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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-02 > 0823271575


From: "William A. Reitwiesner" <>
Subject: Re: Adultery (Was: Royal lines)
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:32:55 EDT


Chris Bennett <> posted:

>With apologies to the original poster, I'd like to hijack this
>discussion into a different direction. Here is a little bomb for pyros.
>
>Any assertion of paternity, even if perfectly documented, is only an
>assertion unless supported by biological proof. Jared Diamond, in
>p85ff of his book on human biology "The Third Chimpanzee" (New York,
>1992) reports a 1940s study on the blood types of new born infants
>which, embarassingly, revealed that nearly 10% of American children
>were conceived adulterously. He reports that other similar studies in
>both the US and Britain have shown numbers of 5-10%.
>
>The implications of these observations for patrilineal genealogical
>research over large numbers of generations are nothing short of
>devastating.

<snipped for space reasons>

>The documentation is not only highly impeachable, but on this subject
>is at times wilfully ignored. A classic example is Catherine II of
>Russia, whose memoirs explicitly state that her son, the future Tsar
>Paul, was the son of a lover, not of her husband Peter III -- yet
>virtually all royal genealogies show Peter as Paul's father without
>question.

Actually, that's not quite correct. Catherine never finished her memoirs,
but in several places she gave some broad hints about her son's paternity.
When, in her manuscript, she got to the place where his conception was to
be discussed -- that's where her memoirs stop.

And *most* Royal genealogies show the mother's husband (Peter) as the
father of the child (Paul), with a footnote mentioning the lover (Saltykov).

> At times, the issue is central to a descent that affects
>many people. For example, the best argument I know for a traceable
>descent from antiquity depends critically on the 9th century Byzantine
>empress Eudocia Ingerina having been an adulteress.
>
>Those who seek to build long genealogies need to face up to this issue
>and decide how they want to integrate it into their research. It seems
>to me that anyone who craves absolute certainty had better focus on
>documenting matrilineal descents rather than patrilineal ones. Or
>else, they should be prepared to do a lot of grave robbing and DNA
>analysis!

You seem to be laboring under the assumption that the whole purpose of
genealogy and genealogical research is to trace genetic links: that any non-
genetic connection (adoption, adulterine bastardy, step-children, etc.) has
no place in a genealogy. I labor under that assumption too, but I think
this is something we should be more explicit about.

William Addams Reitwiesner

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