The grand revelation is that probably sixty percent or more of the American people are descended from kings.
Such descent, shared by a majority of Americans with a sizable quantity of colonial ancestry, is usually derived through roughly 350 royally descended immigrants of the 17th and 18th centuries who have been well studied by various American scholars. They include David Faris (Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth-Century Colonists, 2nd ed., NEHGS, 1999), myself (The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants, GPC, 1993, 2nd ed. scheduled for 2002), Douglas Richardson, Paul C. Reed, Neil D. Thompson, Brice McAdoo Clagett, etc. A large number of these royal descents are adjusted every decade.
King Edward III has over 100 million living descendants. There are more than 30 million Americans with Royal or Noble ancestors, about one in ten, although most don't know it. Almost all of us have at least one ancestral line to Charlemagne or Charles Martel, and most of us have multiple lines. There are about the same number of Americans with documented Mayflower ancestors, and again, most don't know it.
Royal descent occurs, of course, because the younger sons and daughters of kings become or marry nobles; the younger sons and daughters of nobles become or marry landed gentry; the younger sons and daughters of landed gentry become bureaucrats or professionals (clerics, university fellows, lawyers, soldiers, etc.); and the younger sons and daughters of professional elites have become the middle-class citizenry of the Anglo-American and British-derived world, in the U.S., Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, etc. And kings and royal families, of course, were derived from barbarian chieftains who led the tribes that successfully invaded, and intermarried with the patriciate of, the late Roman Empire.
Most middle-class Americans with sizable colonial ancestry and many middle-class Europeans descend from a cluster of High Medieval kings - Plantagenets from England; Capetians from France; and Hohenstaufens from Germany. Because of various intermarriages with the families of Byzantine emperors, a large number of westerners can also trace kinship to the Safavid shahs of Persia and various Mughal princes of India. Speculative descents from many ancient world cultures have been the subject of much study in the last generation and are ably summarized by Don C. Stone in Ancient and Medieval Descents Project.
Eleventh cousins share on average 60-parts-per-billion of DNA, or about 180bp (although with wide variation due to the spotty nature of meiotic recombination: in fact, 99.5% of 11th cousins will share no stretches of DNA through recent descent at all, while the remaining 0.5% will typically share tens of thousands of bases). A study of inbreeding in European populations found that couples from the UK are, on average, as genetically related as 6th cousins. The study looked at inbreeding in Scots, and in children of one Orkadian and one non-Orkadian.
Such descent, shared by a majority of Americans with a sizable quantity of colonial ancestry, is usually derived through roughly 350 royally descended immigrants of the 17th and 18th centuries who have been well studied by various American scholars. They include David Faris (Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth-Century Colonists, 2nd ed., NEHGS, 1999), myself (The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants, GPC, 1993, 2nd ed. scheduled for 2002), Douglas Richardson, Paul C. Reed, Neil D. Thompson, Brice McAdoo Clagett, etc. A large number of these royal descents are adjusted every decade.
King Edward III has over 100 million living descendants. There are more than 30 million Americans with Royal or Noble ancestors, about one in ten, although most don't know it. Almost all of us have at least one ancestral line to Charlemagne or Charles Martel, and most of us have multiple lines. There are about the same number of Americans with documented Mayflower ancestors, and again, most don't know it.
Royal descent occurs, of course, because the younger sons and daughters of kings become or marry nobles; the younger sons and daughters of nobles become or marry landed gentry; the younger sons and daughters of landed gentry become bureaucrats or professionals (clerics, university fellows, lawyers, soldiers, etc.); and the younger sons and daughters of professional elites have become the middle-class citizenry of the Anglo-American and British-derived world, in the U.S., Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, etc. And kings and royal families, of course, were derived from barbarian chieftains who led the tribes that successfully invaded, and intermarried with the patriciate of, the late Roman Empire.
Most middle-class Americans with sizable colonial ancestry and many middle-class Europeans descend from a cluster of High Medieval kings - Plantagenets from England; Capetians from France; and Hohenstaufens from Germany. Because of various intermarriages with the families of Byzantine emperors, a large number of westerners can also trace kinship to the Safavid shahs of Persia and various Mughal princes of India. Speculative descents from many ancient world cultures have been the subject of much study in the last generation and are ably summarized by Don C. Stone in Ancient and Medieval Descents Project.
Eleventh cousins share on average 60-parts-per-billion of DNA, or about 180bp (although with wide variation due to the spotty nature of meiotic recombination: in fact, 99.5% of 11th cousins will share no stretches of DNA through recent descent at all, while the remaining 0.5% will typically share tens of thousands of bases). A study of inbreeding in European populations found that couples from the UK are, on average, as genetically related as 6th cousins. The study looked at inbreeding in Scots, and in children of one Orkadian and one non-Orkadian.
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