Damery of Cork · the descents, read downward
The earliest-ancestor list asks how far back each royal line goes. This asks the opposite question: where does each one end — the last person in the line who was still royal, before the blood drops into the nobility, the gentry, and finally a farm in west Cork.
The short answer
The last royal ancestor is not English, not Norman, and not who anyone would guess. And the crowns do not each close their own door — they queue up behind a handful of shared ones.
The last king in the family died in 1476 — and he was a Gaelic king of Leinster, not a Plantagenet. Donal Reagh Kavanagh MacMurrough outlives Edward I in this tree by 169 years.
Twenty-two houses, ten doors. Most royal lines leave through one of a handful of shared exits. Only the Irish, the Welsh and — as of this rebuild — the Scots close their own.
Seventeen generations. That is the distance to Sabh Kavanagh, "a princess of Leinster" — the last person in the tree born inside a house that was still reigning.
This chart gave Scotland's last reigning ancestor as David I, d. 1153. That was wrong when it was published. William the Lion, who reigned to 1214, was already in the tree at g27, with his daughter Isabel at g26 — I simply failed to search for him. The error is mine, not the data's, and it is sixty-one years and one whole era band. The row below is rebuilt.
The new GEDCOM then adds a second royal-Scottish road, through William's brother David, Earl of Huntingdon — see the Scotland entry.
Part one
Two columns per house, because "royal ancestor" means two different things. Last to reign is the final ancestor who actually wore the crown. Last born royal is the final ancestor born inside the house — usually a king's daughter, and usually one generation later. The number in the margin is generations above Aynsley: g24 means a 22× great-grandparent.
Leinster — the Kavanagh MacMurroughsthe last door
→ Out through her marriage to Sir James Butler of Polestown (d. 1487), whose son Piers became 8th Earl of Ormond. A reigning king's daughter marrying into the Butlers a decade before Bosworth — this is the tree's single most recent royal marriage.
Wales — Powys, the house of Mathrafalnow wired
→ Out through her marriage to Sir John Scudamore of Kentchurch (d. 1435), then Joan Scudamore (g18), Gruffydd Dwnn (d. 1449), and into the Trussells and the de Vere Earls of Oxford. Now fully wired: Glyndŵr g20, Alys g19, traced from the GEDCOM rather than read off a chart. Note the frontier: both of Glyndŵr's parents are terminal nodes — Gruffudd Fychan II of Powys Fadog (d. 1369) and Tomas ap Llywelyn (d. 1343) have no parents wired — so the descent from the Mathrafal princes behind him is asserted, not traced.
England — the Plantagenets
→ Elizabeth married Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford, and carried the line to the Butlers of Ormond. Joan married Gilbert de Clare and carried it to the Despensers and the Raleighs. Two daughters, two independent descents — and no later English monarch anywhere in the tree.
Scotland — Alpin and Dunkeldrebuilt
→ Out through her marriage to Robert de Ros — the Magna Carta surety baron — and their son William de Ros. Forty-nine years of reign later than this chart previously said, and two generations shallower.
→ And now a second royal road. The new GEDCOM wires William's brother David, Earl of Huntingdon (g27), and from him: Margaret of Huntingdon (g26) → Alan of Galloway → Dervorguilla of Galloway (g25) → Eleanor Balliol (g24) → John Comyn II "the Black" → John III Comyn of Badenoch. Dervorguilla was the mother of King John Balliol, so the line runs through the king's sister, not the king. It brings the lordship of Galloway, the Balliols and the Comyns in with it.
→ Two women named Margaret of Huntingdon now sit in the tree — Henry of Scotland's daughter (d. 1201, m. Humphrey de Bohun) and David's daughter (m. Alan of Galloway). The GEDCOM keeps them properly distinct; any chart built from it must too.
Castile · León
→ Not an exit at all: she married Edward I. Castile and León do not leave royalty in this tree — they feed forward into the English crown and leave through his daughters.
Wales — Gwynedd, the house of Aberffraw
→ Out through Ralph de Mortimer, then FitzAlan, Percy and FitzWalter into the de Veres. Her mother is disputed — the site deliberately declines to claim the extra Plantagenet descent that would follow if she were King John's granddaughter.
Munster — the Dál gCais O'Briens
→ A slow exit rather than a sharp one. The Gaelic princely title runs on in the direct line to Turlogh Donn O'Brien (b. 1499, g17) and is finally surrendered in 1552, when Donogh became 1st Earl of Thomond. His granddaughter Lady Honora O'Brien (g13) is the last of the house in the line.
Leinster — the Uí Cheinnselaig
→ Two doors from one king. Aoife married Strongbow at Waterford in 1170 and went to the Marshals; Órlaith married Donal Mór O'Brien and went to Thomond. The Kavanagh kings above are traditionally of the same stock, but that join is kept as tradition and not wired.
Aragón
→ Into the cadet counts of Provence, and back into royalty two generations later when Eleanor of Provence (g25) married Henry III.
France — the Capetians
→ The princess betrothed to Richard the Lionheart for twenty-five years and never married to him. Out through William IV of Ponthieu, and back into royalty through her great-granddaughter Eleanor of Castile. Changed in this rebuild: the shortest road into the French royal house no longer runs through Alys at all. It runs through Louis VI's other son Peter of France (g27), who took his wife's name and became Peter I de Courtenay — putting Louis VI at g28, level with Louis VII, on 22 paths. His daughter Alice de Courtenay (g26) is a male-line Capetian one generation shallower than Alys, if you count cadet blood as royal blood. The door itself does not move. France also leaves a third time, a century earlier, through Hugh Magnus of Vermandois.
Normandy and England — the Conqueror's house
→ Out through his son William FitzRobert and granddaughter Amice into the de Clares. Henry I stands in this tree twice: once by his illegitimate son here, and once by his lawful daughter the Empress Matilda, who carries the Plantagenet road.
Deheubarth — the house of Dinefwr
→ Out through Gerald of Windsor and into the Geraldines — the FitzGeralds of Kildare and of Desmond, and from there back to the Butlers.
Navarre — the Jiménez
→ Straight into Castile by her marriage to Sancho III. Navarre never really exits; it merges.
Jerusalem — the crusader crownanomaly
→ The one crown in the whole set that produces no royally-born descendant. The line leaves through a son born a Count of Anjou — who then fathers Henry II, and the blood re-enters royalty by the front door.
Uí Dúnlainge — the Uí Fáeláin of Naas
→ Out by marriage to Diarmait Mac Murchada. This is the deepest line in the tree — nineteen rungs back to Dunlaing mac Enda Niada in the late fifth century — and it all hangs on Sadb being Órlaith's mother, which the site grades as plausible rather than documented.
Kyivan Rus — the Rurikids
→ Into France by marriage to Henry I, and out again with her younger son Hugh Magnus.
Sweden
→ To Kiev by marriage to Yaroslav. Sweden, Kiev and France are the same descent read at three depths.
Wales — the kingdom of all Wales
→ Out through Osbern FitzRichard, de Neufmarché and Hereford into the Bohuns — a wholly separate Welsh line from Gwynedd and Deheubarth.
Wessex — the West Saxons
→ Out through his daughter St Margaret, shipwrecked in Scotland and married to Malcolm III. Wessex also enters twice more, earlier and by shorter roads: through Eadgifu (g33) into the Carolingians, and through Ælfthryth (g35) into Flanders.
León and Asturias — the old house
→ Into Castile by her marriage to Ferdinand I, who united the two crowns for the first time.
Italy — the Anscarids of Ivrea
→ Into Burgundy, then by two roads: one to Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Plantagenets, one to Alfonso VII of Castile.
Germany — the Ottonians
→ Hedwig married Hugh the Great and became the mother of Hugh Capet. Otto the Great, the first emperor of the new line, is a collateral — a brother-in-law's brother, not an ancestor.
The Frankish Empire and Carolingian Italy
→ Into the Herbertian counts of Vermandois, and eight generations later into Isabel de Vermandois — who is the single most important woman in the whole continental half of this tree.
Navarre — the house of Aristathe deepest crown
→ Through her granddaughter Queen Toda Aznárez into the Jiménez, and so back into Navarre by the next dynasty.
Part two
The natural question is whether the list shortens if the answers repeat. It does, sharply. Twenty-two houses do not leave royalty twenty-two times — they queue behind ten people. Six of those ten carry more than one crown out with them.
| The door | Closes | Crowns it carries out | Into |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sabh Kavanagh g17 | c.1470s | Leinster (Kavanagh) | the Butlers of Polestown |
| Alys ferch Owain Glyndŵr g19 | c.1420 | Powys | Scudamore, then the de Veres |
| Lady Honora O'Brien g13 | 1600 | Thomond, as a surrendered Gaelic princedom | the FitzMaurice barons of Kerry |
| Elizabeth Plantagenet & Joan of Acre g23 | 1282 · 1272 | England, Castile, León, Aragón, Provence, France, Navarre, Jerusalem, all-Wales, Anscarid Italy | the Bohuns and the de Clares |
| Isabel of Scotland g26 | c.1190s | Scotland — no longer shares the Bohun exit | the de Ros barons |
| Gwladus Ddu g26 | d. 1251 | Gwynedd | the Mortimers |
| Aoife & Órlaith MacMurrough g26–27 | 1170 · 1168 | Uí Cheinnselaig, Uí Dúnlainge | Strongbow; the O'Briens |
| Robert of Gloucester g27 | d. 1147 | Normandy | the de Clares |
| Nest ferch Rhys g27 | c.1100 | Deheubarth | the Geraldines |
| Isabel de Vermandois g27 | d. 1131 | the Frankish Empire, Carolingian Italy, France, Germany, Kiev, Sweden | Beaumont and Warenne, then the de Veres |
Three of the nine doors are Irish and one is Welsh — and those four are the latest to close. Every English and continental crown in the tree is finished by 1282. The family's royal blood does not trickle out; it arrives in two great lumps, seven centuries apart in date but only nine generations apart in the tree, and the later lump is Gaelic.
Part three
I have William at thirteenth cousin and Felipe at twentieth. Here is what the rest of the field looks like, computed the same way: degree is min(mA, mB) − 1, removal is the difference.
Charles III is closer than William. The same Loftus chain, stopped one rung earlier, makes him a 12th cousin once removed — the closest of any European monarch by nine degrees. The site computes William and never draws the corollary.
Felipe looks like 21st cousin twice removed, not 20th. The shortest documented Spanish chain I can build is 22 generations, via Gaunt → Castile → Habsburg-Lorraine. A 20th-cousin figure needs a 21-generation descent, and the route above is already the slowest-generating line available. Worth re-checking the working — if there is a shorter chain I would like to see it.
| Monarch | Common ancestor | Gens | Relationship | Weakest rung on their side |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charles III | Adam Loftus & Jane Purdon | 14 / 13 | 12C 1R | Anne Wellesley, born 1788 before her parents' marriage |
| Hans-Adam II, Liechtenstein | Edward I & Eleanor of Castile | 24 / 21 | 20C 3R | Archduchess Elisabeth Amalie, 1878–1960 |
| Felipe VI, Spain | Edward I & Eleanor of Castile | 24 / 22 | 21C 2R | routed to avoid Alfonso XII's contested paternity |
| Philippe, Belgium | Edward I & Eleanor of Castile | 24 / 22 | 21C 2R | hangs entirely on the Count of Flanders line |
| Carl XVI Gustaf, Sweden | Edward I & Eleanor of Castile | 24 / 23 | 22C 1R | Margaret of Connaught — solid |
| Harald V, Norway | Edward I & Eleanor of Castile | 24 / 23 | 22C 1R | two independent chains agree — the best cross-checked |
| Guillaume V, Luxembourg | Edward I & Eleanor of Castile | 24 / 23 | 22C 1R | one Belgian marriage carries everything |
| Albert II, Monaco | Edward I & Eleanor of Castile | 24 / 23 | 22C 1R | Princess Charlotte, legitimated 1911 — weakest of the ten |
| Frederik X, Denmark | Joan of Acre | 23 / 26 | 22C 3R | two independent chains agree |
| Willem-Alexander, Netherlands | Joan of Acre | 23 / 26 | 22C 3R | Anne, Princess Royal, m. William IV of Orange |
Guillaume V acceded in October 2025 on Henri's abdication; Hans-Adam II remains sovereign, Alois being regent only. Andorra and the Vatican are elective and fall outside the arithmetic. Every continental figure is an upper bound on distance — a shorter chain, if one exists, makes them closer, never further.
This is the real finding. The royal cousinships are all so distant they carry no information — as my own Cousin William post says. But the same gateways produce some startlingly close relatives who are not royal at all.
| Person | Common ancestor | Gens | Relationship |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sir Aubrey de Vere, 2nd Bt (1788–1846), poet | Vere Hunt & Anne Browne, m. 1760 | 8 / 2 | 1C 6R |
| Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902), poet | Vere Hunt & Anne Browne | 8 / 3 | 2C 5R |
| Lord Shelburne, Prime Minister (1737–1805) | William FitzMaurice, Baron Kerry, & Constance Long | 11 / 3 | 2C 8R |
| Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia | Sir Maurice Berkeley & Catherine Blount | 14 / 3 | 2C 11R |
| Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford | John de Vere, 15th Earl, & Elizabeth Trussell | 15 / 2 | 1C 13R |
| Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury | Richard Cecil & Jane Heckington | 16 / 2 | 1C 14R |
| The Duke of Wellington | Adam Loftus & Jane Purdon | 14 / 7 | 6C 7R |
| Anne Boleyn | James Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormond | 20 / 5 | 4C 15R |
| Catherine Parr | Sir Thomas Greene of Greens Norton | 18 / 3 | 2C 15R |
| Winston Churchill | James Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormond | 20 / 19 | 18C 1R |
| Charles Darwin | James Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormond | 20 / 21 | 19C 1R |
Three people in the tree are direct collaterals rather than cousins, which is a stronger claim and reads better: Jane Lane, Lady Fisher, who rode Charles II out of England after Worcester, is a 10× great-aunt. Sir James Ware, the historian, is a 10× great-granduncle. And if the Cecil rung below is added, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I's chief minister, is a 13× great-granduncle.
Part four
Four candidates that look promising and are not. Each is more useful written down than left to be re-attempted.
Part five
Generation counts traced directly from the ancestor tree published at damery.family, August 2026 · 1,362 direct ancestors, 46 generations
Cousin degrees computed as min(mA, mB) − 1 with removal |mA − mB| · continental royal chains taken from published pedigrees, not primary sources
Every figure here is an upper bound on distance: a shorter documented chain makes a cousin closer, never further away
‹ All the royal houses · Chapter 26: the houses of Europe · damery.family