Talk:Rodulf II de Warenne

Problems with page as it existed
As my motivations have been questioned let me explain. This page is a perfect example of what can go wrong on Wikipedia by overzealous editors, unfamiliar with the situation they are describing based on a what they find in a few Google hits.

The Warenne pedigree is an old one, first recorded by Robert of Torigni. He said that Rodulf married a niece of Gunnora, and had William de Warenne and Roger of Mortimer. [note, one Rodulf, and only one] This was criticized by later historians, who noted that Roger de Mortimer appears in the documentary record to have been of a different earlier generation than William, and Torigni himself gives Roger different parentage in another of his works. Further research in the 19th century revealed two charters that named Rodulf, one with a wife Beatrice, a second with a wife Emma, and further, evidence that this Rodulf was followed in Normandy by a second Rodulf, brother of William. A model was then proposed making Rodulf I marry first Beatrice and second Emma, one of whom was niece of Gunnora, and by Beatrice (who was alive too late for a second wife to be mother of William) having Rodulf II, William and (but not very confidently) Roger.

Then Keats-Rohan in 1993 reevaluated it, and came up with the novel hypothesis that Torigni had compresses two identically named Rodulfs into one, and that a Rodulf I married Beatrice niece of Gunnora, having sons Rodulf II and Roger de Mortimer. She then has Rodulf II marrying Emma, and having Rodulf III and William. She has been followed in this supposition by some, but not all, subsequent writers. Hopefully, the POV issues now become apparent. There were either two Rodulfs, the first marrying both Beatrice (William's mother) and Emma, father of Rodulf II and William; or three, Rodulf I marrying Beatrice, Rodulf II marrying Emma (William's mother), having Rodulf III and William. William was either son of Rodulf I or Rodulf II, by either Beatrice or Emma, either brother of Roger de Mortimer or nephew, or Roger doesn't belong here at all. Rodulf II was either William's brother or William's father, different men.

More to the point, the article (in the plagiarized part) said everything that is known of William's father - he appears in two charters and one marginal note in a chronicle. Not even that, though, is accurate, as the same reconstruction that gives you Rodulf II as William's father also would assign him only the second charter, the first then belonging to Rodulf I, and the chronicle note can hardly be said to refer to Rodulf II, vs Rodulf I, given that the whole existence of Rodulf II is predicated on the chronicle author compressing Rodulf I and II into a single composite. Whoever was father of William, the man was an extremely minor historical personages, about whom almost nothing definitive can be said. The only 'significant' coverage by modern historians of a Rodulf II who is father of William is in the paper that conjured him into existence, and three lines of text in the correction volume to a set that runs over 10,000 pages, which makes him rather insignificant. This is not someone who merits a page - it may not even be someone who existed at all, and given all of the uncertainties, Wikipedia is better off without such a page. Agricolae (talk) 19:09, 23 October 2010 (UTC)