[Northkeep] Genealogists discover royal roots for all

Tue Jul 4 12:33:25 PDT 2006

*God help us---- :) *
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*Genealogists discover royal roots for all *
*Millions have provable descents from medieval monarchs*
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*By MATT CRENSON *
The Associated Press

Updated: 5:36 p.m. CT July 1, 2006

Actress Brooke Shields has a pretty impressive pedigree — hanging from her
family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El
Cid, William the Conquerer and King Harold, vanquished by William at the
Battle of Hastings.

Shields also descends from five popes, a whole mess of early New England
settlers, and the royal houses of virtually every European country. She
counts renaissance pundit Niccolo Machiavelli and conquistador Hernando
Cortes as ancestors.

What is it about Brooke? Well, nothing — at least genealogically.

Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the
odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from
one royal personage or another.

"Millions of people have provable descents from medieval monarchs," said
Mark Humphrys, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of computer science at
Dublin City University in Ireland. "The number of people with unprovable
descents must be massive."

By the same token, for every king in a person's family tree there are
thousands and thousands of nobodies whose births, deaths and lives went
completely unrecorded by history. We'll never know about them, because until
recently vital records were a rarity for all but the noble classes.

It works the other way, too. Anybody who had children more than a few
hundred years ago is likely to have millions of descendants today, and quite
a few famous ones.

Take King Edward III, who ruled England during the 14th century and had nine
children who survived to adulthood. Among his documented descendants are
presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Zachary
Taylor, both Roosevelts), authors (Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord
Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning), generals (Robert E. Lee), scientists
(Charles Darwin) and actors (Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke
Shields). Some experts estimate that 80 percent of England's present
population descends from Edward III.

A slight twist of fate could have prevented the existence of all of them. In
1312 the close adviser and probable lover of Edward II, Piers Gaveston, was
murdered by a group of barons frustrated with their king's ineffectual rule.
The next year the beleaguered king produced the son who became Edward III.

Had Edward II been killed along with Gaveston in 1312 — a definite
possibility at the time — Edward III would never have been born. He wouldn't
have produced the lines of descent that ultimately branched out to include
all those presidents, writers and Hollywood stars _ not to mention everybody
else.

Of course, the only reason we're talking about Edward III is that history
remembers him. For every medieval monarch there are countless long-dead
nobodies whose intrigues, peccadilloes and luck have steered the course of
history simply by determining where, when and with whom they reproduced.

The longer ago somebody lived, the more descendants a person is likely to
have today. Humphrys estimates that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, appears
on the family tree of every person in the Western world.

Some people have actually tried to establish a documented line between
Muhammad, who was born in the 6th century, and the medieval English
monarchs, and thus to most if not all people of European descent. Nobody has
succeeded yet, but one proposed lineage comes close. Though it runs through
several strongly suspicious individuals, the line illustrates how lines of
descent can wander down through the centuries, connecting famous figures of
the past to most of the people living today.

The proposed genealogy runs through Muhammad's daughter Fatima. Her husband
Ali, also a cousin of Muhammad, is considered by Shiite Muslims the
legitimate heir to leadership of Islam.

Ali and Fatima had a son, al-Hasan, who died in 670. About three centuries
later, his ninth great-grandson, Ismail, carried the line to Europe when he
became Imam of Seville.

Many genealogists dispute the connection between al-Hasan and Ismail,
claiming that it includes fictional characters specifically invented by
medieval genealogists trying to link the Abbadid dynasty, founded by
Ismail's son, to Muhammad.

The Abbadid dynasty was celebrated for making Seville a great cultural
center at a time when most of Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. The last
emir in that dynasty was supposed to have had a daughter named Zaida, who is
said to have changed her name to Isabel upon converting to Christianity and
marrying Alfonso VI, king of Castile and Leon.

Yet there is no good evidence demonstrating that Isabel, who bore one son by
Alfonso VI, is the same person as Zaida. So the line between Muhammad and
the English monarchs probably breaks again at this point.

But if you give the Zaida/Isabel story the benefit of the doubt too, the
line eventually leads to Isabel's fifth great-granddaughter Maria de Padilla
(though it does encounter yet another potentially fictional character in the
process).

Maria married another king of Castile and Leon, Peter the Cruel. Their
great-great-granddaughter was Queen Isabel, who funded the voyages of
Christopher Columbus. Her daughter Juana married a Hapsburg, and eventually
gave rise to a Medici, a Bourbon and long line of Italian princes and dukes,
spreading the Mohammedan line of descent all over Europe.

Finally, 43 generations from Mohammed, you reach an Italian princess named
Marina Torlonia.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13662242/