Massive Numbered Siblings / Real Life

• Truth in Television: Stephen Colbert is the youngest of eleven children and can recite them all in a Motor Mouth: Jimmy-Eddie-Mary-Billy-Margo-Tommy-Jay-Lulu-Paul-Peter-Stephen. Sadly, Paul and Peter (along with their father) died in a plane crash when Stephen was 11.
• Moulay Ismail, the second ruler from the current royal family of Morocco and the longest reigning, had 4 wives (the maximum number in Muslim law) and about 500 concubines. European diplomats estimated that he had about 900, probably a little less over 1000 children through them. Guinness World Records regarded him as the human with the most number of children in history.
• It is a stereotype that Catholics have large families. This was more true in the past than it is now. While it is still possible to find stereotypically large Catholic families, they are far fewer than they would have been a few generations ago. Also, unlike the Protestant Quiverfull movement, most aren't deliberately having massive numbers of children. They just: 1. Take Catholic injunctions against artificial birth control and abortion seriously. And: 2. Like to have sex anyway. Some specific examples:
  • The Kennedys. Joseph P. Kennedy had nine children, including John; Robert, who had eleven; and Ted. Daughter Eunice Kennedy Shriver had five, as does her former son-in-law Arnold Schwarzenegger^note Himself Catholic, though Austrian, not Irish (four with former wife Maria Shriver, one acknowledged child from an affair).
  • Céline Dion is the youngest of 14 children born to a Québécois Catholic family.
  • The Dionne quintuplets, the first quintuplets known to have survived infancy, were born in 1934 to a Franco-Ontarian^note This term has two senses: French-speaking residents of Ontario, and Ontario natives of French-Canadian origin. The family met both criteria. couple that had already had six children (although one had died in infancy). The parents then went on to have three more children after the quintuplets.
  • Jim Bunning, a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher who went on to become a US Senator from Kentucky, also had nine. In 2013, four years before his passing, he had 35 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
  • Philip Rivers, retired NFL quarterback noted for his adherence to Catholicism, has 10 children. On top of that, each of his parents has eight siblings.
  • Mark Wahlberg is the youngest of nine children from a Boston Catholic family, and also the youngest of his father's 12 children (three from his first marriage). His older brother Donnie from New Kids on the Block is the next-youngest one.
  • Jack White is the youngest of 10 children from a Detroit Catholic family. His former bandmate Meg isn't one of them, despite their regularly claiming so during the band's run.^note They were married when they formed their band, but divorced before they hit their career peak. That said, they're very Amicable Exes, and do think of themselves as siblings.
  • John C. Reilly, who incidentally starred with Mark in Boogie Nights and The Perfect Storm, is the fifth of six children.
  • Amy Coney Barrett, who became a Justice of the US Supreme Court in 2020, has seven (five biological, two adopted).
  • Mark Hamill, from a mid-20th-century conservative Catholic family, is the fourth of seven children.
  • Hall of Fame NBA great John Stockton has six.
  • Another basketball Hall of Famer, coach Rick Pitino, also has six; sadly, one died in infancy from a congenital heart condition.
  • Heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury has six; equally sadly, his wife has had two miscarriages as well.
• Also applies more or less to many Muslims. The strict Wahhabi branch, in particular, equates abortion as murder, and definitely encourages procreation. Combine this with a certain infamous rule that's actually not meant to be used in peaceful times, but some men have abused anyhow (it's polygamy, by the way), and one Wahhabi man can have as many as 60 children.
  • Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia (a country dominated by the Wahhabi branch), had dozens of children (the exact number is unknown) through his 22 wives. His sons have been ruling Saudi Arabia since his death in 1953. His sons have had similar numbers of children, with Saud notably having had 115. Another son and the current king, Salman, has 13 known children by three wives, and Salman's son and the current crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, so far has five with only one wife.
  • One notable example of a Muslim who had many children without having more than one wife at a time was Muhammad Ali,^note originally Nation of Islam, later converted to orthodox Sunni Islam who had eight known biological children from various marriages and affairs, plus one adopted child. At least one of his former wives publicly suspected he had more children, and least two other people have claimed to be his biological children.
• Most Jewish denominations (including many versions of Orthodoxy) no longer follow or teach this practice, but very traditional groups like the Hasidic still keep to it.
• In the United States, there's the Christian-based "Open Quiver" or "Quiverfull" movement, where families try to have as many children as they possibly can in order to develop "an army for Christ". Families within the group with ten or more children are not uncommon.
• The "Octomom". Octuplets... in addition to the six she already had. In vitro was involved, of course.
• Not to mention the McCaughey^*pronounced "McCoy" septuplets of Iowa (born in 1997), the first complete set of that size to survive infancy. (Yes, IVF was involved in that one as well.) The McCaugheys previously had one daughter.
• Going beyond that: the Arby family of Mali. In 2021, doctors in their home country thought the mother was carrying seven children and transferred her to a Moroccan hospital shortly before the birth. She wound up giving birth to nine. They celebrated their first birthday in May 2022, still being cared for in Morocco, making them the largest set of multiple births to all survive infancy. Like the McCaugheys, this family previously had one daughter.
• Fred Phelps, the controversial leader of the extremely homophobic Westboro Baptist Church, had 13 children. The most well-known is Shirley Phelps-Roper, who has 11. In all, Phelps had 63 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren, most of whom are members of his cult/church.
• Philip Rivers isn't the only NFL player with massive numbers of children or siblings...
  • James Harrison, a linebacker who spent almost all of his career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, has 13 siblings, as does former Dallas Cowboys linebacker D.D. Lewis.
  • Kaden and Christian Elliss, respectively linebackers for the New Orleans Saints and Philadelphia Eagles, as well as 2022 defensive tackle prospect Noah Elliss, are three of the 12 children of former NFL DT and current college assistant coach Luther Elliss and his wife (four biological, eight adopted).
  • At least two other former players have similar numbers of children—cornerback Antonio Cromartie has 14 with eight women, and offensive lineman Bruce Collie 13 with his wife.
  • Not quite as extreme, but still notable: Hall of Fame QB Kurt Warner adopted the two children that his wife Brenda had from her first marriage, and they went on to have five more.
• Scottie Pippen, Hall of Fame NBA star most famous as Michael Jordan's running mate with the 1990s Chicago Bulls, has eight children with two wives and two other women. Sadly, he's outlived two of them, with one daughter dying nine days after birth and a son dying in his mid-thirties.
• Former NBA executive Pat Williams and his first wife had 18 children—four biological, including contemporary Christian singer Karyn Williams, and 14 adopted from four different nations.
• Speaking of contemporary Christian music, the genre's biggest-selling artist ever, Steven Curtis Chapman, has six children (three biological, three adopted from China). Sadly, he and his wife lost one of the adopted daughters in an accident in the family driveway.^DetailsOne of the biological sons was pulling into the driveway when said daughter, about to turn 6, was running toward him to meet him. Neither noticed where the other was until it was too late; the son ran over his sister, who died of her injuries.
• Legendary Texas oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, the inspiration for J.R. Ewing, had 15 children in all—seven with his first wife, four from a bigamous marriage, and four with a mistress whom he would (legally) marry after his first wife died.
• This trope tends to be a common focus for Reality TV shows.
  • The Duggar family's show isn't called 19 Kids and Counting for nothing. Michelle Duggar is the youngest of seven herself. One of said 19 kids, the now-disgraced Joshua^*who later admitted to having molested several of his own sisters as a young teen, was outed as a serial philanderer, and was convicted on federal child porn charges in 2021, has seven of his own.
  • The Gosselin family from Jon & Kate Plus Eight. Obviously, they have eight kids, one set of twins and one set of sextuplets, born in the span of three years thanks to fertility treatments.
  • Deon and Karen Derrico, featured in TLC's Doubling Down with the Derricos, have 14 kids, starting with two single births followed by a set of twins, a set of quintuplets, another set of twins, and a set of triplets. All of this was done without fertility treatments.
  • Barry and Kim Plath, featured in another TLC series, Welcome to Plathville, have nine.
  • In Bringing Up Bates, Kelly and Gil have 19 kids. Unlike the Duggars or Derricos, the Bates have no sets of twins.
• The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as well as its various branches and various other branches of Mormonism, practice polygamous marriages, marry women quite young (in fact the FLDS has gotten in trouble for this, as in some cases underage girls have been married off), and eschew birth control, leading to huge families. A few people who have left their communities have written about their experiences; wives having 10+ children apiece and multiple wives pregnant at the same time are not at all uncommon. For prominent men in the community with three, four, or more wives, this can lead to upwards of 50 whole and half siblings in one family.
  • One example is Winston Blackmore, who depending on the account was excommunicated from or left the FLDS and started his own polygamist sect in Bountiful, British Columbia. Blackmore has had 27 wives who have 150 children in all. Blackmore himself is the ninth of 13 children born to his father Ray and mother Anna Mae, with Anna Mae being the only one of Ray's six wives he was legally married to.
  • That said, the FLDS and other polygamous Mormon sects are a very small part of the LDS movement. The mainstream Mormon body, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or LDS Church), repudiated polygamy in 1890, started excommunicating polygamists in 1904, and to this day wants no part of polygamous groups. Large families are more common in the LDS Church than in the general society, but not to the extremes of polygamous sects. The LDS leadership has publicly stated, "There's no such thing as a Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint."
  • An LDS Church example is the Osmond musical family. Family patriarch George and his wife Olive had nine children, eight sons and one daughter. Some of them went on to play this trope to a T themselves: Tom has nine children, Alan has eight, Wayne has five, Merrill has six, Donny has five, and Marie has seven (two biological, five adopted). In total, George had 55 grandchildren and 48 great-grandchildren when he died in 2007.
  • Disgraced LDS Church family YouTuber Ruby Franke and her ex-husband Kevin have six children.
• Food Network cook Sandra Lee practically raised her five younger siblings after her mother's second divorce, buying groceries, preparing meals, caring for the children, and handling the family's finances by the tender age of eleven.
• Ronan Farrow, an American freelance journalist, Child Prodigy, and son of director Woody Allen and actress Mia Farrow, is one of fourteen (four biological and ten adopted) children. And that's just on his mother's side.
• Audie Murphy, one of the most decorated American soldiers of WWII and later an actor, was the seventh of 12 children.
• Bing Crosby, one of seven children, also had seven himself (four from his first marriage and three from his second).
• Hanson are the three oldest of seven children. Taylor and his wife have seven.
• Robert De Niro has fathered six children with four women, with his youngest child being born when he was 79, and also adopted the child that his first wife brought into their marriage.
• The English and British royals provide a number of notable examples:
  • Edward I had fourteen children on his first marriage and another three on his second, although only half of them made it into adulthood.
  • It's not often remembered, but Henry VIII had eight legitimate children, though only three survived past infancy; in addition to their lone surviving daughter Mary I, he and Catherine of Aragon also had four babies who were stillborn or died shortly after birth, and a fifth ("Little Prince Hal") who died from an unknown cause at the age of two months. After divorcing Catherine, he would then go on to father Elizabeth I with Anne Boleyn and Edward with Jane Seymour. Boleyn also had two relatively late pregnancy losses which some historians count as stillbirths, which would bring the total to ten. In addition, Henry had one acknowledged illegitimate child (Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond), and it's believed he may have had as many as six others that he did not formally acknowledge.
  • Henry was himself one of many siblings. His parents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, had eight children, only half of whom - Arthur, Margaret, Henry, and Mary - survived childhood. Elizabeth, Edward, Edmund, and Katherine all died before the age of four.
    • It was a family trait, as Henry's mother Elizabeth (the daughter of Edward IV) was the eldest of ten legitimate children. Her father also acknowledged at least four illegitimate children.
  • George III and his queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg had fifteen children, of whom all managed to reach their first birthday (a rarity in those days). Thirteen reached adulthood (one died a little short of his second birthday, and one died at the age of four), and six of those had surviving issue (although in at least one case,^note "At least one", because the legitimacy of the children of George III's fifth son Augustus is questionable the only surviving issue was illegitimate).
  • Speaking of which, one of George III's thirteen surviving children, his third son William Henry (who would take the throne as William IV) had this—but not with his legitimate wife and queen, Adelaide. As a third son, he had not originally been expected to inherit the throne, and so he took up a career as a naval officer. Being a third son, he also refused to marry some random foreign princess or some equally random daughter of a British Peer, and instead lived with his beloved mistress, the Irish actress Dorothea Jordan, for twenty years. William and Dorothea had ten children, who took the name FitzClarence (after his title as Duke of Clarence). William only married Adelaide after becoming heir presumptive, at which point he had already separated from Dorothea; they had three stillborn sons and two daughters who died in infancy. The especially tragic part is that William and Adelaide came to actually care deeply for each other, and the kindhearted Adelaide even accepted William's children by Dorothea and treated the youngest ones (who were still small children when she married her husband) as her own. They also both doted on William's niece and heiress, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent—when her mother allowed it.
  • Queen Victoria had nine children, all of whom survived childhood (which was quite impressive, even for royals with full access to the most advanced medicine).^note While 19th-century medicine was fairly primitive by today's standards, the science available in the 1830s and 40s was leagues ahead of what had been available just fifty years earlier. Still, infant mortality was very high through the 19th century even for the wealthiest, so Victoria and Albert were extremely lucky not to have lost any of their children—especially considering that Victoria carried the gene for hemophilia, and passed it on to two daughters (who inherited a normal blood-clotting gene from Albert and thus were spared the disease) and one of her sons. Even then, said son Leopold survived until shortly before he would have turned 31. These children went on to marry just about every other monarch on the continent. She's not known as "the Grandmother of Europe" for nothing.
• German politician and current president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is the mother of seven.
• Maria Theresa had fifteen children (ten survived to adulthood), and so did her third son Leopold.
• Philippe Ier, duc d'Orléans, only sibling of Louis XIV, puts up a rather less impressive seven children from two marriages (including one stillborn and two that died in childhood), but what makes this impressive is (1) Massive Numbered Cousins—his surviving children, save one, had lots of kids, who went on to marry most of the Catholic royalty of the Continent, leading historians to call him "the grandfather of Europe" and (2) the fact that he was gay, and everyone knew he was gay (he managed to be flaming and prissy in dress in an era when men's fashion involved lace frills and rouge, though nobody dared cross him because he was also a tremendous badass), but he still got over his probable distaste for it and actually managed to become "the grandfather of Europe." (As a royal, marrying and having children was required,^note Under other circumstances, he might have had the option of joining the Church, but this was not possible for Philippe. There were several reasons for this, but probably the most important was that he and Louis were the only surviving legitimate male-line descendants of Henry IV, so they both needed to have as many children—especially sons—as possible to secure the Bourbon succession and prevent a Succession Crisis. If the line of Henry IV had died out in the 17th century, a strict reading of French Salic Law dictated that the crown would pass to the House of Courtenay—an impoverished cadet branch so distantly related to the monarchy that the Bourbons preferred to shift the succession to the House of Lorraine, which was more closely related but only in the female line. A succession dispute could have easily arisen if the nobility decided to make an issue of it and support the Courtenay claim. but rather than simply do the minimum he could have gotten away with—having one or two children and not remarrying after his first wife died—he did his full duty and then some.) He definitely had more surviving legitimate children than his straight big brother (who had six legitimate children, but only one—Louis le Grand Dauphin—survived childhood).
• Par for the course in many Royal and Imperial families, as seen with the examples above, and there are far too many to list them all. Charlemagne beats them all in the long run, starting with his 8 sons and some daughters. These children lived to adulthood and many went on to have (varying numbers) of their own children. As a result, a great many in Western Europe can claim some genetic descent from Charles the Great. ^note This, combined with his successful unification of much of Western Europe for the first time since Rome fell (he is listed as Charles I of France, Germany, and the Holy Roman Empire, and his descendants would go on to rule these realms), and the Carolingian Renaissance that would shape much of the culture of Europe during the Middle Ages, earned him the nickname Pater Europae ("The Father of Europe"). Genghis Khan would end up doing the same thing in Asia.
• The ill-fated Nicholas II and Alexandra of Russia just barely met the trope with five children — the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and the Tsarevich Alexei.
• Sufjan Stevens has five siblings, and large families occasionally feature in the plots of his songs.
• Sarah Jessica Parker has seven siblings, most of whom also have careers in the entertainment industry.
• All of the New Kids on the Block members (save for Danny Wood) came from numerous families. Jonathan and Jordan were the fifth and sixth of six kids, respectively, whereas Joe was the "runt" among nine.
• The Jacksons. Joseph and Katherine Jackson had ten children (one died shortly after birth), including Michael and Janet (the respective eighth and tenth siblings). The fourth sibling, Jermaine, has seven children.
• The Kardashians, counting their stepbrothers and half-sisters (see Theme Initials), add up to ten siblings.
• Macaulay and Kieran Culkin have three brothers and two sisters.
• John Tyler, President of the United States between 1841 and 1845 was the father of fifteen children from two marriages, the most for any President. Only one didn't survive into adulthood. His last child, a daughter, was born when Tyler was 70. His next-to-last son, born when Tyler was 63, also fathered children when he was over 70; thus, Tyler had two grandsons who survived into the 2020s, with one still living as of February 2024. For an example of what this means, see this [1].
• Tyler's predecessor William Henry Harrison had 10 children, all from one marriage. Harrison's son John Scott Harrison in turn had 13 children from two marriages with ten from the second, including future President Benjamin Harrison.
• James Buchanan, President #15, was the eldest of nine children.
• The only president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, had six. Sadly, he outlived all four of his sons, only one of whom made it to his teens (and even that one died at 21).
• Historically, Pharaoh Ramses the Great had 110 children. Obviously, this was through numerous women, including three of his own daughters. (Also a sister, but that was par for the course among the royal family.)
• Johann Sebastian Bach had twenty children, many of whom became successful composers or performers in the family tradition. Granted, he was married twice (although that doesn't affect things too much: his first wife Maria Barbara died young—just 35 years old—after giving him seven children, and his second wife Anna Magdalena gave him 13 children and found time to sing and to edit and compile his compositions, to boot), and several of them died in infancy, but still, it's a lot.
• Carlos Mencia is the 17th of 18 children.
• Charles Darwin was the fifth of six children; his wife Emma was the youngest of seven. He himself went on to have nine children, two of whom died in infancy and one who died at the age of 10.
• Mrs. Valentina Vassilyeva was pregnant twenty-seven times. She had sixty-nine children.
• Jim Henson and his wife Jane fulfilled the bare minimum for this trope — they had five children, all of whom have worked in various entertainment fields, usually related to puppetry.
• Another "bare minimum" case: Greek NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo is the third of five brothers.
• Arthur Guinness, founder of the Guinness brewery, had 21 children. Ten survived to adulthood.
• Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was the 18th of 19 children, of whom 9 survived to adulthood.
• Benjamin Franklin was the 15th of his father's 17 children.^note Franklin's father Josiah had two wives, Anne Child and Abiah Folger. He had seven children with Anne and ten with Abiah, of whom Benjamin was the eighth; he was also Josiah's tenth and final son.
• Actor Stellan Skarsgård has eight children. 4 of his sons (Alexander, Gustav, Bill and Valter) are actors as well.
• As of 2024, actor, comedian and singer Eddie Murphy has ten children.
• Genghis Khan and his children had such large families that 8% of all of Asia can show a direct lineage to the Great Khan. That's 16 million people, not counting other parts of the world where his genes have shown up.
  • Even looking at his legitimate line with his khatun Börte, Genghis qualifies. They had nine children, four sons^note Well, possibly three; there were doubts about the paternity of his eldest, Jochi, as he was born while Börte was a captive of the rival Merkit clan. and five daughters with Börte, all of whom lived long enough to marry, and most if not all had children (a remarkable achievement in the 13th century).
• The real-life Georg von Trapp had Rupert, Agathe, Maria, Werner, Hedwig, Johanna, and Martina with his first wife Agathe. With his second wife Maria, he had three more children: Rosmarie, Eleonore, and Johannes.
• Castle's Stana Katic is the first-born of six children.
• Country singer Loretta Lynn had eight siblings, including singer Crystal Gayle. Lynn herself had six children, including a set of twins.
• While not a human, Randy the guinea pig and his brood deserves a mention. After somehow breaking into the female enclosure at Hatton Country World in Warwickshire, England, and escaping discovery for a few weeks, he managed to impregnate all 100 females. That makes for about 400 siblings.
• Pro wrestler Bret Hart is the eighth child of twelve. Owen Hart was the youngest. Seven of Stu and Helen Hart's sons became wrestlers, the eighth became a wrestling referee, and all four of their daughters married wrestlers. Three of their grandchildren (which would make them Bret and Owen's niece and nephews) became wrestlers: Natalya Neidhart, Davey Boy Smith Jr., and Teddy Hart.
• Another prominent wrestler, Devon Hughes (better known as D-Von Dudley), has seven children (four from his first marriage, three from his second and current one).
• Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland had one legitimate son, Augustus III of Poland and eight illegitimate children whom he recognised. He may, however, have had as many as 365 or 382 children!
• Chris Savino, the creator of The Loud House is the ninth of ten children. He has five sisters and four brothers; five of the Loud sisters were named after all of his sisters.
• Two prominent New Zealand sportspeople—two-time Olympic shot put gold medalist Valerie Adams and NBA player Steven Adams—are among their father's 18 children with five women. The "massive" part of the trope fits in another way—the sons average 6'9"/2.06 m and the daughters average 6'0"/1.83 m. (Valerie is 6'4"/1.93 m; Steven is 6'11"/2.11 m, the same height as their father.)
• Famous track-and-field Olympian Wilma Rudolph was child number 20 out of 22.
• Boxing great Sonny Liston was his mother's 12th child of 13 and his father's 24th of 25.^note Liston's father Tobe was married twice, fathering 13 children from his first marriage and 12 (including Sonny) from his second. Liston's mother Helen had a child before she married Tobe.
• Hall of Fame NBA player Dennis Rodman is one of his father's acknowledged 29 children with 16 women.
• Controversial Christian activist The Activist Mommy is the mother of ten children.
• Marlon Brando had 16 known children (13 biological, three adopted). It's also rumored that he is Courtney Love's grandfather through her mother Linda Carroll, whose own mother was a roommate of Brando's around the time of her conception.
• La revanche des berceaux ("the revenge of the cradle") is a term coined to describe the high birth rates and large families among 19th century French Canadians, a phenomenon that was felt like a demographic revenge on the British conqueror.
• Irish artist Christy Brown had 22 siblings, nine of whom died in infancy.
• Robert Clary is the youngest of fourteen children.
• Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov has twelve children, two of whom are adopted.
• Chloe Bennet has seven brothers — four biological, three foster/adopted.
• Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw share seven children between them, including actress Jessica Capshaw and actress and singer Sasha Spielberg. Jessica also has three paternal half-siblings.
• YouTube vloggers Our Tribe of Many have eleven children, and one of their relatives has ten children.
• Brazilian comedian Dadá Coelho has twelve siblings, something that earned her mother the local nickname "Maria the Pregnant".^note To be more specific, "Maria da Prenha", as her given name is Maria da Penha
• Author David Sedaris and actor Amy Sedaris are the second and fourth children from a family of six siblings. Discussed by David in some of his essays where he points out that in the time and place where they grew up (the southern United States in the 1960s), having six kids was just on the larger size of a normal family set-up rather than being seen as unusual.
• George XII, last king of the Caucasus country of Georgia, had 23 children. Even more unusually for an 18th-century monarch, all of his children were legitimate. He and his first wife Ketevan Andronikashvili had twelve children, and after Ketevan's death he married Mariam Tsitsishvili and had eleven more children.
  • Several of George's children and grandchildren also had large families. One of his sons had ten children and another had thirteen, while one of his grandsons had nine.
  • George's father Heraclius II was married three (or possibly four) times and had many children. He had two children (one of whom died young) with his first wife, who was either Ketevan Pkheidze or Ketevan Orbeliani. After Ketevan died he married Anna Abashidze and had three children with her (again one died young). Finally he married Darejan Dadiani and had twenty-three children with her (ten of whom died young). All told he had sixteen surviving children.
• Earlier in Georgia's history there was Levan of Kakheti, who had 2 children with his first wife and 14 with his second.
• Robert I, Duke of Parma was married twice. With his first wife, Maria Pia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, he had twelve children (two of whom died in infancy and one died at birth, taking Maria Pia with him). With his second wife, Maria Antonia of Portugal, he had twelve more children, all of whom lived to adulthood.
  • Robert's and Maria Pia's tenth child, Elias, and his wife Maria Anna of Austria had eight children.
  • Robert's and Maria Antonia's fourth child, Zita of Bourbon-Parma, and her husband Charles I of Austria had eight children. Of those eight, two of them (Otto and Felix) both had seven children.
• Alix, Princess of Ligne (a granddaughter of the aforementioned Robert I) and her husband Antoine had seven children.
• Muteesa I of Buganda had at least eighty-seven wives and ninety-eight children. One of his sons, Mwanga II, had seventeen wives and at least eleven children. His son Daudi Cwa II had thirty-six children with an unknown number of wives, and Mutesa II, Daudi Cwa's fifteenth child and eventual successor, had at least twenty-six children with thirteen wives.
  • Kiweewa, another of Muteesa I's sons, had twenty wives and twenty-three children. Kiweewa's younger brother Kalema had a very small family in comparison: he had only seven wives and five children.
• Rama I of Thailand had thirty-two wives and forty-two children (ten of them with his official wife). His successor Rama II had fifty-three wives (including his cousin and at least one of his half-sisters) and seventy-three children. Rama III had forty-two wives and fifty-one children. Rama IV (who you might know better as King Mongkut) had sixty-one wives, including three of his great-nieces, and eighty-two children. Rama V (AKA Chulalongkorn) had ninety-two wives, including five of his half-sisters and three cousins, and seventy-six children.
  • Mongkut's half-brother Pinklao had fifty-eight children to an unknown number of wives.
  • Earlier in Thailand's history there was King Taksin, who had twenty-one sons and nine daughters to an unknown number of wives.
• King Sisavang Vong of Laos had approximately fifty children by as many as fifteen wives, two of whom were his half-sisters and one of whom was his niece.
• Bob Marley is confirmed to have fathered twelve children with his wife Rita and six other women.
• Emperor Kōkaku of Japan had sixteen children. Sadly he outlived fifteen of them. His surviving son Emperor Ninkō had fifteen children (and outlived twelve). Ninkō's grandson Emperor Meiji also had fifteen children (and outlived ten). Meiji's grandson, Hirohito/Emperor Shōwa, had seven children (and outlived two; his wife outlived another child who died shortly after Hirohito).
• The House of Stuart:
  • James VI and I and his wife Anne of Denmark had seven children. Sadly only three survived infancy, and one of those three died when he was only 18.
  • Charles I and his wife Henrietta Maria of France had nine children, two of whom died in infancy.
  • Charles' sister Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia had thirteen children (ten of whom survived infancy) with her husband Frederick V of the Palatinate. Elizabeth's youngest daughter Sophia of Hanover had seven children, including the future George I of Great Britain.
  • Charles II had no legitimate children, but at least fourteen illegitimate children.
  • Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine, was Elizabeth Stuart's son. He was married three times. With his first wife he had three children, with his second he had thirteen, with his third he had one, and he also had a child with one of his mistresses. All told he had eighteen children.
• Han Kuang Si, a military commander of the Liao dynasty, and his wife Lady Xiao had twelve children.
• Nick Cannon has had twelve children (including two sets of twins) with six different women. Sadly, he outlived his son with model Alyssa Scott, Zen, who died from a combination of brain cancer and hydrocephalus in 2021 at five months old. Nick's babymaking habit has spawned many a joke that at some point, a sizeable fraction of the world population will be directly descended from him.
• King Sobhuza II of Eswatini had seventy wives and 201 children. Through those children he has over 1000 grandchildren.
  • Sobhuza's son and successor Mswati III has fifteen wives and thirty-six children.
  • Sobhuza's daughter Mantfombi and her husband King Goodwill Zwelithini had eight children. King Goodwill had another twenty-one children with his other wives.
• Madonna has six children, two biological and four adopted from Malawi. She's also the third out of eight children herself from her father's two marriages.
• John Bathurst Deane, a Victorian clergyman, and his second wife Louisa had thirteen children, including the novelist Mary Bathurst Deane and the artist Emmeline Deane. Another daughter, Eleanor (the tenth child in the family), became the mother of P. G. Wodehouse. It's believed Wodehouse's many uncles and aunts inspired Bertie Wooster's many uncles and aunts.
• The historian John Dalberg-Acton (famous for being the guy who said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely") and his wife Countess Marie von Arco auf Valley had six children. His son Richard Lyon-Dalberg-Acton and his wife Dorothy Lyon had nine children. His son John Lyon-Dalberg-Acton and his wife Daphne Strutt had eleven children.
• The House of Oldenburg:
  • Christian IV of Denmark was married twice and also had many mistresses. With his first wife he had seven children (though one was stillborn). With his second wife he had eleven or twelve children (two died in infancy and the twelfth child's paternity is uncertain). With three mistresses he had another five children. Discounting the infant deaths, he had either twenty or twenty-one children.
  • Elizabeth of Denmark, Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and her husband Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg had ten children.
• Charles Dickens' family:
  • His mother, Elizabeth Dickens, was one of eight children.
  • Charles himself was also one of eight children. He and his wife Catherine had ten children. Of those ten, Charles Jr. had eight children and Henry had seven.
  • Charles' brother Alfred and his wife Helen just barely qualified: they had five children.
• The scientist John Lubbock was one of eleven children. One of John's brothers, Alfred, had five children. Another brother, Nevile, had seventeen children (ten with his first wife, seven with his second).
• Empress Renxiaowen of the Ming Dynasty had seven children with her husband the Yongle Emperor.
• The Tang Dynasty emperors had large numbers of children.
  • The founder, Emperor Gaozu, had 41 children (19 daughters and 22 sons), of whom four sons and at least one daughter were borne of his wife Empress Dou. Most of his children were born after he founded the dynasty, when he was in his 50s, and he even had children after becoming retired emperor at 60.
  • Gaozu's son Taizong of Tang had 35 children with a similarly large number of women. Three sons and four daughters were born of his wife Empress Zhangsun - unlike his father, a large number of his children were born before he became emperor.
  • Taizong's successor Gaozong had relatively few children, being dominated by his wife Wu Zetian. He had two daughters and four sons with Wu Zetian, and four sons and two daughters with other women. Zhongzong had twelve children, of whom one son and four daughters were born to his wife Empress Wei.
  • The Tang emperor that takes the cake for number of children had is Emperor Xuanzong. He had fifty-nine children, twenty-nine daughters and thirty sons, with a large number of women. It's no surprise he was known for his large harem - though his most famous consort, Yang Guifei, had no children with him.
• Jeffrey Combs was the fifth of nine siblings, although his mother had a stillbirth and his younger brother died not too long after being born.
• The composer Franz Schubert was the twelfth of fourteen children. Sadly, nine of his siblings died in infancy.
• Nineteenth-century author George MacDonald and his wife Louisa had eleven children.
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson was one of twelve children.
• Isabella Beeton, a Victorian writer famous for collections of recipes, was one of sixteen children. She had two full sisters and thirteen half-siblings through her mother's two marriages.

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