Tangled Family Tree / Real Life

• The family tree of the Julio-Claudian dynasty of the early Roman Empire is just about the closest thing to a real-life Tangled Family Tree as you're going to find, as many very confused first-time viewers of The BBC miniseries I, Claudius have discovered. Here's a rendering of that family tree. (Some people have discovered that having a copy of the Julio-Claudian family tree at one's side greatly helps a viewer grasp who's who and what's what while watching I, Claudius. Others avoid looking at the family tree at all, as it contains spoilers.)
  • For example: Caligula Caesar's paternal grandfather, Drusus, was the son of Augustus's second wife Livia by her first marriage. His paternal grandmother, Antonia, was the daughter of Mark Antony and Augustus's sister Octavia. His maternal grandmother was Augustus's daughter of his first marriage, Julia, who married Augustus's friend, General Agrippa.
  • Agrippina the Younger, was (allegedly) the lover of Emperor Caligula, despite being his sister, the wife of Emperor Claudius, despite being his niece, and the mother of Emperor Nero, and was also rumored to have had Parental Incest with him before the two had a falling out over a woman and he had her killed. Big, Screwed-Up Family doesn't even begin to cover it.
  • Also not helped by the Romans' love of adopting nephews as sons, sleeping around as much as the Gods, and giving all of their daughters the same name.
  • Even further complicated by Roman naming traditions (in which Julius Caesar was more like a family name), there are 9 other Julius Caesars before and concurrent with the one you're thinking of in the family tree. The dictator was actually named Gaius Julius Caesar (of which there were only three, not including himself).
• The Julio-Claudians were pikers compared to a lot of European dynasties a few hundred years ago. The number of times people married their first cousins to reaffirm long-standing alliances or some such was absolutely unbelievable. Even in the modern day, it still happens — Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were both second cousins once removed and third cousins via different paths.
  • The worst example historically is probably Alfonso XII of Spain whose grandfathers were brothers who each married their own nieces.^note  As the Wikipedia article notes, though, it is speculated that Alfonso XII's father was not his mother's husband/second cousin. Instead of the usual 24 great- and great-great-grandparents, he had 10. Admittedly, that's not directly a Tangled Family Tree, but when it carries on for a while (and it did, for centuries) it can get ludicrously tangled.
  • All that is before you consider that these people were often all rulers in different nations. Just because he's your brother and your cousin doesn't mean that you can't go to war with him, right? Which makes the Thirty Years' War (aka, the bloodiest European war pre-WWI) the second-biggest family feud of all time.
  • The family tree◊ of Charles II of Spain is also incredibly tangled. In case you don't want to work it out, that means a grand total of eight separate genomes introduced over the course of seven generations and at least three cases of men marrying their nieces. Not only that, but Joanna of Castile, a.k.a. "Crazy Jane", is most of his great^5 and 6 grandmothers, when it'd be normal to have 16 and 32, respectively. Hence his host of physical and intellectual disabilities, hence him being unable to produce children (they actually tried, with two wives that were "merely" second cousins, but the man was literally too malformed to breed), hence the Succession Crisis, hence the War of the Spanish Succession, or the third-biggest family feud of all time.
    Louis XIV of France and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I of Austria both had claims to the Spanish throne through Charles II's grandfather, by way of their mothers and their wives. Problem was, one had a mother who was the other's mother's older sister, the other had a wife who was the other's wife's older sister, and nobody could figure out which trumped which. When the third candidate (six-year-old Joseph Ferdinand/José Fernando of Bavaria) died, the French king moved to have his grandson crowned, and the Austrian emperor moved to have his son crowned. The rest of Europe was terrified of either power gaining control of the Spanish empire and moved to stop them both. Hence, The War Of Spanish Succession.
    • Philip of Castille^note (died 1506) and Joanna of Castille^note (died 1555) together were both 3x-Great grandparents and 5x-Great-grandparents to Charles II, and provided about 40.6% of his^note (born 1661) genes. That shouldn't work! And frankly didn't!
    • Charles II also had congenital syphilis (his father was infected through sex with prostitutes, then transmitted it to his wife, who in turn passed the disease on to her unborn son), which is known to cause severe birth defects and genetic mutation. This may well have been the first new genetic information introduced in generations. Think of it as adding a little raw sewage to a gene pool filled with stagnant swamp water.
  • And Charles II is just the most severe case in his dynasty. Pick a Habsburg. Any Habsburg. There's a reason there's a Wikipedia article on the Habsburg chin. The Habsburg case is one of wanting to keep it "all in the family." Unlike many of Europe's dynasties, they came by the vast majority of their titles through lucky inheritances (having come to power after the Black Plague devastated most of the noble houses of Europe) rather than war, and they didn't want to lose any of them the same way they had earned them. As has been noted, this ultimately produced a literal genetic recipe for disaster. The Habsburg Chin (or Lip) went from a family trait of a larger than normal lower jaw to a facial deformity so severe that Charles II could barely speak and couldn't chew.
  • You would think that if you had a grandmother called Juana The Mad you would know better than to marry your double first cousin and later your own niece (daughter of your sister by another first cousin!) but not if you are Philip II of Spain. And that of course was why Philip was the LAST sane and intelligent King of the Spanish Habsburg line.
    • His daughters by the French Elisabeth de Valois were beautiful, sane, and highly intelligent - in contrast to the two sons he had bred with the above-mentioned cousin and niece. But did he notice and draw the obvious lesson? Heck no!
    • And as if that wasn't enough, Philip II himself was also the product of a cousin marriage! His mother Isabella of Portugal was the daughter of Juana's sister Maria of Aragon, who then married Charles I, Juana's son. As if the family tree wasn't inbred enough.
  • The Austrian Habsburgs fared better than their Spanish counterparts, but not by much. Less than a century after the inbreeding-fueled War of Spanish Succession, double-first-cousins (as in, the offspring of a brother and sister marrying their first cousins, who were also brother and sister) Holy Roman Emperor Francis II and his wife, Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily, had 12 children, the majority of whom died in infancy or childhood, suffered disfigurement or mental health issues, or were cognitively delayed (though the eldest child, Marie Louise, went on to marry Napoleon Bonaparte). Their eldest son, Emperor Ferdinand I, was nearly in as poor shape as Charles II of Spain: He was epileptic, suffered from hydrocephalus and a speech impediment, had cognitive delays and was rumoured to be "feeble-minded", and, similar to Charles, was unable to consummate his marriage, and therefore unable to produce an heir. This unfortunate luck with their children makes more sense when one considers not only the long traditions of cousin-marriage and uncle-niece marriage of the Habsburgs, but that as double-first cousins, Francis and Maria Theresa would have been genetically similar to half-siblings.
    • Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria had an inbreeding coefficient of 0.3053 (for comparison, a child from Brother–Sister Incest or Parental Incest has a coefficient of 0.25) due to her parents and grandparents being uncle and niece. Surprisingly, she was relatively healthy and lived to adulthood.
• Older Than Dirt: Any given Ancient Egyptian dynasty, whose Royal Blood was traditionally "preserved" via so much incest that it gave Tutankhamun a club foot and a cleft palate, and was probably the reason he had no surviving offspring.
  • According to recent DNA studies, Tut was the offspring of a full brother/sister marriage, with said brother and sister being children of Amenhotep III and his non-royal chief wife, Queen Tiye. Ironically, this suggests that exogamy may have actually been the source of his problems, as the antecedent Thutmosids' only genetic problem seemed to have been a bad overbite.
  • The 12th Dynasty seemed to consistently practice brother/sister marriage, and it lasted nearly two hundred years, producing seven extremely able and successful kings and finally ending due to a lack of sons. It all depends on how sound the genetic inheritance is to start with.
• The Greek Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt (founded by Ptolemy, who was one of Alexander the Great's Generals) is so knotted and twisted that it almost defies description. This website makes a brave effort. Ptolemy VIII Tryphon and his wife (and double-niece) Cleopatra III produced five children: Cleopatra IV, Ptolemy IX, Tryphaena, Cleopatra Selene, and Ptolemy X Alexander I. Ptolemy IX secretly married his sister Cleopatra IV, but their mother forced them to divorce (they'd already produced two sons, Ptolemy XII Auletes and Ptolemy of Cyprus). Cleopatra IV then married their cousin Antiochos IX of Syria and had another son with him, Antiochos X. She was then murdered on the orders of her sister Tryphaena (who was in turn executed by Antiochos IX). Her brother/ex-husband Ptolemy IX meanwhile married his other sister, Cleopatra Selene, by whom he had a daughter, Berenike III. He was expelled by Egypt by their brother, Ptolemy X Alexander I, who then married Cleopatra Selene himself (they had a son named Ptolemy XI Alexander II). After they divorced, Cleopatra Selene married three successive kings of Syria, becoming history's only known quintuple queen: Antiochos VIII (widower of her sister Tryphaena), Antiochos IX (widower of her other sister, Cleopatra IV) and finally Antiochos X, her own nephew, by whom she had two sons. Ptolemy X Alexander I married his niece/stepdaughter, Berenike III, and had a daughter with her, Cleopatra V. After his death, Berenike married her half-brother/cousin/stepson, Ptolemy XI Alexander II, who had her murdered and was subsequently murdered himself. Ptolemy XII Auletes, the son of Ptolemy IX and Cleopatra IV, became king and married his niece, Cleopatra V, by whom he was father of the famous Cleopatra VII (she of Caesar and Mark Antony fame). This tangled web is not at all helped by the fact that all the principal players shared only about four names and have to be distinguished by Roman numeral.
  
  If Mark Antony had won the war, it would have gotten a lot worse. For example, the Donations of Alexandria would have divided the Roman holdings in the Eastern Mediterranean (and parts of Armenia and Persia conquered by Mark Antony in the name of Egypt) into various kingdoms, each with one of Mark and Cleo's children as King or Queen. In Alexandria, Cleo would have been crowned "High Queen and Queen of Egypt." Her son by Caesar, Ptolemy Caesar (better known by his Latin nickname Ceasarion, meaning "Little Caesar"), would be crowned "High King, King of Egypt, heir to Caesar (who was by that point raised to the status of living god), Dictator of Rome". You just know the various lesser kings and queens would get into all kinds of family feuds and incestuous marriages like later day European royalty. Potentially even Twincest since Alexander Helios (Alexander Sun) and Cleopatra Selene II (Cleopatra Moon II) were twins, and both included in the land grab. However it gets really interesting when you consider that the King and Queen of Egypt, traditionally ruled together, were related, and married. So Cleo's relationship record would've gone "Brother, other Brother, Caesar, Mark Antony, Son."
• Both Queen Victoria of Britain and Christian IX of Denmark had a lot of children that were married off to the royalty of Europe according to custom. During World War I, every monarch in Europe, even the rulers of minor nations like Romania, and Greece, were the grandchild of Vicky on one side, and Chris on the other, making them both maternal and paternal cousins. (Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary being among the only exceptions, although the latter, as a Habsburg, had a tangled family tree of his own.) Both the Russian Tsar and the German Kaiser spoke English as their first language, and the Swiss press at the time called it "the cousins' war". Surreal.
  • Here◊ is a photo of British King George V, and his double cousin Tsar Nicholas II of Russia both wearing German military uniforms together in Berlin before the war. Good luck figuring out which is which. They look enough alike to be twins and have the same taste in facial hair.
  • Even more surreal when you realise that through Imperialism, they controlled anywhere between 75% and 90% of the world's landmass, making them also the most successful family in human history.
  • Despite the close relationships and often being in close communication, they quite frequently hated each other. To a substantial degree, World War One started because the English royals sneered down their noses at Kaiser Wilhelm, and he was desperate to be loved while also resenting them. Yes, World War One takes the title for "biggest family feud of all time," even if you discount the Americans and the French.
    • There was also the fact that Wilhelm really didn't grasp that his cousin George didn't control the British government. He was convinced that King George V wouldn't allow the dispute to come to war, not understanding that George didn't have a say in the matter.
  • King George V actually quietly did away with the "royal" requirement for his children's marriage partners altogether, as after World War One, there were few European royal families still standing, and all that remained were closely related. While Elizabeth II did marry another royal, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (who also happened to be a distant cousin of hers), in 1947; they were a love match who just happened to both be royals rather than either of them specifically seeking to marry another royal.
  • And then there's the fact that Franz Joseph's great-great-grandfather was Charles III of Spain, and Victor Emmanuel's great-great-grandfather was brother to Franz Joseph's grandfather. For extra fun, the families of Christian IX and Victoria married several times; most notably, a Danish prince and his wife (Victoria's granddaughter), who became the first King and Queen of Norway.
• The Rothschild banking family, said to be so rich they financed both sides of every war in the 19th century, practiced incestuous marriage, motivated by the fact that marrying outside the family would mean the family fortune would be split in between different lines through inheritance, dowries and the like. Several generations of Cousin/Cousin, and in one case, Uncle/Niece marriages followed. They have since abandoned this practice (doctor's orders). Also, they were right. The family fortune dried up after they stopped the incest.
  • Not only that, but one of the original branches of the family died out, and several descendant branches have been in feuds with each other. While still wealthy, the Rothschilds' fortunes suffered greatly in both world wars (with several members of the family perishing in concentration camps), and they are far less wealthy than they used to be.
• Duke William of Normandy (also called William the Bastard, because he was illegitimate) invaded England and killed King Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon King. William was motivated by the fact that he was Edward the Confessor's cousin, and was supposedly promised it by Harold Godwinson on a stack of holy relics (Edward the Confessor was the King of England before Harold Godwinson for those paying attention). King Harold Godwinson's daughter married Prince Vladimir Monomakh of Kiev (whose own mother was the daughter of Constantine IX Monomachus of Byzantium). The Russians, assisted by large numbers of Scandinavians, invaded Byzantium in 1043. Harald Hadrada ("the Ruthless"), who later became king of Norway, joined the Byzantine army with a large following of northmen ("Varanger"), campaigned widely, and ripped out the eyes of the Byzantine emperor Michael V Kalaphates in 1042. King Harald Hadrada of Norway invaded England in 1066, on the pretext that it was promised to his family by Harthacnut whose father was Cnut The Great, Viking King of Norway, Denmark, and England (also parts of Scotland, Sweden, Ireland, and Poland) from 1018-1035. Harthacnut's mother was also Emma of Normandy, William of Normandy's great aunt. Harald Hadrada was killed by King Harold Godwinson, who was himself killed by Duke William at the Battle of Hastings, thus ending the Saxon period, and leading to centuries of French rulers on the English throne. All at a time when most people never got further than 3 miles from their birthplace.
  • Prior to marrying Cnut, Emma had been wife to Aethelred the Unready, and bore him two sons. She was second wife to both men as well, meaning that at different points the throne was contested by sons of Aethelred and his first wife, sons of Aethelred and Emma, sons of Cnut and his first wife, and sons of Cnut and Emma. Not making the whole thing any less confusing was the fact Aethelred and Cnut's first wives both happened to be named Aelgifu. ^note Emma herself was given the name "Aelgifu" when she first came to England, but historians rarely use it when referring to her, for obvious reasons.
  • Speaking of the two Aelgifus, one oft-overlooked detail is that they too would be distant relatives through marriage, as Aelgifu of York's son with Aelthelred, Edmund Ironside, married a cousin of Aelgifu of Northampton named Ealdgyth. The reasons for this are complicated: when Sweyn Forkbeard first invaded England, he married his son Cnut to Aelgifu of Northampton to secure a political alliance with the Mercians. Seemingly behind this alliance were Sigeferth, husband of Aelgifu's cousin Ealdgyth, and his brother Morcar^note Aelgifu's father Aelfhelm had been killed on Aethelred's orders, and her brothers Wulheah and Ufegeat blinded, so she had pretty good reason to go along with this. Then when Sweyn died and Aethelred retook the country, Sigeferth and Morcar were executed and Ealdgyth imprisoned. However, Aethelred's son Edmund then ran away with Ealdgyth and married her, securing her northern allies for himself. Meaning when Cnut re-invaded and he and Edmund fought for the English throne, they were both married to women of the same family, and after Cnut defeated Edmund and Edmund then died under mysterious circumstances, Cnut (possibly) put aside Edmund's wife's cousin to marry his stepmother. Yeah.
  • And that's before we get into the whole issue of what the legal status of Cnut and Aelgifu's relationship actually was. It's unclear if she had a lesser legal status than a wife, meaning Emma was his only legitimate wife, and her children his legal heirs, or if his marriage to Aelgifu was a full-fledged marriage, meaning his marriage to Emma would have been bigamous and hence, illegitimate. This is significant given the Succession Crisis that ensued between Aelgifu and Emma's respective sons by Cnut after his death.
• Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. Not only was he a Magnificent Bastard, but he had several literal bastards (probably including the artist Eugene Delacroix), most of them with a very unsure paternity. Charles de Morny a politician, stated: "In our family, we are bastards from mother to son since three generations, I am a great-grand-son of a king, grand-son of a bishop, son of a queen and brother of an emperor". Specifically, he was great-grandson to King Louis XV of France, whose illegitimate daughter Adelaide Filleul bore a son to Talleyrand, the bishop. Said son, Joseph, Comte de Flahaut, had an affair with Hortense de Beauharnais (daughter of Joséphine), stepdaughter of Napoléon Bonaparte and Queen of the Netherlands, an affair which produced de Morny; de Beauharnais' legitimate son later became Emperor Napoleon III. And Charles de Morny himself had an illegitimate son: writer George Feydeau. Talleyrand's legitimate family was also quite complicated, his brothers and cousins breeding prodigiously. And Talleyrand's daughter married one of his cousins.
• Genghis Khan's Y-Chromosome is found in 0.5% of all men on earth. Makes for roughly 35,000,000 people. Guy got around.
• Some 30% of all Europeans descend from Charlemagne, making for roughly 220,000,000 people descended from a total of ten legitimate and illegitimate children who survived, married, and procreated.
• Some scientists theorize that around the time humans first left Africa, we were on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 500 individuals making up the entire human race, all of them living along the straits of Aden. Sometime after making the crossing into Arabia, they would splinter into two groups. One group would return to Africa, the other would go on to colonize the rest of the world. They cite signs of a genetic bottleneck in the human genome as evidence, geological evidence of expanding African deserts at around the same time as a cause, and fishing tools found in fossil reefs in the region from around this time gives them the place. Also of note, Mitochondrial Eve, the last common female ancestor of all humans, lived around 150,000 B.C., whereas Y-Chromosome Adam, the last common male ancestor of all humans, lived around 30,000 B.C..
  • It is a common misconception that Y-chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve reproduced with each other, and were the only people around at the time, or were the only people around at the time with descendants in the present day. Y-Chromosome Adam is unique because he passed his genes down through an unbroken line of male offspring. Many of his male contemporaries also are ancestors of people living today, but through lines that contain daughters, so their Y-chromosomes were not passed on (although other genes of theirs certainly were). Similarly, Mitochondrial Eve is unique because she passed her genes down through an unbroken line of female offspring. Other women were alive when she lived, but somewhere in your ancestry between you and them is a male. There is no requirement that these two people reproduced with each other, or even lived at the same time, for this to be true.
    • It should further be noted that "Adam" and "Eve" are titles, not individuals. They refer only to the last common ancestor of every living human. If some isolated tribe in the Amazon or Indonesia was completely wiped out by a sudden natural disaster, "Eve" could suddenly switch to someone who lived 20,000 years later than the previous Eve.
  • Also of note, Y-Chromosome Adam lived around the same time as the "Great Leap Forward", the time when humans began developing more complex tools (bow and arrow, rafts and canoes, animal traps, etc.), and making art for the first time. Therefore, it's entirely reasonable to suggest that Y-Chromosome Adam's line was more successful because its members were more intelligent, and therefore either (A) reacted better to dangerous situations then competing males (natural selection), or (B) had more successful tribes that attracted more ladies and had more surviving children (social selection). Or both.
    • The biggest cause of the difference in time periods is simply because men can have dramatically more offspring than women, even moreso with polygamy being much more common than Monogamy for much of human history.
• Japan, with a caste system as strong as medieval Europe, is no exception. Until the marriage between then Prince Akihito to Empress Michiko in 1958, for the past millennium, members of the Japanese Imperial House could only marry another Imperial House member, a descendant of a Heian-era nobility, or, after the Meiji Restoration, the descendants of one of the former daimyos.
  • The Japanese Emperors have all been drawn from the same patrilineal dynasty. (Their claim to legitimacy has always been that the first emperor was the grandson of Amaterasu, the sun goddess.) There have, however, been a few matrilineal dynasties. That is to say, the clan who had the most power ruled by having the Crown Prince marry the daughter of the most powerful man in that clan generation after generation, therefore ensuring that the next generation counts that clan as family, and is thus loyal to them. This goes on until the ruling clan gets overthrown by another clan. So first it's the Soga clan, then the Fujiwara, then the Taira, then the Minamoto...
• Carrie Fisher (daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds) actually went so far as to make a flow chart called "Hollywood Inbreeding 101" explaining her family tree in her one-woman show Wishful Drinking. This was prompted by her daughter asking Fisher if she was related to her boyfriend, a grandson of Elizabeth Taylor. Thanks to numerous marriages, she'd been related to several Hollywood stars including Taylor, Paul Simon, and Marie McDonald.
• Zachary Taylor (12th president of The United States) was second cousins with James Madison (4th President of The United States) who was himself first half-cousin to George Washington (1st President of The United States), James Madison's wife Dolly Madison had a sister who married George S Washington, who was George Washington's nephew. Zachary Taylor's fourth cousin was Robert E. Lee ^note  Lee married Mary Anna Randolph Custis, step-great-granddaughter of George Washington.(A famous Confederate General during The American Civil War), and Jefferson Davis (1st and only President of The Confederate States) was his son-in-law. When he was president, Taylor once remarked "I'll hang every secessionist there is, starting with that son-in-law of mine." Referring of course, to Jefferson Davis.
• Inbreeding (and the related genetic hilarity that ensues) is a common riff in redneck humor, as noted by Jeff Foxworthy. Some examples:
  If your family tree does not fork, you might be a redneck.
  If you've ever gone to a family reunion to pick up women, you might be a redneck.
• Even without incest, there can be some seriously weird relations if certain people marry other certain people. For example, if you're a guy and you just married your long-time girlfriend (making her your wife), but your divorced mother just married your wife's father, that would make your wife also your (step)sister! And then if your older sister decided to marry your wife's uncle, he'd be your uncle too, but he'd also be your brother (in-law). It's almost the opposite of Jeff Foxworthy's "redneck jokes": Your family tree does fork, it just forks so dang much it resembles a bush more than a tree!
  Homer: And then our kids would look all weird and mutated!
  • Also see My Own Grampa.
• In some cultures where polygamy is legal, some husbands try to minimize strife between co-wives by marrying women who are sisters, hence used to getting along with one another. The co-wives' respective offspring are therefore each others' half-siblings and cousins at the same time. According to The Other Wiki, such individuals are called three-quarter siblings.
  • The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a fundamentalist Mormon offshoot, does practice plural marriage, including men marrying sisters for this very reason. However, as the sect is rather small to start with, and families generally end up with many children - who then all intermarry with other families in the same relatively limited pool - the genealogies and relations get quite complex. As the FLDS has a few offshoots and breakaway sects of its own that are even smaller, this has quickly veered into Everyone Is Related territory, including some increased genetic risk factors.
• In secluded societies, people were prone to marry close because it was easier that way. Before modern communication and roads, many remote areas in Norway had this problem; in the valley of Setesdal, certain inherital diseases spread because of this, and in nearby Telemark, some families were as tangled as any. In one case, a farmer married his cousin because she was close. One of his daughters married her second cousin, and so on. After getting all those details straight, one family member actually mused: "it is a wonder we didn't end up morons all of us". The family tree in question looks something like this, and is only one example of many.
• Not only are Franklin D. Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt related, but Franklin happens to be the fifth cousin to his wife Eleanor's father. Furthermore, Eleanor happens to be the niece of Teddy Roosevelt. Let's just say that the Roosevelt family tree is complicated enough that they distinguish themselves as the Hyde Park branch (Franklin's side) and the Oyster Bay branch (Teddy's side). With Eleanor's marriage to Franklin serving as a bridge between the two. Here is the family tree.
• In 2012, a California student named BridgeAnne D'Avignon completed a genealogical project that, by tracing both paternal and maternal lines, proved that almost every man to become President of the United States is a descendant of King John of England. The only exception is Martin Van Buren, who is of Dutch ancestry instead. Yes, Barack Obama does descend from King John through his white mother. Donald Trump, who obviously was not included in D'Avignon's project, turns out to be a distant cousin of Obama (again, through his white mom) and a 19th cousin of Hillary Rodham Clinton, on top of being another King John descendant.
• While we're on the topic of Hillary Rodham Clinton, she is a distant cousin of singers Madonna, Celine Dion, and Alanis Morissette. To elaborate, she and Angelina Jolie are ninth cousins twice removed. Meanwhile, her rival during the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama, is a distant cousin of Brad Pitt.
• The Kardashian family has enough drama to go around as is, but with the birth of Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna's daughter Dream... well, we'll just let this guy explain it.
  • To clarify: Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna have a daughter together named Dream. Dream's half-brother King Cairo is the son of Tyga, a rapper who used to date Dream's half-aunt Kylie Jenner while she was underage. Had Tyga and Kylie stayed together and gotten married, Kylie would've also been King Cairo's stepmother and Tyga would've been Dream's half-uncle, which would also make King Cairo Dream's cousin. (Kylie Jenner, by the way, would go on to have two children with Travis Scott: a daughter named Stormi and a son named Aire.)
    • Meanwhile, you have Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, who have four children overall. Kanye once dated Amber Rose, who went on to have Sebastian with her ex Wiz Khalifa.
    • Khloe Kardashian has a daughter of her own named True, whose father is Khloe's ex-boyfriend Tristan Thompson. The latter also has a son named Prince with another woman.
• Your own family tree may prove to be this when you try researching more than several generations back. Tracing your ancestry can prove complex and costly. With similar surnames, similar families in similar households all born the same year in the same place AND with the same occupations, it's very easy to accidentally follow the wrong line back (or hit a brick wall). Humans are very messy and disorganized creatures, so the census and church records may either be wrong, missing, or not correctly show who married who (or who didn't marry who). Joining genealogy sites and doing DNA tests may help somewhat, but be prepared to have many 3rd-4th cousins contact you with trees that look nothing like yours and no apparent connection as to where you belong.
• Edward III of England had a number of healthy sons who had children, some of them with multiple wives over decades. These cousins tended to marry each other or into the prominent noble families like the Percys and the Nevilles. All good, until Edward's oldest son, Edward the Black Prince, predeceased Edward and the crown passed to his ten-year-old son Richard. His uncle, John of Gaunt became Lord Protector. But Richard II was unpopular and possibly mentally ill, so John of Gaunt's son, Henry deposed him and became Henry IV. Except that John of Gaunt was the third son not the second son of Edward III. The second son, Lionel, only had a daughter, Phillipa. But Phillipa had a granddaughter, Anne who married the son of Edward III's fourth son, Edmund, Duke of York. They had a son, Richard, Duke of York, with a better claim than the Lancastrian descendants of John of Gaunt. So when Henry IV's grandson Henry VI turned out to be something of a Cloud Cuckoolander, Richard, Duke of York, decided to press his claim, with his faction calling themselves the Yorkists. This kicked off the Wars of the Roses. Richard, Duke of York never became king but two of his sons, Edward IV and Richard III did. Meanwhile, Henry VI's mother had been widowed young and went on to have several children with her Welsh second husband, Owen Tudor. One of those married a descendent of John of Gaunt named Margaret Beaufort, but she descended through his third wife, who had been his mistress and only married John of Gaunt after their children were grown. The children were legitimized on the condition that they not be illegible for the crown. But when Henry VI's son was killed, the Lancastrians threw their support behind Margaret's son Henry Tudor. Henry Tudor eventually defeated Richard III and married Edward IV's daughter, Elizabeth, uniting the two houses. And let's not forget George R. R. Martin looked at all this and said, Let's Add Dragons.