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#21
13-05-13, 14:35
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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. Last edited by Shona; 13-05-13 at 15:44. 
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#22
13-05-13, 15:28
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I have to say that very often the BBC present things based on a lot of assumptions, have basic factual errors at the outset, or have a preset agenda. In the last 3 weeks a relative has been involved or mentioned on three different BBC programmes, two of them have had such errors, (including his name and the names of institutes he is associated with), the third was only correct in as much that they were broadcasting his book but even the editing and paraphrasing changed some of the passages to the point that their context was changed so greatly it can hardly be recognised.
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Joseph Goulson 1707-1780 My sledging hammer lies declined, my bellows too have lost their wind My fire's extinct, my forge decay'd, and in the dust my vice is laid My coal is spent, my iron's gone My nails are drove, my work is done Lord receive my soul Last edited by Glen TK; 13-05-13 at 15:30.
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#23
13-05-13, 15:38
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#25
13-05-13, 17:47
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Shona
Not just landed gentry, but anyone who owned a farm (or even tenanted it) would tend to marry other farmers etc, to protect their lifetime interest in the sheer hard work they had put into it. Many of my farmers had daughters with illegitimate children, from which I deduce that a farmer would rather have illegitimate grandchildren than see his farm inherited by some passing vagabond who had got his daughter pregnant! (Or some jumped up farm labourer from a local bad family). Yes, it's POSSIBLE that R3 has a million descendants - but very unlikely. OC
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#26
13-05-13, 18:03
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#27
13-05-13, 18:48
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Thank you Shona! I had assumed this was silly drivel that a programme like More or Less would knock on the head, rather than perpetuate.
The number of Medieval surnames is vastly greater than those in existence today: an indication of the number of families who failed. On the other hand, I am a distant cousin of Richard III (on the assumption that he was related to Edward I) and my family is completely ordinary for the last couple of centuries.
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The chestnuts cast their flambeaux
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#28
13-05-13, 22:33
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Phoenix
Yes, as the genes descend further down the years they often tail off into obscurity and become ordinary, but that's presumably because you cannot have over one million royals, lol. OC
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#29
14-05-13, 01:39
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Didn't the original article quoted claim 'connected genealogically to' rather than 'descended from'? I am genealogically connected to Winston Churchill, but I am definitely not descended from him. One of OH's lines married 'advantageously' many times and there are any number of grand names in his tree.....but he is blood kin to very few of them.
And since they were counting from R3's nephews and nieces, they would not be his descendants either, but his parents'. Just a thought 
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#30
14-05-13, 08:14
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Macbev's post has reminded me that some people don't seem to understand the meaning of the words "descendant" and "ancestor". I have had to point out the fact gently to a few people!
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