To think a 3rd cousin isn't really a relative?

[CallMeNutribullet]

Not really a Royal family thread but inspired by some of the conversations I've seen online since the Queen's death.

I've seen lots of people suggesting the fact that the Queen and Prince Philip were 3rd cousins is creepy and incestuous. To me it's such a distant relationship that I honestly wouldn't even consider myself related to a 3rd cousin. Google tells me you share less than 1% of your DNA with a 3rd cousin and I can't imagine the vast majority of people have any idea who their 3rd cousins are.

Would others see it as a deal breaker in a relationship if you found out a potential partner shared great, great grandparents with them?

You're right. Sorry, I had a brain fart. 🤦🏻‍♀️

No

Your cousin is 1st generation cousin.
Your cousins child is 1st gen cousin 1 gen removed.
Your child to cousins child are 2nd generation cousins.
Your grandchild to cousins grandchild are 3rd generation cousins.

3rd cousin is a distant relation

It would be like Prince George marrying Lady Chattos granddaughter.(Princess Margaret's Great granddaughter)

Ie Charles and her are 1st cousins.
William and her child 2nd cousins

George and her granddaughter 3rd.

And no I don't know the names. Most people don't know their 3rd cousins

If families are so scattered and out of touch as to not be aware of 3rd cousin relationships, I would have thought the likelihood of two of them meeting and marrying is pretty slim, but yes, they might not know they are related.

The Royal Family however, are well aware of how family members relate to each other and I personally don’t think a hypothetical relationship between Prince George and a granddaughter of Lady Chatto would be encouraged!

I honestly don't think they'd discourage a hypothetical relationship purely on the basis of being a distant cousin. They have learnt the hard way that meddling in relationship between couples doesn't work.
People would have a very different view of Charles if he hadn't been discouraged from marrying his soul mate in the first place.

HMQ and PP had a very long and successful marriage (70 odd years sounds good to me) being 3rd cousins and them both having an understanding what the RF is all about.

DH and I met and married on the other side of the world. Since delving into our family tree I've found our grandmothers lived within 500 yards of each other at the time of the 1911 census. I haven't the time to go into cousin relationships, just looking at direct antecedents and their children, but considering my grandmother was one of nine, her mother was one of seven and her father one of seven (although from the opposite end of the country), it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find DH and I share an ancestor.

I barely know my first cousins, any more distant than that are complete strangers.

Princess Margaret's grandkids are too young b1996-2002 to have DC that will be ages to marry Prince George unless he does a Charles and waits until he's older and marries much younger. That didn't work out well last time...

No the child is your first cousin once removed.

The children of your cousin are second cousins to your children

Your child is first cousin once removed to your cousin.

OK then one of Edwards grandkids (not born yet) if that makes the ages tie up better. And I still don't think the RF would object to it.

But its a distant relation, few people would even know what their 3rd cousins look like.

No cultural background - but you just wouldn't marry your family member. Would you marry your step brother? There's no DNA shared there . . .
We just don't marry family members in my family and I am sure many of my friends - expect some friends who are from certain cultures I know marry their cousins.

If my child fell in love with a distant family member - none of us were connected to in any way except for looking at family trees etc i.e. My grandmother's Cousin's great grandchildren then that's a bit different - although still a relative we would deal with it at that point.

I know someone who got married to a man while abroad and turns out they share the same grandmother and didn't know. If she knew she wouldn't have. I have also read about adopted children in love and not knowing they were siblings - it happens in life - but these aren't situations most people would get into voluntarily.

It's ok for people to have different opinions on this - we are all different and raised in different ways. I don't believe there's a right or wrong answer per her - just what you value morally may differ from person to person.

Maybe William - I don't see Catherine and the Middletons agreeing to it. If one of Lady Louise's kids married George? That's just crazy to me.
Their parents are far too modern to allow that.

I dropped George out the post. Apparently he'd be too old to marry one of Lady Chattos Granddaughters.

I'm talking Edwards hypothetical GC marrying one of Lady Chattos hypothetical GC, they'd be distant relations.

How many people on here actually know people descended from a great grandparent's cousin? That's the connection with Queen and Philip.

I know (vaguely) of couple of my grandparent's cousins and their children but not any further back

My brain hurts..

It wouldn't happen - but only time will tell. Just wait 20 years and see. Both William and Harry didn't marry royals. Did any other grandchildren ?
All this talk about inbreeding, I think it's unlikely they would marry family members.

I started to do research into family history on ancestry and got a DNA test. My closest match was the aunt of a guy I went out with when I was at university. He was my first cousin twice removed. We didn’t come from the same town so I would never have known.

I'm talking Edwards hypothetical GC marrying one of Lady Chattos hypothetical GC, they'd be distant relations.

No it would be their great-grandchildren marrying. The Queen and Philip's great-grandparents were 1st cousins

Lady Chatto is Edwards cousin
The kids would be 2nd gen cousins
The hypothetical GC would be 3rd gen cousins

Third cousins share a pair of great, great grandparents and typically less than1% of their DNA. I guess in small families who have stayed in the same area for generations they might know each other well but I doubt that is common.
I've been researching my family history, and between them my great great grandparents had over 50 children. Obviously they didn't all live to have children of their own, but many did and that translates into literally hundreds of full third cousins for me, with remarriages adding yet more half relatives. I wouldn't even recognise anyone more distantly related than first cousin and have never, to my knowledge, even met any of my third cousins, though I've recently been contacted by one through Ancestry and we do hope to meet soon to share our findings about our common ancestors.
The late Queen and her husband were both descended from Victoria and Albert - 2 out of their 140 odd great great grandchildren. I believe they were also distantly related via another line too, so probably shared a bit more DNA than average 3rd cousins, but still not what I'd call close relatives.
The aristocratic families of Europe have always married each other to varying degrees so there are bound to be links, but the same is probably true in lots of ordinary families too, especially in times and areas where there was less mobility. I traced one branch of my family back to the early 1800s when they lived in a rural area but had to give up at that point as there were so many local families with the same name and it became impossible to discern who was who (without spending a huge amount of time and money anyway.) There was almost certainly intermarriage within different branches of the family then. By coincide I also came across people with my DH's fairly unusual surname on the same page of Church records and was then able to trace his family back to the same area. We are quite possibly distantly related too. I've also found probable commonalities between DH's family and one of his sibling's partners family from a couple of hundred years ago. Go back far enough and look carefully enough and you will find links between many families, especially if they've not moved around a lot. It's interesting, but no more than that.

There was a thread on here some time ago about this. I think they were quite distant cousins from a marriage perspective.

I imagine in lots of cases you wouldn't even know if you married a third cousin unless you both examined your family trees in some detail.

@MrsAvocet Exactly.

Go back 150 years ordinary people rarely travelled more than 20 miles from their birth place. So the met and married within their local area.

My Grandparents were 2nd cousins with the same middle name. I've also met a couple who were 2nd cousins who figured it out when they got engage, through older family members talking.
It is much more common than you think.

Lady Chatto is Edwards cousin
The kids would be 2nd gen cousins
The hypothetical GC would be 3rd gen cousins

Yes I agree with that @Dinoteeth but if we're comparing it to Queen and Philip it was great-grandparent's who were 1st cousins so it would be next generation down

150 years ago yes. Many people nowadays have a family whatsapp - Someone is bound to know you're dating a relative - even a distant one at that.

Doesn’t that make the Queen and Prince Philip 4th cousins, then?

The shared ancesters were Victoria & Albert
So King Edward Viii - brother
King George V - cousin
King George VI. - 2nd cousins
Queen - 3rd cousin

I am using a Queen family tree. Would need to look for Philips.

Victoria & Albert
Princess Alice - sister to Edward
Princess Victoria - cousin to George V
Princess Alice - 2nd cousin to George VI
Philip - 3rd cousin to Queen