The Descents
The ancestry, by the numbers
Regenerated 9 August 2026 from the master GEDCOM, after the Raleigh, St Leger and Kingsmill work. Every figure below is counted afresh from the file, not carried over.
Who they were
The full social breakdown of all 1,362 direct ancestors, each counted once, in the highest category that matches his or her own recorded title, style or occupation.
| Category | Count | Share | 30 Jul |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monarchs and consorts | 257 | 18.9% | 216 |
| Titled nobility — earls, counts, barons, lords | 426 | 31.3% | 222 |
| Knights and baronets | 40 | 2.9% | 29 |
| Gentry, clergy, officers | 63 | 4.6% | 36 |
| Named trades and labourers | 33 | 2.4% | 41 |
| Too little detail to classify | 543 | 39.9% | 289 |
| All direct ancestors | 1,362 | 100% | 833 |
Aristocracy proper — monarch, peer or knight — is 723, or 53.1 per cent. Add the gentry and clergy and it is 786, or 57.7 per cent.
Why the share moves about
The aristocratic share sits close to where it stood in July, and that is the point: it has held near 55 per cent through three doublings of the tree. What changed underneath is the bottom row. The August work went sideways as well as upward, wiring in the wives, mothers and daughters who carry these lines but whose own records say almost nothing beyond a name and a father. They land in “too little detail to classify,” which is now the largest single category in the table. The crowned heads themselves have only gone one way: 115 in July, then 216, then 247, now 257.
How many ways in
Distinct chains of parent links from Aynsley to each ancestor, counted through the whole tree — not the shortest route, but every route.
| Ancestor | Paths | 8 Aug | 30 Jul |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brian Boru | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Rhys ap Tewdwr | 8 | 8 | 1 |
| Edward I | 9 | 7 | 1 |
| Empress Matilda | 18 | 14 | 2 |
| William the Conqueror | 40 | 24 | 6 |
| Alfred the Great | 78 | 52 | — |
| Vladimir the Great | 80 | 52 | 8 |
| Rollo | 293 | 194 | 14 |
| Charlemagne | 412 | 263 | 30 |
What the doubling means
Ten days ago there was one road to Edward the First, one to Brian Boru, one to the Welsh kings. There are now nine, two and eight. Deeper in, the braiding is on another scale altogether: Charlemagne arrives four hundred and twelve separate ways, Rollo two hundred and ninety-three, Alfred and Vladimir of Kiev around eighty apiece.
This is pedigree collapse, and it compounds. Every house wired in this month married into houses already standing in the tree, so each new entrant does not add roads to the deep ancestors, it multiplies them. Ninety-seven ancestors were added since yesterday — seven per cent growth — and the count to Charlemagne rose by half again.
The narrow gate
One number resists all of this. Brian Boru is still reached two ways and no more. The Irish descent runs through a single narrow join, and no amount of work among the Norman and Continental houses will widen it; it can only be widened from the Irish side. It is the plainest reminder the table offers that a thousand roads to Charlemagne and two roads to Brian Boru are not the same kind of fact.