Quotes / Single Line of Descent

A lot of misleading things were written in the press, as if:

1. It is a new discovery that Bush descends from Strongbow.

2. Strongbow was Bush's only famous ancestor.

3. Only Bush descended from Strongbow.

In reality:

1. This may be news to the artists of the Ros Tapestry, but it had been known by genealogists for years, certainly since 1994.

For example, a sketch by me of the descent has been online since about 1996. Here it is online in Jan 2000 for example.

It is trivial to see that this leads to Strongbow.

2. Strongbow is not Bush's only famous ancestor. Bush provably descends from, among others: Strongbow, Aoife, Dermot Mac Murrough, Brian Boru, Charlemagne, Edward III, Edward II, Edward I, King John; Duncan I, King of Scotland; Malcolm III Canmore, King of Scotland; Alfonso VI, King of Leon and Castile; Hugh Capet, King of France; William the Conqueror, Edmund II (Ironside), Ethelred the Unready, Alfred the Great, Lady Godiva; Cerdic, first King of the West Saxons, and many other medieval Irish notables. There seems no particular reason to pick Strongbow as the one to highlight.

3. Going the other way, Bush is not Strongbow's only famous descendant. Strongbow is the ancestor of millions of living people. It is certain that almost everyone in Ireland, and much of the West, descends from Strongbow. Strongbow is provably the ancestor of, among others: George W. Bush, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, the Duke of Wellington, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Robert Emmet, Terence O'Neill, William of Orange, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Marie Antoinette, Tsar Nicholas II, Kaiser William II, the current English Royal family, and even my own children. There seems no particular reason to highlight the link from Strongbow to Bush.

—Mark Humphrys, genealogist, deconstructing this trope.