 'pedigree' from their own class in order to restrict land, wealth and power - a practice known as endogamy. It was, in fact, normal for the British monarchy to marry a cousin.

Check out this link to see just common it was for British royals to marry someone with whom they had a familial relationship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogam...itish_monarchy

To be fair, you did say that your calculation was based on the assumption that there was no intermarrying.

Even looking at more recent royal marriages, Victoria and Albert were first cousins. The Queen and Prince Philip are second cousins once removed through Christian IX of Denmark and third cousins through Queen Victoria. Charles and Diana were seventh cousins once removed (Diana was descended from Charles II and also King James II). Charles and Camilla are linked but not related - Alice Keppel, Camilla's great-grandmother was a long-time mistress of King Edward VII.

Away the British monarchy, people lower down the social scale would tend to marry someone within their own social groups - the illiterate farm labourer would rarely get hitched to the daughter of a merchant.

Religion plays a role, too. Certain groups, such as Orthodox Jews, have practiced endogamy as part of their traditions. Catholics, too, traditionally practiced religious endogamy. Even now in Northern Ireland, so-called 'mixed marriages' are the exception.

Another reason why the back-of-the-envelope calculation that there are 1,000,000 descendants of Richard III's siblings may be correct mathematically but wrong genealogically is that lines die out.

Let's take Henry VIII - six wives (yes, each of them was a cousin to Henry), three children, but no grandchildren. The line died out.

Thanks to intermarrying, Edward VII was pretty well connected:

Adolphus, Duke of Teck - second cousin
Prince Albert of Schleswig-Holstein - nephew
Albert I of Belgium - second cousin
Prince Alexander of Battenberg - nephew
Alexander, Duke of Fife - son-in-law
Prince Alexander of Teck - nephew-in-law
Empress Alexandra of Russia - niece
King Alfonso XIII of Spain - nephew-in-law
Prince Arthur of Connaught - nephew
Prince Carl of Sweden - nephew
Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha - nephew
Charles I of Portugal - second cousin
Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein - brother-in-law
Constantine I of Greece, Duke of Sparta - nephew by marriage
Duchess of Albany - sister-in-law
Duchess of Connaught and Strathearn - sister-in-law
Ernest Louis - Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
Ferdinand of Bulgaria - second cousin
Ferdinand of Romania - nephew-in-law
Prince Francis of Teck - second cousin
Frederick VIII of Demark - brother-in-law
Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein - niece
George I of Greece - brother-in-law
Prince George of Hanover and Cumberland - nephew-in-law
Haakon VII of Norway - nephew by marriage and son-in-law
Prince Heinrich of Prussia - nephew
Manuel II of Portugal - second cousin
Crown Princess Marie of Romania - niece
Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein - niece
Crown Princess Margaret of Sweden - niece
Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia - nephew-in-law
Tsar Nicolas II - nephew
Princess Patricia of Connaught - niece
Crown Princess Sophia of Greece - niece
Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain - niece
Kaiser Wilhelm II - nephew

Any one with an interest in family history will come across people in their family tree who married some form of cousin.

A member of a discussion forum of which I am a member, estimated that over the course of 500 years, intermarriages reduces the total number of descendants by a factor of 20 or so. The results? Rather than 1,000,000, a more believable 50,000.