www.ditl.org

Captain Seafort wrote:

Mikey wrote:Perhaps not in general, but the embodiment of the state - that is, the royal family - was, like most of Europe's monarchial families, well-known for inbreeding up through the 19th century.

Not particularly. It was the Hapsburgs who were the most notorious bunch of inbreeders. Given that the royal family has had plenty of fresh blood from various Welshmen, Scots and Germans over the last few centuries, mostly with pretty tenuous claims, their gene pool is probably in pretty good nick.

I thought you guys meant "steal" when you said "nick."

Anyway, I seem to recall a fair span of time during which the British monarchs were German... some of them barely even spoke English, as I recall.

Mikey wrote:

Captain Seafort wrote:

Mikey wrote:Perhaps not in general, but the embodiment of the state - that is, the royal family - was, like most of Europe's monarchial families, well-known for inbreeding up through the 19th century.

Not particularly. It was the Hapsburgs who were the most notorious bunch of inbreeders. Given that the royal family has had plenty of fresh blood from various Welshmen, Scots and Germans over the last few centuries, mostly with pretty tenuous claims, their gene pool is probably in pretty good nick.

I thought you guys meant "steal" when you said "nick."

Anyway, I seem to recall a fair span of time during which the British monarchs were German... some of them barely even spoke English, as I recall.

They tried that twice. Never quite got there if I recall correctly...

Sonic Glitch wrote:They tried that twice. Never quite got there if I recall correctly...

Cute, but I wasn't referring to an attempted invasion so much as I was to the Hanoverian dynasty and the subsequent House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Nutso wrote:

Fuck Madagascar!

Mikey wrote:I thought you guys meant "steal" when you said "nick."

Context is everything, and the English language is nothing if not adaptable.

Anyway, I seem to recall a fair span of time during which the British monarchs were German... some of them barely even spoke English, as I recall.

Less than half a century. George III was no more German than you're Polish.

Nutso wrote:

Stupid STUPID Penguins!!!

Captain Seafort wrote:George III was no more German than you're Polish.

That would make him about 85% German. The fact is that the Hanovers were a German dynasty which ruled Great Britain from 1714 through 1901 (at which point they were succeeded by another German line.)

Mikey wrote:That would make him about 85% German.

Really? Where were you born? Where were your parents born?

Captain Seafort wrote:

Mikey wrote:That would make him about 85% German.

Really? Where were you born? Where were your parents born?

I was born in New Brunswick, NJ. My parents were both born in Brooklyn, NY. However, you (understandably) lack a sort of native intrinsic understanding of how such statements are viewed in the U.S. Over here, we can't delineate the majority of our residents into one of a small handful of traditionally-native ethnic groups. You can, so you no longer refer to yourselves as Pictish, Saxon, Norman, etc. Add to that the fact that such distinctions in your neck of the wood are a millennium or more old - over here, with me as "American" as anyone, I am ancestry-wise less than a century removed from the Old Country.

Mikey wrote:Add to that the fact that such distinctions in your neck of the wood are a millennium or more old - over here, with me as "American" as anyone, I am ancestry-wise less than a century removed from the Old Country.

And? A century ago, as many of my ancestors as I can count were either Irish or Manx. My great great uncle fought in Dublin during the '16 Rising. The grandfather of a friend of mine from uni came over here from Poland during the war. We're both English, just as George III was, and just as you're American, regardless of where our ancestors came from.

As I said, it's a vernacular I wouldn't expect you to understand any more than I'd expect most Americans to understand the distinctions between the different Celtic ethnicities.

Funny thing, take a gander at Utah Mormons. They are a relic of America's Nineteenth Century demographics.

'Twas Britannia bade our Wild Geese go that small nations might be free
But their lonely graves are by Sulva's waves or the shore of the Great North Sea
Oh, had they died by Pearse's side or fought with Cathal Brugha
Their names we will keep where the Fenians sleep 'neath the shroud of the foggy dew

Mikey wrote:As I said, it's a vernacular I wouldn't expect you to understand any more than I'd expect most Americans to understand the distinctions between the different Celtic ethnicities.

America has more redheads than Scotland.

The flower of the free, the heather, the heather,
the Bretons, and Scots, and Irish together
the Manx, and the Welsh, and Cornish forever,
six nations are we, all Celtic and Free.

Mikey wrote:

Captain Seafort wrote:

Mikey wrote:That would make him about 85% German.

Really? Where were you born? Where were your parents born?

I was born in New Brunswick, NJ. My parents were both born in Brooklyn, NY. However, you (understandably) lack a sort of native intrinsic understanding of how such statements are viewed in the U.S. Over here, we can't delineate the majority of our residents into one of a small handful of traditionally-native ethnic groups. You can, so you no longer refer to yourselves as Pictish, Saxon, Norman, etc. Add to that the fact that such distinctions in your neck of the wood are a millennium or more old - over here, with me as "American" as anyone, I am ancestry-wise less than a century removed from the Old Country.

New Brunswick? Princeton myself. Dad was born in Jamesburg, but that was when it was still farm land. His family were dairy farmers before they turned it into a neighborhood and stripmalls.

There's an awful lot of that around here. When I told my parents I was moving to Toms River, they asked me why I was moving to "the country."