To ask you to help me get my head round this?!

[WashingMatilda]

Okay HELP!

I'm watching the American 'Who Do You Think You Are'

Courtney Cox has just gleefully exclaimed that her x26 great grandfather was William The Conquerer.

TWENTY SIX TIMES GREAT GRANDFATHER FFS

AIBU that actually a whole load of us probably are as well??

That if you go back far enough we'll all be able to dig up all kinds of lineage? But also mainly just blacksmiths and scullery maids? And a few murderers?

But the way it was framed in the programme - how there was this big reveal that she couldn't wait to tell her family about - now I'm thinking I could be wrong??

Anyone more knowledgeable that can shed some light on this for me??

I think there are loads of people, yes. Having proof is the trickier bit.

Yes I'm distantly related to Anne Boleyn, therefore Queen Eliazabth 1st. Its amazing what you discover when you study your family tree.

Exactly as Grockle says: not many of us outside the nobility can trace our family tree back to the 11th century with any degree of certainty, though it's very likely that if we could more of us would be able to claim ancestry from past royalty

I wish I had the energy to research my family tree that far.

Certainly there have got to be thousands and probably millions of people whose lineage traces back to William the Conqueror, but they don't know it.

Hopefully someone who can provide accurate calculations will come along shortly.

Kirsten right?? I'm so envious.

So is it right that we're all, either directly or distantly, to Shakespeare? But also Jack the ripper? Vlad the Impaler?

So that means we are all related to Courtney Cox? Will she have a family gathering so you think?

Me too. If you believe Ancestry.com and a day of pottering online. As is most of the country no doubt! Maybe I'll drop her a line...

I’m just working this out...
Parents=2 ancestors
GP=4
Then each generation further back would go..

1. 8
2. 16
3. 32
4. 64
5. 128
6. 256
7. 512
8. 1024
9. 2048

10. 4096 11. 8192 12. 16200ish (can’t be bothered to use a calculator) 13. 32400ish 14. 64800ish 15. 129600ish 16. 260000ish 17. Half a million... 18. More than a million (and I wonder what the population would have been...)

So you don’t have to go back too far to be directly related to a very lot of ancestors, though I guess that there would be complications caused by people in the family marrying members of the same other family, distant cousins etc too...

Wow Tellme that's awesome, thank you

Gonna write to Courtney Cox

DH can get back to William the Conqueror as his family were proper posh. On one line he can go a fair bit further.

Given that until recently most people married someone local, I'd reduce the number in the calculations above because they would have ancestors in common

Presumably Cox has got ancestors who came over on or following the Mayflower?

DH has one ancestor who appears 17 times in his family tree Oleanna as different branches intermarried.

I think it's over 67 million people, looks like we're all related to each other if you go back far enough...................... Adam & Eve?

Look at it this way - they had to go that far back to find someone interesting in her family... What a bore!

I can trace my tree back to William the Conqueror too. I only have to go about five generations back and I hop onto a very well researched landed gentry line. I look a little bit like Courtney Cox too...

Alexander Armstrong on Who Do You Think You Are also linked back to William the Conqueror.

Most of us do. It is difficult to prove as most records were destroyed during the reformation. But once you hit some landed gentry, or parish records, you're fairly well up and running, if you have the patience.

DH can also go back to William The Conqueror

How come she is not able to trace her ancestry back to a night soil man from 19 C or someone hanged for sheep stealing in 17 C why are these fakes always related to royalty.?

Yeah, Bolokov it's the same with people who claim to have had past lives, they were always someone like Cleopatra, never some poor little kitchen maid. I wonder why that is?

I found out a relative in the early 1900's was a murderer who was hung for his crime.......

Everyone I've talked to locally who has researched is related to the Duke of Northumbria (or Northumberland, whichever one it was then) it seems, including Dh.

Im sure I heard (probably on QI) that if you go back to the 13th century you are probably related to pretty much everyone.

TellMe that’s both impressive and terrifying as a bit of maths. I’d love to know who all those people were even 5 generations back.

My surname has French routes so I’ve always assumed that an ancestor came over from France perhaps around William the Conquerer’s time...

*roots

pigsdofly I was going to say the same thing!!

How funny that AA was also related to William the Conqueror. Surely his story is actually pretty easy to get access to; I'd want to hear about the 'normal' folk and all their juicy details history