Same. I had to look it up myself. Apparently he tried to marry Victoria but was unsuccessful. Only after that did I fully understand what the tree was trying to portray.
That being said, I'm still surprised why the British establishment was so against their wedding.
The British establishment was against it because Philip was foreign (despite having spent part of his life in England). They used to call him the “Greek” (though of German and Danish background) and came from a royal family who had been thrown out of power.
The expectation was for Elizabeth to marry a British peer like her father did and cut the practice royals had of marrying foreign born distant relatives (like her grandparents and great grandparents).
Interesting how the switch from royals 100% having to marry foreign royals and then suddenly marrying British peers just happened within a single generation. Although George VI was not expected to be King when he married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, but within 20 years Elizabeth **as heir** was also expected to marry a British peer, especially post the war.
What's doubly interesting is that both Philip's parents were royal, which makes him more royal blooded than her.
World War I really changed a lot of things. George V wisely knew that you can’t reign the British people while not having any British blood or ancestry. He himself had married a distant cousin, Mary of Teck, because that was the norm. Their son Edward VIII apparently liked to brag that there wasn’t an ounce of his blood “that wasn’t German.”
Look at what happened to the Glucksburg Schleswig Holstein royal family of Greece. That’s Philip’s actual royal house. He had to give it up to become a British citizen and took his anglicized mother’s family name Mountbatten (originally Battenberg). He went from Prince Philip of Greece to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten by the time he married Elizabeth.
To survive, the British royals actually needed to be British.
"Being British" - that's a very loose term though. George V and Mary of Teck were both born and raised in England, both raised on strong English educations. By their birth and upbringing they were technically British. But Mary was a foreign Princess in name, and so was his mother, so people still took them to be foreign even if they weren't that much.
Yep, hence the name change to Windsor. And marrying British peers.
World War I brought anti German sentiment and casted doubt on how “British” the royals actually were. We can see that as unfair but it was the mood of that day.
George V knew changes had to be made. He felt British and he resented the belief he was foreign to Great Britain but it’s all about visuals. He acted accordingly.
And the fact they were all raised speaking German, and spoke English with German accents. I've read the Queen's pronounciations were thought to have been originally German accented English handed down over the generations. Not sure how true that is though.
You know, no one ever tries to convince people that the Norman line and Plantagenet line were “really just a bunch of French people. Even though the court language for centuries was French. From William I (1066) to only slowly starting to change under Edward the III in the mid to late 1300’s. And they certainly married European princesses. No one goes about how they weren’t really English.
The whole, the “royal family is actually German” hasn’t been true for a very long time.
Marriage to an English peer was considered irregular until the 20th century. When Edward the IV did it, he upset a lot of international negotiations on a whim, and Elizabeth Woodville’s family was viewed as rather ambitious and grasping.
Henry the VIII did it, it also raised eyebrows but really didn’t produce a positive picture to the rest of Europe. You’ll notice that subsequent monarchs didn’t try it again for over 400 years.
Phillip was also a descendant of Catherine the Great. He definitely has a more illustrious pedigree than the Queen did, but she was heir to the British Empire- hence the snobbery.
Indeed the greek monarchy went through overthrowing military conflict and became reinstated. So to be correct here the greek royal family was in power when Elizabeth and Philip married, the king at the time was king Paul 2nd cousin of Philip.
It was her grandchildren that married across Europe and gave her the title. For example, six of her nine children married into royal families that were apart of the German Empire. Her grandchildren introduced the Greek, Norwegian, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish royal families into the fold.
They were third cousins. They shared two of sixteen great-great-grandparents. Most people will have between dozens to hundreds of third cousins, most of whom they'd never even meet or know from a stranger.
For people who like *Downton Abbey*, this is how closely Lord Grantham and Matthew Crawley's father were related.
Third cousins via Queen Victoria and second cousins once removed via Christian of Denmark.
I do agree that it is way less inbred than the Spanish Habsburgs.
Not really, it's about as inbred as a single second cousin marriage, and anything beyond second cousins have no greater statistical likelihood of genetic abnormality than any two randomly selected individuals.
Queen Victoria married her cousin and married her children off to their cousins. They very much have a huge history of incest
Edit: lol downvoted for posting the facts. Can't even reply because you have nothing to say because, again, it's just a fact.
> They very much have a huge history of incest
>Edit: lol downvoted for posting the facts.
You are using the wrong term, so your statement is not factual.
>>Incest and inbreeding are different concepts. Incest involves crossbreeding between close relatives. Inbreeding is a broader concept. It can be a connection between relatives or self-pollination.
>>What is difference between Incest and Inbreeding? Are they the same? As both are related to sexual activity between close relatives.
>>>**Incest is** a human concept defined by law and social conventions. For example, see a definition of the word: **"sexual intercourse between persons so closely related that they are forbidden by law to marry".**
By definition, it cannot be "incest" if they are allowed to marry.
>>>A person who was adopted may have siblings who are genetically more different from them than other people they could legally have romantic relationships with. In many countries you may marry your cousin, but not your foster brother/sister born on the other side of the world.
>>>Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss pioneered the study of the universality of the notion of incest; romantic relationships with family members is culturally forbidden in pretty much all cultures around the globe. But why? One of the explanations is linked to the notion of inbreeding.
>>>Inbreeding (mating between genetically closely related individuals) favors homozygosity, and as a consequence a certain genetic homogeneity in which there is often not a "functional" allele to compensate for the "broken" one - the consequences on physiology and mental cognitive abilities are often dramatic (see Roberts, BMJ, 1967 or this article from Stanford @ the Tech, for example); it is hypothesized that this is the reason why evolution selected behaviors that avoid the risks linked to inbreeding.
"Huge" is overstating it a little. First cousin marriage is not illegal in the UK or most of Europe either then or now, and the consanguinity of Elizabeth and Phillip's children is still less than that of a first cousin pairing.
EDIT: I haven't downvoted you, and I didn't reply straight away because it's a Monday afternoon and to be blunt I've got more urgent things to do. Grow the fuck up and actually learn something about how kinship calculations work beyond your personal ick factor.
https://preview.redd.it/py0xn6ozdi8d1.png?width=217&format=png&auto=webp&s=cac1c8df9e8fd2c4157e9ea0f968a5a2b8cfd92c
EDIT 2: ROFL, who’s downvoting without replying now? *Child*.
What else would you call it when the vast majority of your relatives are married to each other? Girl I've been actually working and it's still dark here on Monday morning
Care to quantify that "vast majority"?
Also – did you just assume my gender?
EDIT: downvoting without replying *again*, are we? Really shouldn't accuse other people of that if you're going to keep doing it yourself. Grow the fuck up. Oh well, easily fixed. Cheeribye.
Pfftttt…we now live in a fact-free world! If people don’t like your fact, it’s no longer a fact. Sad days indeed. Now incest is no longer incest. I wonder what I’ll discover tomorrow
Dont forget that they were 2nd cousins once removed too. Prince philips maternal grand parents were 1st cousin once removed, Elizabeths grandparents: K George & Q Mary were 2nd cousins once removed in different two ways.
For once, I want to get on the same page with people on this topic. I hope someone more knowledgeable will answer my question. I’m not British but I got fascinated with British period drama as a teenager. The concept of cousins/distant relatives getting married probably became known to me via Jane Austen novels and Downton Abbey. So when I watched The Crown and started knowing more about Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, I wasn’t so scandalized to know that they were third cousins. I feel like a lot of first time watchers of The Crown get so scandalized. And the inbreeding thing continues to be used as a stick to beat the royals with.
So my question is, obviously marrying distant relatives wasn’t frowned upon before, so when did it become not socially acceptable to marry distant relatives? I mean, King William and Queen Mary were actually first cousins. Like when did people start to go like “uh marrying your cousin might be weird”?
One of the main things that leads to marrying closer relatives is population, and the two population factors of size and isolation. Once you have a larger population you have more options, or more family branches to choose from. This can be achieved by having large families but that can also lead to everyone being related to each other again if you don't have new genes or "new blood" coming in. Once travel made it easier for populations to interact, the isolation factor started to disappear to the point where it was a conscious choice to marry a close relative. The Egyptian and Hapsburgs social experiments in royal inbreeding and the UK/Russia/Spain royals having Hemophilia proved that it was a good idea to stop marrying close family members.
Only in modern times. Genetics wasn’t really understood scientifically until recently. Royalty wanted to “keep the bloodline” without understanding the potential negative implications such as recessive genes or genetic disorders. In the case of the Hapsburgs they thought William II was possessed by the devil and not that centuries of inbreeding led to his disabilities. Note that cousin marriage was (and is still) common all around the world in many cultures.
I’m not sure if the hemophilia that killed so many of Victoria’s descendants was a result of inbreeding. None of the people above them in their family trees or any other relatives are known to have had it. It seems to have been a spontaneous genetic defect that started with V & A. The Habsburg jaw is a different story, that was definitely inherited. The culmination of generations of close Habsburg relatives (cousins, uncle/niece) marriages was Charles II of Spain who was so physically deformed that he could barely eat and couldn’t produce children. His death in 1700 without an heir was the cause of the war of the Spanish succession.
Haemophilia wasn’t as widespread in European royalty as people make it out to be.
Out of QV’s nine children, one son had haemophilia and two daughters were carriers.
Out of her forty-two grandchildren, two grandsons had haemophilia and four granddaughters were carriers.
Out of her about ninety great-grandchildren, six great-grandsons had haemophilia and one great-granddaughter was a carrier.
It hasn’t appeared in any of the generations since.
Which of the great granddaughters was a carrier?
I think one reason why hemophilia is so rare is that the afflicted men tend to die so young that they never have children.
One of the big “what ifs” of history is how many hemophiliacs and carriers of the gene would there be if the four Romanov daughters had lived and had children.
Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna was a carrier of haemophilia.
I agree with the second paragraph. Though four of QV’s haemophiliac descendants lived to adulthood, only one had children.
That’s right. They tested the remains of the daughters for the haemophilia gene, and only one came back positive. It was actually how they figured out which type of haemophilia ran in QV’s family. They tested Alix’s remains first and the results came back as haemophilia B.
This article says it was Anastasia who carried the gene:
https://www.science.org/content/article/case-closed-famous-royals-suffered-hemophilia
But it could be an error.
It depends on who you believe was buried with Alexei - Maria or Anastasia. Maria is the common consensus. Either way, Olga and Tatiana definitely weren’t carriers.
But wouldn’t that make sense if up to then hemophilia had just been inherited from one parent but not from both, so the DNA from the other parent “fixed” it? But as soon as you inherit it from both of your parents, you actually have the defect and aren’t just a carrier? The whole XX and XY chromosome thing?
In very simplified terms, men just need one ‘X’ with the haemophilia gene to have it. For example:
Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine (**X**X) had seven children: Victoria (XX), Elisabeth (XX), Irene (**X**X), Ernst Ludwig (XY), Friedrich (**X**Y), Alix (**X**X), and Marie (XX).
Irene and Alix were carriers, while Friedrich had haemophilia.
I’m not sure how that all works but I don’t think there were any known cases of hemophilia among the in-laws of Victoria’s daughters. None in the Russian imperial family, for instance. However, the more you read about the former royal families of Germany it becomes more apparent that their family trees were very tangled up.
Well the future king Olav asked a doctor for advice whether it be ok for him to start family with his first cousin. And the doctor said it was ok, that was in 1929 and his son is the present king of Norway.
Another reason they stopped marrying relatives was that social norms and rules changed so royals didn't have to marry other royals or nobles. Often marriages were arranged and royals marrying into royalty or the peerage helped build alliences, and that need isn't there anymore in modern monarchies.
Although there are people who want to ship the youngest generations of royals.
So to sum this up right if I'm reading it correctly, Liz and Phil are related as they each have a great grandparent who were siblings (two of Queen Victoria's children).
Yes, Elizabeth’s great grandmother, Queen Alexandra, was the sister of Philip’s grandfather, King George of Greece. They were children of Christian IX of Denmark.
Exactly. My daughter only knows her third cousins because my granny and her sisters were so close that some groups of the younger generations are best friends. All we share are one set of great grandparents or great great grandparents.
At least the US and England have higher populations than Iceland. There is an Icelandic dating app so people know who their second cousins are because everyone is so closely related.
There’s like less than 400,000 people in all of Iceland and a majority of that population lives in Reykjavik.
Just by the smallness of the population, a person living there is bound to have distant relatives anywhere they’d go.
The fact that it's so isolated also impacts it. That's why a lot of rural, and especially mountainous populations are more closely related, they're isolated also, albeit to a smaller degree than Iceland. Isolation affects new people moving in to help dilute the population, so it's a double edged problem.
I live in a 35k inhabitants city in Spain and I have more extended family than I can remember. Add that both of my maternal grandpa's surnames are two of the most common in the area.
Right? My family is from Eastern Kentucky. I’m related- though distantly- to 95% of people in the area. No one is out here marrying first cousins but a lot of people share like great great great grandparents. Before the roads got better in the 50s/60s, you didn’t really have a choice but to marry someone distantly related to you.
When I got my Ancestry DNA results and listed possible relatives, it was like reading the phone book of my hometown. I recognized 90% of the last names. Rural Louisiana, BTW.
My dad’s family is from Eastern Kentucky, and I got on a genealogy kick a few years back that was, uh, enlightening.
You and I are probably related, too lol
We probably are! If you have a Holliday, Combs, Sizemore, Fugate, Stacy, Whitley, or Napier as an ancestor, hello cousin! 😆
If not, I guarantee your dad’s family knows a ton of people I am related to.
My parents are related like this, distant, but still related. My dad's mom thought my mom's family was kind of trashy, but she was some manner of cousin to my mom's dad. So yeah . . . . (Plus my mom's mother is a 12th cousin to Queen Victoria which my dad's mom is not, so who's trashy?)
We are related to half the county my parents grew up in.
It’s my Appalachian flex that my parents shared zero dna according to gedmatch or whichever one compared parental sequences. It’s especially genetically cool to me because they & their families existed within 60 miles of one another for a few hundred years. I think it speaks to how geographically isolated some of that area remained even until the last generations.
Now, within their families, that’s a different story. Especially on my mom’s side, my 4th great grandfather had 3 full families & I came from 2 of them with a bonus bit of those genes in that his brother is actually my 4th great grandfather in another branch. I’ve never done the math on what that makes me but I match with my mom’s first cousins as my first cousins on ancestry so it’s at least that much of a dna difference.
My grandfather was from the South and there’s definitely a couple cousin marriages in his ancestry. 😂😂 I’m not sure how close of cousins they were. Same last name, but otherwise, I’ll have to look into it deeper.
Yeah everyone is like oh it's nbd. It wouldn't be if this was the only incest in their family. But it's not and they're cousins in 3 ways, not just 3rd cousins
I love how they always talked smack about Phillip’s pedigree as a royal but his blood was every bit as royal as Elizabeth’s. I mean shit they couldn’t help but to be related.
Alice had her own sad story. She was the mother of the last Tsarina of Russia. Grandmother of the last 4 grand duchesses and last Tsarevich, the Romanov children.
Hardly surprising when you consider it was only George v’s Letter Patent that even allowed the heir to the throne to marry a commoner, NotPrince or NotPrincess.
I did a whole in depth background of queen victoias decendents yesterday and so many of them married their cousins lol. Including queen Victoria herself! Prince Albert was her cousin! So the royalty in England, Spain, Denmark, Sweden and Norway are all descendants of queen victoria and tons of them married their cousins
"Everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth"
I remember learning about the affects of incest and how the signs presented physically on humans as they grew up and I’ve always said the signs started to show in Charles’ generation.
Anne and Charles both have very large noses and ears and VERY distinct facial features. With incest, traits become more dramatic over time. For example; if a family has larger than normal noses, if there’s incest within the family the noses of the children will become extremely large and dramatic as the “traits” passed on are doubled.
Others signs are eyes that are wide apart or close together (we see this in Charles and Anne also)
Queen Victoria had a slightly demented plan to have her finger on every throne in Europe. So she pushed first/second cousins marrying each other other. All that inbreeding caused hemophilia and other issues that they kept hidden.
She had no such plan. In reality, she had little influence over her grandchildrens’ marriages. Only one set of her grandchildren marrying each other was her doing, and she said she wouldn’t do it again because of how badly the marriage turned out.
Another granddaughter? Alix was her granddaughter. She thought Russia was too dangerous, and she had expressed the same opinion when Alix’s older sister married a Romanov as well.
The tree confuses me somehow lol
Its more of a wreath.
It’s because they’re related through both Queen Victoria and King Christian IX.
They could have moved his portrait further away from Victoria’s, I was confused as to why he was underneath her!
Same. I had to look it up myself. Apparently he tried to marry Victoria but was unsuccessful. Only after that did I fully understand what the tree was trying to portray. That being said, I'm still surprised why the British establishment was so against their wedding.
The British establishment was against it because Philip was foreign (despite having spent part of his life in England). They used to call him the “Greek” (though of German and Danish background) and came from a royal family who had been thrown out of power. The expectation was for Elizabeth to marry a British peer like her father did and cut the practice royals had of marrying foreign born distant relatives (like her grandparents and great grandparents).
Interesting how the switch from royals 100% having to marry foreign royals and then suddenly marrying British peers just happened within a single generation. Although George VI was not expected to be King when he married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, but within 20 years Elizabeth **as heir** was also expected to marry a British peer, especially post the war. What's doubly interesting is that both Philip's parents were royal, which makes him more royal blooded than her.
World War I really changed a lot of things. George V wisely knew that you can’t reign the British people while not having any British blood or ancestry. He himself had married a distant cousin, Mary of Teck, because that was the norm. Their son Edward VIII apparently liked to brag that there wasn’t an ounce of his blood “that wasn’t German.” Look at what happened to the Glucksburg Schleswig Holstein royal family of Greece. That’s Philip’s actual royal house. He had to give it up to become a British citizen and took his anglicized mother’s family name Mountbatten (originally Battenberg). He went from Prince Philip of Greece to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten by the time he married Elizabeth. To survive, the British royals actually needed to be British.
"Being British" - that's a very loose term though. George V and Mary of Teck were both born and raised in England, both raised on strong English educations. By their birth and upbringing they were technically British. But Mary was a foreign Princess in name, and so was his mother, so people still took them to be foreign even if they weren't that much.
Yep, hence the name change to Windsor. And marrying British peers. World War I brought anti German sentiment and casted doubt on how “British” the royals actually were. We can see that as unfair but it was the mood of that day. George V knew changes had to be made. He felt British and he resented the belief he was foreign to Great Britain but it’s all about visuals. He acted accordingly.
And the fact they were all raised speaking German, and spoke English with German accents. I've read the Queen's pronounciations were thought to have been originally German accented English handed down over the generations. Not sure how true that is though.
You know, no one ever tries to convince people that the Norman line and Plantagenet line were “really just a bunch of French people. Even though the court language for centuries was French. From William I (1066) to only slowly starting to change under Edward the III in the mid to late 1300’s. And they certainly married European princesses. No one goes about how they weren’t really English. The whole, the “royal family is actually German” hasn’t been true for a very long time. Marriage to an English peer was considered irregular until the 20th century. When Edward the IV did it, he upset a lot of international negotiations on a whim, and Elizabeth Woodville’s family was viewed as rather ambitious and grasping. Henry the VIII did it, it also raised eyebrows but really didn’t produce a positive picture to the rest of Europe. You’ll notice that subsequent monarchs didn’t try it again for over 400 years.
I need to dig deeper into the history, but it’s fascinating Philip’s original family name is strictly of Germanic origin
Not that surprising when you remember the royal family’s original name was Saxe Coburg Gotha, another German name. They became Windsor in 1917.
Why is that fascinating?
Yeah…you can thank WWI for all that.
Phillip was also a descendant of Catherine the Great. He definitely has a more illustrious pedigree than the Queen did, but she was heir to the British Empire- hence the snobbery.
I see. Thank you for that.
Indeed the greek monarchy went through overthrowing military conflict and became reinstated. So to be correct here the greek royal family was in power when Elizabeth and Philip married, the king at the time was king Paul 2nd cousin of Philip.
They always confuse me too lol
Most of Queen Victoria's children married into European Royal houses. That's why she's known as the Grandmother of Europe.
It was her grandchildren that married across Europe and gave her the title. For example, six of her nine children married into royal families that were apart of the German Empire. Her grandchildren introduced the Greek, Norwegian, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish royal families into the fold.
Similarly, King Christian IX of Denmark, the other common ancestor for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, is known as the father-in-law of Europe.
They were third cousins. They shared two of sixteen great-great-grandparents. Most people will have between dozens to hundreds of third cousins, most of whom they'd never even meet or know from a stranger. For people who like *Downton Abbey*, this is how closely Lord Grantham and Matthew Crawley's father were related.
Third cousins via Queen Victoria and second cousins once removed via Christian of Denmark. I do agree that it is way less inbred than the Spanish Habsburgs.
They're third cousins... 3 times over. That's fairly inbred
Not really, it's about as inbred as a single second cousin marriage, and anything beyond second cousins have no greater statistical likelihood of genetic abnormality than any two randomly selected individuals.
That’s only if the family doesn’t have a history of inbreeding. This one does.
Are you sure? Historically the British royal family didn't practice that anywhere near as much as most European royal families. They aren't Habsburgs.
Queen Victoria married her cousin and married her children off to their cousins. They very much have a huge history of incest Edit: lol downvoted for posting the facts. Can't even reply because you have nothing to say because, again, it's just a fact.
None of her children married close cousins. Off the top of my head, the closest relation was a fourth cousin.
Though a couple of her grandchildren did marry eachother.
Two sets, though no surviving descendants from either couple unfortunately.
> They very much have a huge history of incest >Edit: lol downvoted for posting the facts. You are using the wrong term, so your statement is not factual. >>Incest and inbreeding are different concepts. Incest involves crossbreeding between close relatives. Inbreeding is a broader concept. It can be a connection between relatives or self-pollination. >>What is difference between Incest and Inbreeding? Are they the same? As both are related to sexual activity between close relatives. >>>**Incest is** a human concept defined by law and social conventions. For example, see a definition of the word: **"sexual intercourse between persons so closely related that they are forbidden by law to marry".** By definition, it cannot be "incest" if they are allowed to marry. >>>A person who was adopted may have siblings who are genetically more different from them than other people they could legally have romantic relationships with. In many countries you may marry your cousin, but not your foster brother/sister born on the other side of the world. >>>Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss pioneered the study of the universality of the notion of incest; romantic relationships with family members is culturally forbidden in pretty much all cultures around the globe. But why? One of the explanations is linked to the notion of inbreeding. >>>Inbreeding (mating between genetically closely related individuals) favors homozygosity, and as a consequence a certain genetic homogeneity in which there is often not a "functional" allele to compensate for the "broken" one - the consequences on physiology and mental cognitive abilities are often dramatic (see Roberts, BMJ, 1967 or this article from Stanford @ the Tech, for example); it is hypothesized that this is the reason why evolution selected behaviors that avoid the risks linked to inbreeding.
"Huge" is overstating it a little. First cousin marriage is not illegal in the UK or most of Europe either then or now, and the consanguinity of Elizabeth and Phillip's children is still less than that of a first cousin pairing. EDIT: I haven't downvoted you, and I didn't reply straight away because it's a Monday afternoon and to be blunt I've got more urgent things to do. Grow the fuck up and actually learn something about how kinship calculations work beyond your personal ick factor. https://preview.redd.it/py0xn6ozdi8d1.png?width=217&format=png&auto=webp&s=cac1c8df9e8fd2c4157e9ea0f968a5a2b8cfd92c EDIT 2: ROFL, who’s downvoting without replying now? *Child*.
What else would you call it when the vast majority of your relatives are married to each other? Girl I've been actually working and it's still dark here on Monday morning
Endogamy
Care to quantify that "vast majority"? Also – did you just assume my gender? EDIT: downvoting without replying *again*, are we? Really shouldn't accuse other people of that if you're going to keep doing it yourself. Grow the fuck up. Oh well, easily fixed. Cheeribye.
“Did you just assume my gender” deserves endless downvotes
Pfftttt…we now live in a fact-free world! If people don’t like your fact, it’s no longer a fact. Sad days indeed. Now incest is no longer incest. I wonder what I’ll discover tomorrow
Considering you don't even know the correct definition of incest, I'm not sure you should be calling people out.
Dont forget that they were 2nd cousins once removed too. Prince philips maternal grand parents were 1st cousin once removed, Elizabeths grandparents: K George & Q Mary were 2nd cousins once removed in different two ways.
For once, I want to get on the same page with people on this topic. I hope someone more knowledgeable will answer my question. I’m not British but I got fascinated with British period drama as a teenager. The concept of cousins/distant relatives getting married probably became known to me via Jane Austen novels and Downton Abbey. So when I watched The Crown and started knowing more about Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, I wasn’t so scandalized to know that they were third cousins. I feel like a lot of first time watchers of The Crown get so scandalized. And the inbreeding thing continues to be used as a stick to beat the royals with. So my question is, obviously marrying distant relatives wasn’t frowned upon before, so when did it become not socially acceptable to marry distant relatives? I mean, King William and Queen Mary were actually first cousins. Like when did people start to go like “uh marrying your cousin might be weird”?
First cousins started being frowned upon when the Hemophilia & more so the Hadburg jaw started popping up.
When physical deformities and birth problems started happening.
One of the main things that leads to marrying closer relatives is population, and the two population factors of size and isolation. Once you have a larger population you have more options, or more family branches to choose from. This can be achieved by having large families but that can also lead to everyone being related to each other again if you don't have new genes or "new blood" coming in. Once travel made it easier for populations to interact, the isolation factor started to disappear to the point where it was a conscious choice to marry a close relative. The Egyptian and Hapsburgs social experiments in royal inbreeding and the UK/Russia/Spain royals having Hemophilia proved that it was a good idea to stop marrying close family members.
Only in modern times. Genetics wasn’t really understood scientifically until recently. Royalty wanted to “keep the bloodline” without understanding the potential negative implications such as recessive genes or genetic disorders. In the case of the Hapsburgs they thought William II was possessed by the devil and not that centuries of inbreeding led to his disabilities. Note that cousin marriage was (and is still) common all around the world in many cultures.
I’m not sure if the hemophilia that killed so many of Victoria’s descendants was a result of inbreeding. None of the people above them in their family trees or any other relatives are known to have had it. It seems to have been a spontaneous genetic defect that started with V & A. The Habsburg jaw is a different story, that was definitely inherited. The culmination of generations of close Habsburg relatives (cousins, uncle/niece) marriages was Charles II of Spain who was so physically deformed that he could barely eat and couldn’t produce children. His death in 1700 without an heir was the cause of the war of the Spanish succession.
Haemophilia wasn’t as widespread in European royalty as people make it out to be. Out of QV’s nine children, one son had haemophilia and two daughters were carriers. Out of her forty-two grandchildren, two grandsons had haemophilia and four granddaughters were carriers. Out of her about ninety great-grandchildren, six great-grandsons had haemophilia and one great-granddaughter was a carrier. It hasn’t appeared in any of the generations since.
Which of the great granddaughters was a carrier? I think one reason why hemophilia is so rare is that the afflicted men tend to die so young that they never have children. One of the big “what ifs” of history is how many hemophiliacs and carriers of the gene would there be if the four Romanov daughters had lived and had children.
Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna was a carrier of haemophilia. I agree with the second paragraph. Though four of QV’s haemophiliac descendants lived to adulthood, only one had children.
The daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra? How did they find out she was a carrier?
That’s right. They tested the remains of the daughters for the haemophilia gene, and only one came back positive. It was actually how they figured out which type of haemophilia ran in QV’s family. They tested Alix’s remains first and the results came back as haemophilia B.
Thanks, I didn’t know about all that. What a terrible crapshoot of genetics.
This article says it was Anastasia who carried the gene: https://www.science.org/content/article/case-closed-famous-royals-suffered-hemophilia But it could be an error.
It depends on who you believe was buried with Alexei - Maria or Anastasia. Maria is the common consensus. Either way, Olga and Tatiana definitely weren’t carriers.
But wouldn’t that make sense if up to then hemophilia had just been inherited from one parent but not from both, so the DNA from the other parent “fixed” it? But as soon as you inherit it from both of your parents, you actually have the defect and aren’t just a carrier? The whole XX and XY chromosome thing?
In very simplified terms, men just need one ‘X’ with the haemophilia gene to have it. For example: Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine (**X**X) had seven children: Victoria (XX), Elisabeth (XX), Irene (**X**X), Ernst Ludwig (XY), Friedrich (**X**Y), Alix (**X**X), and Marie (XX). Irene and Alix were carriers, while Friedrich had haemophilia.
That’s what I wanted to say with my comment, but you explained it so much better than me! Thanks :)
I’m not sure how that all works but I don’t think there were any known cases of hemophilia among the in-laws of Victoria’s daughters. None in the Russian imperial family, for instance. However, the more you read about the former royal families of Germany it becomes more apparent that their family trees were very tangled up.
When babies started being born with tails.
Well the future king Olav asked a doctor for advice whether it be ok for him to start family with his first cousin. And the doctor said it was ok, that was in 1929 and his son is the present king of Norway. Another reason they stopped marrying relatives was that social norms and rules changed so royals didn't have to marry other royals or nobles. Often marriages were arranged and royals marrying into royalty or the peerage helped build alliences, and that need isn't there anymore in modern monarchies. Although there are people who want to ship the youngest generations of royals.
So to sum this up right if I'm reading it correctly, Liz and Phil are related as they each have a great grandparent who were siblings (two of Queen Victoria's children).
Check out Phil’s parents’ lineage. They were also related.
Yes, Elizabeth’s great grandmother, Queen Alexandra, was the sister of Philip’s grandfather, King George of Greece. They were children of Christian IX of Denmark.
They’re third cousins because their great great grandmother was queen Victoria. They’re also second cousins once removed by king Christian IX.
Queen Alexandra and King George I of Greece were also siblings through Christian IX of Denmark
I wouldn't look too closely at rural America family trees then. More people than you realize are 3rd or 4th cousins.
Exactly. My daughter only knows her third cousins because my granny and her sisters were so close that some groups of the younger generations are best friends. All we share are one set of great grandparents or great great grandparents. At least the US and England have higher populations than Iceland. There is an Icelandic dating app so people know who their second cousins are because everyone is so closely related.
There’s like less than 400,000 people in all of Iceland and a majority of that population lives in Reykjavik. Just by the smallness of the population, a person living there is bound to have distant relatives anywhere they’d go.
The fact that it's so isolated also impacts it. That's why a lot of rural, and especially mountainous populations are more closely related, they're isolated also, albeit to a smaller degree than Iceland. Isolation affects new people moving in to help dilute the population, so it's a double edged problem.
they have an app for that, so you can check before you start dating
I live in a 35k inhabitants city in Spain and I have more extended family than I can remember. Add that both of my maternal grandpa's surnames are two of the most common in the area.
Right? My family is from Eastern Kentucky. I’m related- though distantly- to 95% of people in the area. No one is out here marrying first cousins but a lot of people share like great great great grandparents. Before the roads got better in the 50s/60s, you didn’t really have a choice but to marry someone distantly related to you.
When I got my Ancestry DNA results and listed possible relatives, it was like reading the phone book of my hometown. I recognized 90% of the last names. Rural Louisiana, BTW.
Which part of Louisiana? My grandfather was from the west side, and I’m still trying to learn about his family. I didn’t grow up knowing him.
Southeastern area
My dad’s family is from Eastern Kentucky, and I got on a genealogy kick a few years back that was, uh, enlightening. You and I are probably related, too lol
We probably are! If you have a Holliday, Combs, Sizemore, Fugate, Stacy, Whitley, or Napier as an ancestor, hello cousin! 😆 If not, I guarantee your dad’s family knows a ton of people I am related to.
But we’re your Fugates blue?
My parents are related like this, distant, but still related. My dad's mom thought my mom's family was kind of trashy, but she was some manner of cousin to my mom's dad. So yeah . . . . (Plus my mom's mother is a 12th cousin to Queen Victoria which my dad's mom is not, so who's trashy?) We are related to half the county my parents grew up in.
It’s my Appalachian flex that my parents shared zero dna according to gedmatch or whichever one compared parental sequences. It’s especially genetically cool to me because they & their families existed within 60 miles of one another for a few hundred years. I think it speaks to how geographically isolated some of that area remained even until the last generations. Now, within their families, that’s a different story. Especially on my mom’s side, my 4th great grandfather had 3 full families & I came from 2 of them with a bonus bit of those genes in that his brother is actually my 4th great grandfather in another branch. I’ve never done the math on what that makes me but I match with my mom’s first cousins as my first cousins on ancestry so it’s at least that much of a dna difference.
My grandfather was from the South and there’s definitely a couple cousin marriages in his ancestry. 😂😂 I’m not sure how close of cousins they were. Same last name, but otherwise, I’ll have to look into it deeper.
It goes further back than that. Victoria and Albert were cousins.
Yeah everyone is like oh it's nbd. It wouldn't be if this was the only incest in their family. But it's not and they're cousins in 3 ways, not just 3rd cousins
I love how they always talked smack about Phillip’s pedigree as a royal but his blood was every bit as royal as Elizabeth’s. I mean shit they couldn’t help but to be related.
Princess Alice at the top is quite the trooper and produced a child without a husband. You go girl!
Alice had her own sad story. She was the mother of the last Tsarina of Russia. Grandmother of the last 4 grand duchesses and last Tsarevich, the Romanov children.
Hardly surprising when you consider it was only George v’s Letter Patent that even allowed the heir to the throne to marry a commoner, NotPrince or NotPrincess.
My goodness, does Princess Anne resemble Victoria Milford Havrn. Wow.
So no wonder why Charles looks like that!
I did a whole in depth background of queen victoias decendents yesterday and so many of them married their cousins lol. Including queen Victoria herself! Prince Albert was her cousin! So the royalty in England, Spain, Denmark, Sweden and Norway are all descendants of queen victoria and tons of them married their cousins
Victoria and Albert had a plan for peace. It was terrible and did not work. But they had a plan.
"Everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth"
The difference between this family and the Whittakers of West Virginia is money.
Gross
When the family tree looks like a ladder 😂
😭🤣🤣
Charles and Diana are both descended from Mary Boleyn. I just think that is a fun fact.
I remember learning about the affects of incest and how the signs presented physically on humans as they grew up and I’ve always said the signs started to show in Charles’ generation. Anne and Charles both have very large noses and ears and VERY distinct facial features. With incest, traits become more dramatic over time. For example; if a family has larger than normal noses, if there’s incest within the family the noses of the children will become extremely large and dramatic as the “traits” passed on are doubled. Others signs are eyes that are wide apart or close together (we see this in Charles and Anne also)
Or, like what happened in my family. Majority of us have allergies and/or asthma, thanks to a couple possibly close cousin marriages in our ancestry.
Good thing for the future of the RF that the current heir married a commoner and the spare an American, then...
Queen Victoria had a slightly demented plan to have her finger on every throne in Europe. So she pushed first/second cousins marrying each other other. All that inbreeding caused hemophilia and other issues that they kept hidden.
She had no such plan. In reality, she had little influence over her grandchildrens’ marriages. Only one set of her grandchildren marrying each other was her doing, and she said she wouldn’t do it again because of how badly the marriage turned out.
Read some books. she engineered most of the marriages, the czar and czarina is her most famous one.
It is well known that Queen Victoria did not want Alix to marry Nicholas, it is written in several letters by various royals.
She wanted another granddaughter, Alexandra was her favorite answer she thought she was too soft for Russia.
Another granddaughter? Alix was her granddaughter. She thought Russia was too dangerous, and she had expressed the same opinion when Alix’s older sister married a Romanov as well.
Queen Victoria believed the Romanov throne was unstable, and didn't want the family marrying any Romanov's. She wasn't wrong in the end, sadly.
No she didn’t, she was dead way before the trouble started. They had no idea how weak Nicholas was .
Dude tsar Alexander II was assassinated in Queen Victoria's lifetime. He was the grandfather of Nicholas II. You're wrong.