****A Call to Insurrection Spoiler****

Joat42 wrote:

n7axw wrote:Tracing back to Genddis (sp)Khan might be a bit much, however.

Not really, they did that in 2003 and came to the conclusion that on average 1 in 200 men are direct line descendants of Genghis Khan, a so called super-Y lineage. See The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols.

As I said in my comment above, Genghis Khan was prone to mount anything within reach wherever he went, whether it was a horse or a woman.

There are some other super-Y lineages of note, like Uí Néill and Manchu.

I think you've really reinforced my point rather than contradicting it. How in the Dickens would you ever establish a direct line with a mess like that?

Of course, European monarchies frequently has to deal in cousins or brothers when a direct line wasn't available. Or sometimes war. Think how dubious Henry the VII's claim to the throne of England was, a very doubtful tie to the House of Lancaster. Bosworth Field is what bestowed ligitamacy on Henry. As the story is told, he actually takes the crown off
the dead Richard's head and puts it on his own at the end of the battle. Then to cement things he married Elizabeth of the House on York. So we get the House of Tudor. And when Elizabeth I dies without heirs, we get the Scottish House of Stuart with James I, I think a distant cousin.

The point is that if you wanted to establish monarchies, you would probably have to work with families and allow them to put forward their own representative rather than dealing with the almost impossible, in most cases at least, of trying for a direct line.

Don

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Joat42 wrote:

n7axw wrote:Tracing back to Genddis (sp)Khan might be a bit much, however.

Not really, they did that in 2003 and came to the conclusion that on average 1 in 200 men are direct line descendants of Genghis Khan, a so called super-Y lineage. See The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols.

As I said in my comment above, Genghis Khan was prone to mount anything within reach wherever he went, whether it was a horse or a woman.

There are some other super-Y lineages of note, like Uí Néill and Manchu.

n7axw wrote:I think you've really reinforced my point rather than contradicting it. How in the Dickens would you ever establish a direct line with a mess like that?

Genetics, specifically by examining the Y-chromosome since we are talking about male straight lineal descendants here. The geneticists today have no real problems determining straight lineal descendants, even on the female side which uses mitochondrial DNA if I remember correctly.

Determining lineal descendants in Honorverse should be child's play considering the medical progress, the real problem is determining who is the nearest descendant that would possibly have a claim - because I can guarantee that any children left on earth by the shareholders must at this point have tens of thousands of descendants, and if we count in descendants from other relatives (uncles, aunts, nieces etc) we are probably in the hundred of thousands. And all these descendants are spread all over Honorverse - not just concentrated on Earth.

TL;DR: Determining that someone is a direct descendant is easy, determining that the person have a valid claim is not.

Although there is a wrinkle here, since genetic tinkering have occurred over the centuries we have no idea how that impacts the determination of lineal descent.

Ok, I get what you are saying and can see that working out with families in the European aristocracy.

But with the Genghis Khan? For one thing, how would they even get his DNA to establish the common ancestor. They don't even know where his grave is, iirc.

And even assuming that you know the common ancestor, with that many direct lines, how would you know which direct line to choose?

As I said up stream, a real mess.

Don

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n7axw wrote:But with the Genghis Khan? For one thing, how would they even get his DNA to establish the common ancestor. They don't even know where his grave is, iirc.

It's inferred from when the lines was started and the telltale genetic markers of Mongol ancestry. Genghis was famous for his voracious sexual appetite and the number of progenies he had. Is it possible that they are wrong about the lineage, certainly - but that still means that less people are direct descendants while the discrepancy is made up of people who are not direct descendants but descendants of Genghis relatives.

n7axw wrote:And even assuming that you know the common ancestor, with that many direct lines, how would you know which direct line to choose?

As I said up stream, a real mess.

Don

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My point was that your original take that it would "a bit much" to tell if someone was descendent from Genghis really isn't.

But as you point out, it's a mess determining who would have a valid claim aka being the closest descendant - which I also noted in my post.