Royal Ancestry in Your Family History
Friday, September 30th, 2011When studying one’s ancestry, there are few things more exciting than discovering that you have royalty in your family history. And because most members of any royal family tended to marry other members of a royal family, once you have one royal relation, you usually find you are related to them all by some degree.
It’s actually not that rare to find royalty in your family history, particularly if your background stems from countries in Europe.
Where to Do Further Research
One of the best benefits of researching any royalty in your ancestry is that there are so many places to find accurate information. The family history of any royal family will be well-documented and can usually be found in any number of history books, rather than slowly dug up one document at a time.
Given that this information is historical and public, you can find huge databases filled with royal genealogies that you can search through for free online. One particular website is the Directory of Royal Genealogical Data (http://www3.dcs.hull.ac.uk/genealogy/royal/). They cover many different royal families from various eras, nations and cultures.
If you prefer to do your family history research offline, there are more history books than can be listed that will list members of any royal family and their ancestry details.
Just be aware that once you start finding names dating back a few hundred years, you may start to discover inconsistencies and potential errors. Though ancestry records were relatively well-kept even in medieval times, information provided can be limited. Relationships that were assumed back then are not so obvious now. Historians may differ on someone’s lineage, particularly when someone marries a “commoner” who would not have been considered important at the time. Dates and ages were also not always recorded accurately. Be prepared to sift through multiple options of someone’s parentage. Royals who had numerous mistresses and children out of wedlock can confuse things further.
Handling Royal Titles
One unique complication with doing research into Royal lines of your ancestry can be the titles that go along with each person. Trying to keep track of them can be awkward, particularly if you are using a genealogy software program to manage your entire family tree. Simple programs may not have enough fields for you to enter all the information, especially for individuals who may have held several royal titles over their lifetime.
The best way to manage this part of your family history is to decide how you want to record the information and stick to that format. Whether you use the honorific “Duke” as a prefix to their given name, or leave the entire title as a suffix is up to you. That would be either Duke Robert of Sussex or Robert, Duke of Sussex. Consistency is important in keep your family history organized and accurate. Don’t forget to record the dates along with each title as well, because they can be passed on through families and may not be permanent. You’ll also need a way to record unique dates, such as when they came to the throne.
Whether your own personal ancestry has any royal blood in it should be considered a fun bonus rather than a specific goal when doing your own family history studies. Most common people have very interesting stories to their lives as well.