King’s second cousin Lord Ivar Mountbatten to star in US Traitors
I was trying to think of how they were second cousins. After I’d worked out who Ivar was of course. And while descent from Viccie, it’s trough the Battenbergs that they are second cousins.
All of which is very boring and not what got me wondering. Second cousings. So, one great grandparent or more in common, yes? Hmm, perhaps one pair of great grandparents in common? Same parents, siblings, same grandparents, cousins, same g g second cousins?
Now, I know I have second cousins. Vast tribes of them in fact, a very with it and trendy poet in Canada I believe, armies roaming New Zealand, Co. Down contains some ancestral stock and on and on.
But I have absolutely no idea who these people are (other than the poet) and no knowledge of even how many there are. Second cousin is out there enough for me not to know I guess.
Perhaps they just keep the stud books better if you’re famous?
The stud books are kept for royals.
So Ivar’s grandad was the ‘forgotten’ son of Louis Battenberg, erstwhile First Sea Lord, who died in the late 1930s and inherited the English titles. Dickie Mountbatten was his brother.
The cross line between Prince Philip and HLM rather muddies the calculations, I think.
What is also noteworthy is that Ivar ( like many chaps I have encountered ), stopped liking women after decades of marriage and producing offspring and started going out with gentlemen instead. He has even married one. Mind you I think ‘batting for both sides’ is a Mountbatten family tradition.
The stud book as in Burkes Peerage is very thorough and covers vastly more than even the most tenuous royals. I once typed in the name of a friend into the search purely because it was a double barreled name. I was surprised to find him and his parents listed. His wife and children were there too and her family background was more prestigious.
It is of course all bollocks. Without DNA verification how can you tell if the claimed studs bollocks is correct. Maybe even kings have sons they didn’t father.
Ancestry.com are frequently emailing me to let me know they’ve found another possible 2nd/3rd cousin of mine. I can’t be bothered to follow up, although I have to thank them for helping me recently discover that I have six half-siblings in South Africa that I knew nothing about.
That’s interesting. Presumably on father’s side – 6 extra on mother’s side would be fairly noticeable over the years……
@Tim
Yes, father left UK for SA after parents divorced when I was still being transported by pram. He married twice more, five children by wife No 2, then one more with No 3. I have a half sister who is younger than both of my daughters.
We had one cousin who kept up with everyone related to her. So we knew about the doings of second and a few third cousins on that side of the family.
On the other side? Who knows? Admittedly they were mostly on the other side of the Atlantic. nowadays that’s possible, but when I was young a fair bit of news involved writing letters.
It does also depend on whether your parents kept up. Second cousin for you is their first cousin’s kid after all.
“inherited the English titles”: even assuming they are neither Scottish nor Irish titles you still need to distinguish English, GB, and UK titles. Apparently it matters under some circs.
Perhaps Tim will explain.
I have a friend who’s the son of an earl by the latter’s second marriage. One day I was talking to him about the problems my relatives in Ukraine are having with schooling at the moment.
“How are you related to them then?”
“Er, they’re the grandchildren of my father’s sister.”
I didn’t think that this was particularly important, but my friend immediately began drawing a diagram on the back of a betting slip, and after about ten seconds announced: “First cousins, twice removed!”
I just grinned and told him that it had taken me about half an hour and a few Google searches to work that one out. But I guess that if you’re the son of an earl by his second marriage, this sort of calculation is part of everyday life.
Quaker friends seem to keep up with distant cousins while I don’t have a clue about mine.
I suspect it’s a holdover from being a religious minority. Maybe Zoroastrians or Jews also keep the records straight.
Precedence. The older the title the grander. English titles are oldest, followed by GB, by UK. That’s about – about – it. Scottish and Irish titles on the other hand really are different.
Who doesn’t know their second cousins?
Not exactly hard to work out. First cousins share grandparents, second cousins share great grandparents, third cousins share great great grandparents and so forth.
And the removes come in when one’s ancestor is at a different level to another’s.
PiP
And I meant English rather than Scots or Irish or German/Danish in this case. Of course Milford Haven is in Wales, but that doesn’t count 🙂
. If George Mountbatten had become Earl of Irnbrushire I’d have said Scots.
I presumably have second cousins about whom I know nothing, because I remember from my childhood my mother’s being in touch with kin who lived in foreign places – Oz, Kenya, London …
And then a few years ago a Sydneysider got in touch to explain how we were related, involving a ggmother on my mother’s side. I can’t remember how she made the link: could it be because a member of the younger generation took a DNA test? Or was it ordinary genealogical inquiry?
This is all completely distinct from my paternal grandfather, an ANZAC who was a Queenslander.
As for the USA and Canada I suspect my surviving kin there are more remote than second cousins, apart from the first cousin who lives in Arizona and her children who must be (have I got this right?) first cousins once removed.
I do have a first cousin once removed whom I have “met” only once when she turned up in a telly programme we were watching, discoursing on medieval history. Another family redhead.
began drawing a diagram on the back of a betting slip, and after about ten seconds announced: “First cousins, twice removed!”
That’s a painfully slow calculation to get the wrong answer. Inbreeding, perhaps?