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Just found out the George Washington is supposed to be descended from William the Conqueror

Just found out the George Washington is supposed to be descended from William the Conqueror

Posted: 22 Feb 2015 6:04PM GMT
Classification: Query
I just found out the George Washington is supposed to be descended from William the Conqueror, see here, for example

http://washington.ancestryregister.com/FALAISELineage00006.h...

and since I know my maternal grandfather's family is supposed to be descended from William the Bastard's maternal uncle Walter and that the paper trail for that ceases to exist around 1450 and most of those claims is actually conjecture of based on recorded names in documents and not proof; then I think: for Washington to actually be descended from royalty and William the Conqueror directly is a wishful white lie and the family trees attributed to George Washington, and not so coincidently, many other powerful, rich, and famous people, needs to be corrected by historical researchers if they value truth in history and not political posturing and pandering. That Washington can't be proven to have descended from William the Bastard doesn't change who Washington was in anyway, so the motive is bizarre.

For any of these folk claimed to be descended directly from William the Conqueror a validated paper trail must exist. Eventually, one can prove it is likely that one is a close relative, (close relative in the scheme of 10,000s (or maybe a lot more) of members of William the Bastard's extended family vs. billions of members world wide if you were to go back to the archeological Adam & Eve) possibly via DNA one day. However it's unlikely these white lies will be validated with an actual paper trail in the future. Although more and more historical documents are discovered every year they are unlikely to concur with such wishful thinking with regards to direct descent from royalty. Likewise, I realize my childhood dream of becoming Speed Racer ain't going to happen.

I happen to think that my Grandfather is descended from the Conqueror's maternal uncle is much more likely to be true than claims the Washington was descended the Conqueror and that Washington was likely descended from this Uncle Walter too but the fact is the paper trail does not exist and today they could only infer it through DNA matches if they even had DNA samples from the Conqueror or Uncle Walter to begin with, which they don't. It's a very unglamorous claim but, oh well, that's life, huh?

The thing people keep missing when they claim to be descended from royalty is that most royalty tended to be unusually unproductive in having children and successfully raising them to adulthood. Those horridly bloody history books is testament to that.

If you want a sanitized version of the 'A History of Britain' TV Series by Simon Sharma, where I first heard of Walter de Falaise, is reasonably accurate and unbiased. And when I say sanitized, I mean the TV series doesn't ghoulishly create reenactments of the horrid cruelty that some of these historical people participated in or were subjected too and not that the cruel behavior often mentioned in this TV series, was in anyway sane.

Just surprised at obviously unsubstantiated claims with regards to George Washington and many other prominent historical figures and celebrities that are taken as proven because a supposedly professional and unbiased historian made the claim.
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