A royal descent is a lineal descent from a monarch. Royal descent is sometimes claimed as a mark of distinction and is seen as a desirable goal of genealogy research. Pretenders, impostors and those hoping to improve their social status have often claimed royal descent and, as a result, fabricated lineages are common. The importance of royal descent to some genealogists has been criticized.
Due to the incompleteness of records, the number of people who claim royal descent is much smaller than the number who can actually prove it it. Genealogists and geneticists have attempted to estimate the percentage of various populations that have a royal descent.
Read more about Royal Descent: Europe, United States, Africa, Proving Royal Descent, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words royal and/or descent:
“When other helpers fail and comforts flee, when the senses decay and the mind moves in a narrower and narrower circle, when the grasshopper is a burden and the postman brings no letters, and even the Royal Family is no longer quite what it was, an obituary column stands fast.”
—Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893–1978)
““There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet,
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet;”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)