[Strike79]

@Wildman I have a couple nerdy hobbies. One includes watching movies about Elizabethan and Victorian England. I also like documentaries explaining the different houses of the British monarchy. It's super interesting how this branch of the Windsors came to be the monarchs...and even that Windsor wasn't their name until 1917. Also that Queen Elizabeth II was the last monarch to marry a cousin. Her children married other nobles but far enough down that they weren't 2nd and 3rd cousins. My other nerdy hobby is learning about the political landscape of Germany from 1938-1945. Not just the WWII history but the actual politics of how it came to happen, the players, and how everyday people voted for it and became complicit in the atrocities that occurred. One day I want to travel to see the places from the documentaries.

Hey that is cool.    My nerdy skill is being able to name all 46 U.S. Presidents in order. If you give me a number between 1 and 46. I can tell you the name of the President, the predecessor, the successor and usually some historical tidbit concerning the particular President.

I can make that claim right now also, but you will need to give me a few minutes. 

........well, you and Wildman can "make that claim" on another thread cuz the topic here is the transition of Her Majesty, the Queen and ascension of her son, Charles III.  As a matter of fact, Charles was in Belfast, Northern Ireland today, part of the United Kingdom for those unaware, and I need to know what he said today.  Also invited to hear Charles were officials of the Republic of Ireland, so it must have been an eventful day.

Somebody break it all down for a brutha. 

[Capler]

The shine has faded for me as I have learned more about colonialism over the past few days.

[cee dog]

So are you historians going to mention that the queen and the prince were kissing cousins.. third cousins 

[Bearforlife]

@cee dog...yes. Elizabeth II and Phillip were cousins. It was customary at the time to intermarry among royals. Phillip was a descendant of the Greek royal house. Ironically they shared a grandparent. Queen Victoria known as the "Grandmother of Europe" orchestrated marriages of her family members to much of the royal houses all over the continent. Both Elizabeth II and Phillip descended from this line of what became the Windsors. Phillip was a Mountbatten and Elizabeth II descended from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The Saxe-Coburg and Gotha name was changed in 1917 due to anti-German sentiment in Europe to Windsor which is a more British name. Therefore all children resulting from the union of Elizabeth II and Phillip are Mountbatten-Windor instead of Mountbatten b/c the name of the sovereign is the surname of the family.

King Charles and Camilla are related very distantly and Princess Diana and King Charles were also related very distantly. These relations were well beyond the third cousin range. Ironically Diana was also related to Winston Churchill. William and Harry, Euginie and Beatrice I believe all married unrelated yet wealthy people.

[ncsiacfan]

Bear for Life, Strike 79, and Cee dog, it would  be nice if our 'clear'countymen would read your posts. Whether Diana Spencer or Winston Churchill, the commonors that the upper classes associated with were not so common, they just did not have titles. Churchill's father and grandfather married Americans. There was a time in which land rich and cash poor English nobles married rich Americans. That happened with one of the Vanderbilts who was supposedly crying unhappngly on her wedding night. Her eight year old brother supposedly said "he is only marrying you for your money". She was eighteen. Supposedly, her husband would stare at her whenever she opened her mouth at the dinner table. She did her duty, produced a male hier, stayed in England and became quite prominent. Evidently her hsband had a relationship to Churchill since someone made the statement that she was glad the she had a  male child "because I would hate to see that bastard Winnie become the Duke of ... Malborough (I think)

As a history major, my major professor and faculty advisor at one time was English. He would say things like, we don't have this problem in England. (Segregation) I told him you will once they start coming in large numbers from the colonies.

What scares me about America today is before I had been to Europe, I would ask every one that I met from any European nation, who do Americans most remind you of. They would immediately answer as I thought they would. Germans. When I went to Germany, I was surprised at how friendly the people were. I did not expect it. On a airplane not only did the flight attendents appear to speak whatever language anyone else did, they appeared to look at you a knew what you were before you opened your mouth. I remember thinking "damn, how did these people lose the war"? That is what I find to be scary today. Some very smart people can belive that the election was stolen because Trump said it was stolen. That is so "Germantic". That happens to also be his ancestry.

[Capler]

So are you historians going to mention that the queen and the prince were kissing cousins.. third cousins 

Genetically it is ok to marry a cousin beyond your first cousin. 2nd, 3rd... is fine. People did it all the time not so long ago.

[cee dog]

So are you historians going to mention that the queen and the prince were kissing cousins.. third cousins 

Ain't no way. I'm sorry. I don't care if we 10th cousins. I'm not sticking my wally whacker in you. I mean it was ok in 1920 to be 40 and marry a 15 year old. It was sick then and it's sick now.

Genetically it is ok to marry a cousin beyond your first cousin. 2nd, 3rd... is fine. People did it all the time not so long ago.

[Capler]

So are you historians going to mention that the queen and the prince were kissing cousins.. third cousins 

Ain't no way. I'm sorry. I don't care if we 10th cousins. I'm not sticking my wally whacker in you. I mean it was ok in 1920 to be 40 and marry a 15 year old. It was sick then and it's sick now.

Genetically it is ok to marry a cousin beyond your first cousin. 2nd, 3rd... is fine. People did it all the time not so long ago.

Most people in small towns are related. If you talk to the right person in your family, they can tell you how your mother and father are actually related. dog, poor folk did not have the means to travel very far for a mate.

[cee dog]

Yeah I have heard my parents and grandparents talk about how we were double kin as they use to say about certain folks growing up. That's why my pops left small town Georgia. I've heard about those stories.

So are you historians going to mention that the queen and the prince were kissing cousins.. third cousins 

Ain't no way. I'm sorry. I don't care if we 10th cousins. I'm not sticking my wally whacker in you. I mean it was ok in 1920 to be 40 and marry a 15 year old. It was sick then and it's sick now.

Genetically it is ok to marry a cousin beyond your first cousin. 2nd, 3rd... is fine. People did it all the time not so long ago.

Most people in small towns are related. If you talk to the right person in your family, they can tell you how your mother and father are actually related. dog, poor folk did not have the means to travel very far for a mate.

[ncsiacfan]

All of the above is true. And with ordinary European common people as well. I deliberately did not mention the two Bowles sisters who had to be institionalizd. Nor the bleeding disease which affected European male royalty. My concern was what made ordinary German people allow themselves to be lead into war by one man. That was my comparison with Trump in America today. With the Japanese it was different. They knew that they could not beat the Americans. They believed that if they delivered one knockout blow, Americans were two degenerate to fight.

[Bearforlife]

I'm loving this discussion lol

Princess Diana was connected to the royal family through the illegitimate children of distant relatives.

there is a really good documentary on Youtube about wealthy Nuevo Riche Americans marrying mail order spouses from English nobility who were noble but cash and house poor. It definitely happened.

There's also a documentary or a few about the impact of marrying 2nd cousins. That's not smart either. It's possible to have a "normal" child but the closer the relation the muddier the gene pool. The house of Hapsburg died out because they kept marrying uncles and nieces and wondering why no one could produce a child that live beyond birth. One Hapsburg was impotent, drooled due to a mis-shapen jawline (a birth defect from inbreeding) and had developmental delays. Also, hemophilia ran in the royal bloodline for a long time. It's ultimately part of what helped bring down the last czar of Russia. His wife employed Rasputin to "heal" their only male child of the blood disorder. Rasputin's presence and strangeness had them doing some odd things that didn't help their public persona. They were killed because their British cousins wouldn't allow them to come to England in exile, leaving them open to the Bolshevik uprising.