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To: SunkenCiv

Claudius had two daughters. Neither married a Briton.

Nero was married to one, before he kicked her to death while pregnant.

He then asked the other to marry him, and executed her when she refused.


3 posted on 09/17/2012 4:29:54 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Perception wins all the battles. Reality wins all the wars.)
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To: Sherman Logan

Yup, if one does a web search, this alleged daughter turns up in various genealogies made up by/for people who want to show their own “royal” lineage. I always have a quiet laugh at the expense of genealogists who claim to have traced their ancestry into ancient times — for 99+% of living humans, it is simply not possible to find any such intact paper trail, and there’s no way to verify anything if it does exist.

I think Vortigern or Vortimer (or the latter’s son) is similarly said to have married the daughter of one of the minor emperors (by that I mean, for want of one more victory, he’d have been the one, the only, emperor, but he lost). It’s a nice safe claim to make, even though Vortigern and Vortimer are likely to be historical rather than legendary, because there’s no forensic or genetic testing that can be done — again, because there’s no paper trail.

I’ve read about a 19th c professional genealogist who actually invented a medieval French king (as well as a number of non-heir children to the fictional king) to include in the family trees he prepared for the rubes who were his customers. These bogus lines turn up once in a while.

I used to have a copy of some guy’s alleged family tree which reached all the way back to Ramses II “the Great”, pharaoh of Egypt. I don’t doubt that he has descendants (he had more than 150 children), I just don’t believe for a hot second that there’s even a scrap of paperwork to tell us who they might be.

More recent, historical rulers often have well-doc’d lines of descent; the NEHGS had a booklet one could order telling about the pitfalls of trying to find “royalty” in the ancestry, but it also mentions that the last Plantagenet king of England has perhaps one million living descendants in the US, and that his father has perhaps ten million. Niall of the Nine Hostages is believed to have many descendants because he took liberties with his hostages and many others. And Genghis Khan (or someone who rode with him) appears to have millions of descendants.


4 posted on 09/17/2012 4:41:38 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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