Re: Prince William - inbreeding and all kinds of things

On May 6, 10:27 am, Brad Verity <royaldesc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 6, 6:20 am, PDelor...@xxxxxxx wrote:

Mis Middleton is a prime example of finding out that she is related to her  
husband because they both married into the same socio-economic  
background...however far back it is!

Peter

Dear Peter,

I feel your statement above downplays how revolutionary this latest
royal marriage is from a social status viewpoint.  Prince William is
the first future British monarch to marry a non-aristocrat since
George IV's secret marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert.  You have to go back
to the 1400s to even find a peer in Kate Middleton's ancestry (the
Percy earls of Northumberland).  Sarah Ferguson and Camilla Parker-
Bowles have far "blue"er blood.  Kate is on the same level as Anthony
Armstrong-Jones, Capt. Mark Phillips, Cmdr. Timothy Laurence and
Sophie Rhys-Jones on a lineage level, but none of those individuals
married a royal who was in the direct line of succession.

The Middletons self-made their fortune and could afford to send their
children to prestigious private universities.  It is this factor alone
which put Prince William and Kate into each other's social orbit.  And
Prince William was allowed to attend St. Andrew's only because the
royal family had modernized enough to allow an heir to the throne to
attend university.  Prince Charles was the first - he earned a
bachelors from Trinity College, Cambridge.  Queen Victoria was the
first monarch to allow a child to attend university - she sent her
youngest son Leopold to Oxford, but he wasn't heir to the throne (nor,
even though he fell in love at Oxford, did he marry a non-royal).

As the royal family already has well-established party planners, it's
unlikely the Middletons would ever have had any encounter with the
royals if Kate and William hadn't met at university.  They are far
from an Establishment family.  Do any of Kate's great-great-
grandparents even warrant a bio in the ODNB, for example?

So, no, I wouldn't at all characterize the families of Prince William
and his new wife as coming from the same socio-economic background,
which to me makes their marriage even all the more ground-breaking.

Cheers,      --------Brad

Any discussion of Kate Middleton's ancestry needs to keep in mind that
very little is known on the subject - quite different from the
ancestry of her husband William. This in itself is perhaps a measure
of the significantly different socio-economic backgrounds involved,
but it also leaves open the possibility (remote as it may be) that
further research will discover further connections. And thus
conclusion may change....

Kate's ancestry is largely complete (albeit with some guesses) through
the 6th generation, in which 3 unknowns appear (the first unknown in
William's ancestry appears in the 7th generation). After the 6th
generation, Kate's ancetsry begins to peter out very quickly:
7th: 42 of 128 possible ancestors
8th: 33 of 256
9th: 32 of 512
10th: 26 of 1024
11th: 18 of 2048
12th: 17 of 4096
13th: 6 of 8192
14th: 3 of 16384
15th: 2 of 32768

After this point, interestingly, the numbers of known ancestors start
to increase, because the couple in the 15th generation are her most
recent aristocratic or gentry ancestors: Sir Thomas Fairfax and Agnes
Gascoigne, for whom much ancestry is available.

Another interesting point is that inbreeding, as indicated by repeated
ancestors, first shows up in Kate's ancestry at the 6th generation -
exactly the same degree at which the same phenomenon occurs in
William's ancestry. But Kate's repeated ancestors are a dead end
since their parents are unknown - unlike William's of course. There
are undoubtedly more repeated ancestors in the single thread of Kate's
ancestry which can (presently) be traced beyond the 15th generation.
.

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