Descended from Charlemagne

 It has been suggested that everyone with European ancestry is descended from Charlemagne.

You remember Charlemagne.  He was crowned Roman emperor by the pope in the year 800, the first independent western Roman emperor since the late fifth century--although there continued to be emperors in Byzantium (basically modern-day Turkey) who were considered Roman emperors until the fifteenth century.

Charlemagne's empire is sometimes called the Holy Roman Empire to keep it separate from the empire of antiquity, and the European Union considers him (in some sense) their founder.  He had France, western Germany, and, he thought, Italy, though Italy tended to disagree.  France claims him as theirs, as the nineteenth-century statue shown below seeks to "prove," whereas the Germans call him theirs.  (The Italians figure you can have him.)

 

So how did we get to where everybody in the west is considered to be descended from him?  Well, all of Europe's royalty were.  He had multiple wives, multiple concubines, and multiple children, including a whole lot of daughters.  As long as one counts (as one should!) one's descendants through the female as well as male line, and the illegitimate as well as legitimate line, it is clear that his descent quickly spread throughout Europe's leading families.  Those who were kings of France, Germany, and Italy in the tenth century were all descended via women from Charlemagne.  So are all of today's European royalty, including King Juan Carlos of Spain and Queen Elizabeth of England.

It was considered appropriate in the Middle Ages (as is still the case) for great nobles to marry great nobles.  (The reason Prince Charles married Diana Spencer was because she was of noble ancestry, descended from an illegitimate child of King Charles II.)  Although the actual medieval kings and queens quickly became too closely related to keep on marrying each other, due to prohibitions on consanguinity, there were plenty of rising lords for them to marry.  The great counts and dukes then quickly passed royal blood to their children, who in turn passed it to their children, often offspring of lesser lords.

You can see that in the 1200 years since Charlemagne there has been plenty of opportunity for his descendants to spread out.  If someone has multiple children, and they have multiple children, one can come up with a whole lot of descendants very quickly.  There was a proud announcement in our paper the other day of a couple welcoming the birth of their 100th great-grandchild.  And this is far from the record, even for a couple, much less for someone with many wives and/or concubines.

Cystic fibrosis, which has a strong genetic component, seems to have originated about 1200 years ago in the European population.  Did it begin with a mutation in Charlemagne's genes?  Intriguing thought.  The leading families of Europe can trace their family trees with excellent documentation right back to the eighth century.  The rest of us can just imagine a lot of those entries in the family tree.

Before anyone reading this blog becomes too excited about having imperial blood, let's think about how ancestry works.  You've got two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on.  Just mathematically by the time you get back to the late Middle Ages you have more European ancestors than there were people in Europe then.  Okay, all of us have ancestors who may pop up on more than one line of descent.  And we all have to take a deep breath and recognize that the majority of our European ancestors were peasants.  But it's pretty clear that everyone is related to everyone.

And if you've had your "DNA done" you'll find that you have maybe 1 or 2% of something you had no idea about.  (Where did that Middle Eastern or South Asian descent come from?  I thought we were lily-white!)  And even the nationality or ethnic group that's responsible for your last name may only be a minority of your DNA.  So we may all be "blood of kings" (as well of course "blood of peasants").  Pro tip:  If you're visiting Charlemagne's palace in Aachen, don't announce that you are the returning heir.

© C. Dale Brittain 2021

For more on medieval kings, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.