DESCENDANTS OF CHARLEMAGNE-----HOW MANY?
John Yohalem
> My previous post about descendants of Charlemagne only applied to people
> of Western European descent, as I stated. Certainly Asians, Native
> Americans, etc., would not fall within this reasoning.
> I am also aware that cousins marry cousins, and distant cousins
> certainly marry distant cousins unknowingly, so you cannot get a
> true count of your ancestors simply by doubling every generation.
> However, even taking that into account, the odds still seem very
> great that most people of Western European descent can trace lines
> back to Charlie.
Consider the case of England (leavind aside, for the moment, the even
tinier Scotland), a small island nation with a largely reclusive (except on
certain specific occasions) population, endogamous and fertile. The
population has been estimated as c. 4 millions for the early middle ages,
half to three-quarters of that, abruptly, by 1400, due to the Black Death.
From these 3 (for the sake of argument) millions of people descend, today,
about fifty millions in England and Wales alone (allowing for three or so
millions of ex-colonial immigrants and a million Irish), plus a fourth or
more of the Canadian population, nearly all the Australians and New
Zealanders except those of exclusive Aborigine and Maori ancestry, plus
some fifty million more in the U.S. and quite a passle in South Africa. And
this explosion only occurred in the last three centuries, with the
development of vaccination, etc. Before that, the population never reached
ten figures and intramarriage was common to ALL classes --- it is said that
only the invention of the bicycle (permitting a boy to go courting more
than two miles away) brought exogamy to the rural classes. The aristocracy
of every level (and this was even more true on the continent) preferred to
marry close kin if they couldn't marry upwards, to preserve property and
prestige. We know about the excessive kin-marriage of royalty, because it
shows up in wars, alliances, etc. But this was also true of every class.
Cross-marriage usually was confined to aristocratic but poor youths wedding
richer but less prestigous heiresses.
Anyway: Edward III begot twelve children in wedlock, of whom at least six
have traceable descendants today, and consdering royal opportunity, it
would be very odd if the descendants of at least the two millions living in
the south of England in his day were not all descended from Edward III in
some way or other.
And of course Edward was descended (through both parents, multiply) from
Charlemagne.
John Yohalem
John Yohalem
can't figure out who said:
>"More
> or less everyone in the western world is descended from the Emperor Nero,
> rather fewer from William the Conqueror, and a mere few hundred thousand
> from George Washington."
but since neither Nero nor George Washington fathered a child (Nero did,
actually, but it perished in the womb of its murdered mother), the
likelihood of anyone being descended from them is slim indeed.
William I, the father of four sons and five or six daughters, is a bit more
likely. For one thing, his son Henry I fathered some 20 children before his
marriage....
You have to check subsequent generations. Maria Theresa, the Landesmutter,
had 16 children, yes, but 10 of them died without issue and two others left
only childless issue. That leaves a mere four kids from whom all her
descendants now descend: Leopold II, Ferdinand of Milan, Amalia of Parma
and Carolina of Naples.
After Leopold (13 children) and Carolina (12 I think), it gets
interesting.
Jean Coeur de Lapin
Todd A. Farmerie
John Yohalem wrote:
>
> can't figure out who said:
> >"More
> > or less everyone in the western world is descended from the Emperor Nero,
> > rather fewer from William the Conqueror, and a mere few hundred thousand
> > from George Washington."
>
>
> William I, the father of four sons and five or six daughters, is a bit more
> likely. For one thing, his son Henry I fathered some 20 children before his
> marriage....
>
Outside his marriage, not before . . .
Todd
Tom Camfield
And always, the bottom line is: one never can be absolutely certain of any
male ancestry--no matter what official records or family tradition might
say. :-)
Tom Camfield - camf...@olympus.net