Attila "Scourge of God", 59th King of the Huns - Charlemagne to Attila the Hun

(No Name)

Lord Youxiong is your 133rd great grandfather.

Thanks for fixing this :)

@Attila the Hun, "Scourge of God", King of the Huns is my 46th grt grandfather Judy Rice

@Escama of the Huns is my 1st cousin 46 times removed Judy Rice

@(No Name) is my 132 nd grt grandfather Judy Rice

Attila, supposedly 43rd great grandfather (through Arpad, Hungarian Prince)

This is very useful information, Justin. I think it is generally good to consider all these claims (my own as well) to a lineage from Attila the Hun as anecdotal at the best, just an option to trigger the imagination.
But are there uncertainties (beyond the regular ones) also in regards of the descent from Charlemagne? Is any line "better" or "worse"? Charlemagne is, I assume, one of those historical characters to whome many people claim descent.
I note my paternal grandfathers both connect, but on totally different routes (Through Scotland, and todays Germany, respectively).

Pontus, I enjoy these lines very much and it doesn't bother me to have them on Geni. My philosophy is to make sure they are supported by the earliest sources, and save the criticism of the sources for these discussions and the About Me.

Other curators strongly disagree, arguing that we should cut the lines where they become doubtful. I can see their point. We'd lose some of the fun but have a much more realistic tree. I think we'd get bogged down in arguing about where to make the cuts, because in many cases it would have to be arbitrary.

Scholars think the descent of Arpád from Attila was an invention of Hungarian nationalists. 12th century, I think. There are at least three different versions, and they contradict each other in the details. That might be a good reason to cut the line above Álmos, but I leave that decision to the Hungarian curator and users. It's not an area where I've done much reading.

There are many good descents from Charlemagne. The bad ones usually are easy to disprove and cut.

The problems start with Charlemagne's ancestors. Depending on who you ask, scholars say that only 12, 15, 16, 18 of his ancestors can be proven. Geni has much more, going back to the Romans (academic speculation) and Trojans (an old, fictional line), and through them to the Greek gods. It's not even certain that Charlemagne was descended from the Merovingians.

If we as a group wanted to get serious about creating a realistic tree one of the first things we would do is cut the speculative connections in Charlemagne's ancestry. This alone would eliminate maybe half of the spurious lines.

Charlemagne to Attila the Hun :

http://www.geni.com/path/Charlemagne+is+related+to+Attila+Scourge+o...

.. is this line not valid .... and is it the same line everyone is finding ? ..

http://www.geni.com/path/Carsten+Christian+Sinclair+Zinklar+Zingler...

Geni is changing continuously, and from time to time it connects on different routes. I assume that it is healthy to think about any connections beyond written and documented history as amusing make-believe. I find these "lines of descent" more entertaining than anything I would identify too strongly with.
My own most recent connections to dear Attila goes this way, over a great grandfather:
http://www.geni.com/path/Pontus+Kyander+is+related+to+Attila+Scourg...
Previously, I got to this point past Charlemagne over a great grandmother, but now she is making a (slightly different) path over Scotland and Hungary as well:
http://www.geni.com/path/Attila+Scourge+of+God+59th+King+of+the+Hun...
I think it is time to invent a way to clearly mark the lines and individuals that are obviously "mythological" , thus making it both more visible what is construction or wishful thinking, and identify areas in need of further research.

One thing we have been doing is to put the word Fictional in the display name of profiles that are not for real people. That way, someone who looks at a relationship path can see clearly if the line goes through a false connection.

This doesn't solve the problem of a line that goes through the wrong parents. It would be great to find a way to mark the relationship paths themselves as fictional or dubious.

Pontus, your line is currently going through one of the most controversial problems in medieval genealogy -- Agatha, the mother of St. Margaret.

There is no scholarly agreement about Agatha's parents. The question has been intensely debated. There is no majority opinion. The debate goes on. There is no chance it will ever be resolved unless someone finds new evidence.

Geni shows one theory. It goes against the primary evidence and is rejected by almost every scholar -- but it happens to be the Public Relations version adopted by "the official website of the British Monarchy".

A better presentation would be to disconnect her parents and discuss the evidence, theories and problems in the About section.

===

The traditional theory is that she was the daughter of Henry II's brother. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that she was a niece of the Emperor Henry (filia germani imperatoris Henrici -- daughter of the brother of the Emperor Henry). Florent of Worcester says Agatha was the daughter of a brother of Emperor Henry. William of Malmesbury says Agatha was sister of a queen of Hungary. Roger of Hoveden (late 12th century) says that Agatha was a Russian princess. Several other chroniclers say that Agatha was the daughter of a king of Hungary.

Ronay and de Vajay suggest that she might have been the daughter of Liudolf, Margrave of West Friesland, a half-brother of the Emperor Henry III who is known to have been a close relative of Agatha. This theory makes Agatha a daughter of a half-brother of Emperor Henry III, consistent with early documents which specify that Agatha was "filia germani imperatoris Henrici, " that is, daughter of a brother of the Emperor Henry. De Vajay's hypothesis makes Agatha a niece of Judith, who was daughter of Emperor Henry III and wife of Andrew of Hungary's son Salomon.

Jette believes that this hypothesis requires an unreasonably tight chronology and that the absence of mention of such a connection by continental chroniclers makes it suspect. In response, it can be said that the chronology -- three generations in 58 years -- is tight but not impossible.

Jette argues for Yaroslav I, Grand Duke of Kiev, and Ingegarde of Sweden. Jette also adduces onomastic support for his proposal that Yaroslav and Ingegarde were the parents of Agatha (that is, Agafiya, a Greek name). Yaroslav had an attraction to Greek culture, perhaps inspired by his stepmother Anne of Byzantium; in addition, none of Agatha's children or grandchildren were given German names, while two of her three children (Margaret and Christine) had Greek names which are found only in Sweden at this time. Jette believes that the blood relationship with Emperor Henry might have been inferred by later chroniclers from William of Malmesbury's statement that Agatha was the sister of the Queen of Hungary. Jette's hypothesis makes Agafiya a sister of Anastasia, queen of Andrew I of Hungary.

Another hypothesis is that she was daughter of Vazul of Hungary, which would make her a granddaughter of Agatha Chryselia.

Well, enough of red or false herrings to make a rich soup from. Thank you Justin, facts, even contradictory ones are in the long run more interesting than fiction. Genealogy is at the best a division of history, at the (sometimes) worst a home-grown form of Fantasy literature. I am sure that Geni.com will have a more interactive construction in the future, allowing for all these ambiguities to become visible. Allowing for the fantastic as well as the factual.
I will ponder over these above alternatives, all in their own right interesting. Very illuminating!

The Bulgarian line is this, I assume:
http://www.geni.com/path/Pontus+Kyander+is+related+to+кан+ИРНИК?fro...
This is a presumably a son of Attila.
However flattering, I understand this connection to Attila is a pure make-believe construction of the Bulgarian genealogists.

Attila"Scourge of God" 59th King of the Huns
is my 44th great grandfather

ÁRPÁD (hazi) Ágota-Agatha Princess of Hungary
is my 2nd cousin 27xremoved.

Escama of the Huns
is my 1st cousin 44xremoved.

Lord Youxiong is my 130th great grandfather

Both Attila and Charlemagne are my great grandfathers.
https://www.geni.com/path/Kenneth-James-Goodrich+is+related+to+Atti...

https://www.geni.com/path/Kenneth-James-Goodrich+is+related+to+Char...

At this writing 1640 kings, emperors and pharoahs are my great grandfathers. That blows my mind. Ken

I take it all with substantial amounts of salt, having done a fair amount of myth-busting on lines much closer to the present ("Grace O'Neill" is a Fictional overlay onto the historical Grace Neale of Northamptonshire and Northampton/Accomack, for one example).

As for the vexatious Agatha question, as Justin says, there will probably never be sufficient proof one way or another. I happen to favor Yaroslav the Wise as her father just because we know he *did* have at least four daughters and *was* trying to get them integrated into European royal houses (succeeding with three of them, and we don't know about the other(s)).

2023 finally, in sum: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Of_Huns-3 put she [Escama of the Huns ]

*daughter of Elak, 60th king of the Huns

**(granddaughter of Attila the Hun, "Scourge of God", King of the Huns)

the profile is completely blocked, so much so that not even the TEXTAG is allowed in the info.. now reading what has been reported here all around , I believe that we could easily align GENI as well..