Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ancestry charts of the current British royal family


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. The "keep" opinions do not address the WP:OR concerns. Moreover, we happen to have a policy about this type of content, WP:NOTGENEALOGY. In view of this, the "keep" opinions in the vein of: it's interesting, popular, etc., must be given less weight. That other similar articles may exist is not a reason not to apply our policies to this one (and is even a reason to suppress it insofar as these articles overlap, per WP:CFORK).  Sandstein  09:08, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Ancestry charts of the current British royal family

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Just seems to be someone's collection of whatever genealogical connections interest them. Poorly sourced, with no unifying principle, criteria for inclusion, reason for being. Agricolae (talk) 21:07, 2 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Agricolae (talk) 21:07, 2 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete. It is what the nom has described. Srnec (talk) 23:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 11:09, 3 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment Delete or Merge or something - There are dozens (ok, maybe just a dozen) of these:
 * British monarchs' family tree
 * Genealogy of the British royal family
 * House of Windsor
 * English monarchs family tree
 * English and British monarchs family tree (simple)
 * Alternative successions of the English crown
 * Line of succession to the British throne
 * Descent of Elizabeth II from William the Conqueror
 * Ancestry charts of Lady Diana Spencer and Catherine Middleton
 * Ancestry charts of the current British royal family (Descent from the Franks)
 * Ancestry charts of the current British royal family (Irish connection)
 * Ancestry charts of the current British royal family (Saxon and Scottish descent)
 * Ancestry of Elizabeth II
 * I'm all for multiple perspectives (within a single article or across multiple articles), but I'm not sure all of these are necessary. I've notified WikiProject Genealogy of this AfD, perhaps people over there have some thoughts. Smmurphy(Talk) 20:13, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Wow. Just . . . . wow!  A lot of these are NOR violations, and in particular, they select a specific aspect that the page creator thought was interesting, and present any old line of descent.  As an exmple, the 'descent from Franks' page selects one of what must be over a million different ways you can trace back from the current kings to Charlemagne, every one equally valid.  Many of them amount to 'hey, look at this interesting line of descent I stumbled across'.  I am not saying that they aren't correct, although the sourcing is abysmal, largely depending on user-submitted on-line trees.  Its just that the fact that such lines exists is not in and of itself notable. (WP:NOTGENEALOGY - "Genealogical entries. Family histories should be presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic.") Agricolae (talk) 21:14, 4 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep - entirely relevant and notable today. The Internet was all abuzz last night because Prince Philip might have died. Bearian (talk) 03:23, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
 * So because people care if someone might have died, an arbitrary selection of charts about his wife's distant ancestry is notable? Please provide the policy that would support that. Agricolae (talk) 03:56, 5 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete or redirect. This does seem to be in violation of Notability, i.e. although material may be verifiable, we should avoid indiscriminate inclusion of topics. I think 'Ancestry charts of the current British royal family' can be redirected to one of the other charts, and the three split-off articles (Franks, Irish and Saxon) deleted. Celia Homeford (talk) 09:20, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
 * While the complaints are similar, the rationale for deleting Frank, Irish & Saxon would be different - as opposed to this one, which is just 'charts documenting connections I think are interesting' they each have a coherent guiding principle, just a non-notable arbitrary one, so rather than adding them to this proposal I will wait for it to play out and be sure there is a concensus for getting rid of any royal genealogy pages before initiating a new proposal for them. Agricolae (talk) 15:46, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Let me add that this is a cancer not only affecting British royalty. Why do we need:
 * Genealogical tables of the House of Medici
 * Medici family tree
 * The motivation for a lot of these seems to be 'because we can'. Agricolae (talk) 20:33, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
 * 'Because we can' is a great motivation to do things on wikipedia - what can have an article is only bounded by a few policies and guidelines. In the case of the Medici, the British royals, and many other trees I'm sure, AfD feels like TNT to me; pruning, merging, and reorganizing seems more reasonable if more difficult. I wouldn't be surprised if you but mergeto templates on a number of these, you would either get a useful discussion or none at all. Smmurphy(Talk) 21:01, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I would suggest that 'because we can' make a tree tracing Queen Elizabeth to Brian Boru is a poor motivation for a new page that shows one of thousands of possible lines, and that there may well be nothing in such a page worth saving. Agricolae (talk) 21:57, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree. Here is a comparison of the page-views of 10 of these pages: |British_monarchs%27_family_tree|Genealogy_of_the_British_royal_family|English_monarchs_family_tree_(simple)|Descent_of_Elizabeth_II_from_William_the_Conqueror|Ancestry_charts_of_Lady_Diana_Spencer_and_Catherine_Middleton|Ancestry_of_Elizabeth_II|Ancestry_charts_of_the_current_British_royal_family_(Descent_from_the_Franks)|Ancestry_charts_of_the_current_British_royal_family_(Saxon_and_Scottish_descent)|Ancestry_charts_of_the_current_British_royal_family_(Irish_connection). Five of them get hardly any views, have hardly any edits, etc. I agree with Bearian that the topic is relevant and notable. In spite of this, I think some improvement in organization would be useful. I think that this page and its three subpages should be deleted, as well as Ancestry charts of Lady Diana Spencer and Catherine Middleton and maybe Ancestry of Elizabeth II. The three subpages of this tree could be added to this AfD or submitted as a group, but the others should probably have their own. Descent of Elizabeth II from William the Conqueror and Family tree of English and British monarchs mostly duplicate each other and could be merged. English monarchs' family tree and British monarchs' family tree could also be merged, but perhaps that would be politically insensitive, I do not know. I'll wait a bit to see if any discussion here or there makes different/better suggestions; and will plan to propose merges on those pages over the coming weeks. I'll try to add citations where possible/necessary. The Medici ones are different enough that I will let them be. Smmurphy(Talk) 23:33, 5 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I had no idea this was so out of hand. I'd support PRODing Ancestry charts of Lady Diana Spencer and Catherine Middleton, Ancestry charts of the current British royal family (Descent from the Franks), Ancestry charts of the current British royal family (Irish connection) and Ancestry charts of the current British royal family (Saxon and Scottish descent) if the current AFD goes through. The others probably require AFDs. Srnec (talk) 18:22, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:10, 7 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep or merge with other royal ancestry articles. We probably have rather too many of these, but because the claim to the throne is by descent we probably do need a few articles.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:16, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Though we have discussed them more broadly this is not a proposal to eliminate all royal genealogies. It is about one specific page, a page that has absolutely nothing to do with any claim to a throne.  It has a chart showing descent from Vikings, a chart showing how the male royal consorts are related, descent from a Byzantine emperor and a relationship to Count Dracula, none of which have any relevance to the right to rule Great Britain.  Agricolae (talk) 16:39, 7 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep The reason there are so many articles (and books and forums) on royal lineage is that 1. the subjects of the genealogies -- rulers of states and peoples -- are inherently notable 2. genealogy continues to be a key factor, often determinate, in who reigns, and who are significant competitors for thrones -- competitions that constitute much of recorded, notable history 3. they are probably the best documented human lineages available to us, and 4. readers want to know the most complete and accurate lines of descent and, often, how they correlate through royal intermarriage, such alliances also often being historically notable. FactStraight (talk) 18:52, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * You speak in generalities about royal genealogies, but again, this proposal is about one specific page. Yes, royal people are inherently notable, but the genealogical connections between two royal people chosen at random, who lived at different times in distant places are not inherently notable.  This page is just a magpie collection of any pedigrees that interested the compiler.  Every one of the tables shown is entirely unreferenced, the product of Original Research by the editor who made the charts. This is genealogical Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, with no indication of why any of the lines of descent shown being noteworthy.  They have nothing to do with each other - they don't trace to the same people, they don't trace from the same people.  There are no succession claims, competing or otherwise, being documented through these descents.  We have have royal genealogy pages more targeted on the noteworthy issues of succession, but this specific page, which is basically 'hey, look at these interesting things I found', has no basis for notability.  This argument that because some royal genealogies can be helpful, any genealogy linking any randomly chosen royals must be notable is unsupportable. Agricolae (talk) 19:19, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   13:28, 10 May 2017 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  CAPTAIN RAJU  (✉)   06:17, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete as unreliably-sourced OR and the like. Potentially very interesting unreliably-sourced OR which someone has spent considerable time getting into the present format, but the OR and the unreliable sourcing trump the time, effort and interest any day of the week. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 11:21, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete The ancestry of the British royal family before Sophia of Hanover is not relevant for any legal matters. The article as written is clearly not encyclopedic; the ancestries listed are purely arbitrary. Power~enwiki (talk) 20:14, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. I wonder how expert is the nom in the subject? It seems to me that an ancestry expert would want to fix and improve this article rather than delete it based upon what "seems to be someone's collection of whatever genealogical connections interest them".  Genealogy is a growingly popular subject, and British as well as other royal ancestries have been popular subjects for a very long time.  It makes no sense for Wikipedia to abandon this subject.  Ancestry of Elizabeth II has been getting nearly 900 page views daily, and the nominated article gets more than 200 page views every day.  If experts were to work on these articles, then they could be modernized and made more readable and more sensible, even to non-experts.   Paine Ellsworth   put'r there  23:58, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The discussion is about this specific article, rather than genealogy in particular, or the ancestries of given royals in particular. Nobody's suggesting Wikipedia "abandon this subject". BigHaz - Schreit mich an 00:11, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * My given opinion and rationale is in regard to the article under nomination. The subject of that article is the charted ancestry of the current British royal family.  That is the subject that should not be abandoned.  Hope that makes it clearer.   Paine Ellsworth   put'r there  00:16, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Clearer in relation to what you said, yes. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 00:31, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * (e/c) Who knows, the nom may be more expert than you think (or they may not be, since the anonymity of Wikipedia lets anyone claim to be anything - is this really relevant?). This is not a proposal to abandon the entire subject of Wikipedia royal genealogy, just to ditch a single ill-conceived random collection of royal genealogy trivia.  This one page is what we are talking about.  'Ancestry charts of the current British royal family' may be a good Category, but it is not a good topic for a page, because it isn't about anything specific, and will invariably accumulate the kind of random assortment that appears on this page, all subject to the whims of any editor that finds a particular genealogical conection to be fascinating.  Agricolae (talk) 00:42, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Interesting take, and it was interesting the first time you said it. What is so bad about an editor writing an article about a subject that fascinates them?  I think we should probably be assessing the notability of this article that was split from another article five years ago that was created in 2005.  No, it makes no sense to turn our backs on this article when all it needs is the help of an expert in ancestry and genealogy.  Only then can we really know if any so-called "whims" were amateurish.   Paine Ellsworth   put'r there  01:15, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * There's nothing wrong with an editor writing an article about a subject that fascinates them - a vast amount of the articles here have doubtless started that way. If the editor writes an article that's unsourced, unreliably-sourced, unencyclopedic and full of original research, that's where the problem arises. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 01:58, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * (e/c) Well, for starters, 'what fascinates an editor' is not the standard that Wikipedia uses as its basis for articles. More importantly, though, you are misrepresenting what I said.  That someone might create an article on 'pedigrees that interest me' is a problem, but not what I was referring to.  It is the content that is the problem: why does an article on 'pedigrees that interest me' include such an unfocussed collection of material?  Because the topic itself is unfocussed.  It is an umbrella that would encompass any genealogical tree connecting anyone to anyone, as long as it had a British royal in it.  Thus its content is driven entirely by the whims of editors.  This is not something an 'expert' can fix, because it's like asking an expert to fix an article entitled 'My Favorate Pedigrees' - what is and is not appropriate, what does and does not belong, is entirely subjective.  An expert could fully document every tree there, and it would still be a whimsical collection of whatever trees got put there. Why is the desent of Elizabeth from Rollo the viking more noteworthy than the descent of Elizabeth from Anlaf Cuaran the viking?  arbitrary.  Why is this specific descent tracing Elizabeth from Rollo the viking noteworthy, while the thousands of other lines also tracing Ellizabeth from Rollo the viking are not?  arbitrary.  Why trace William III of England to John of Gaunt through Mary Queen of Scots rather than through Lord Darnley?  arbitrary.  Why not trace through Elizabeth of York and Edward IV, then to John of Gaunt, or his brother Edmund, or his brother Lionel? arbitrary.  Why trace from Isaac Angelos and not any of the other Byzantine Emperors from whom Elizabeth descends?  arbitrary.  Why trace from the Byzantine Emperor and not the Emperor of all Hispania?  arbitrary.  Why does it trace Maria Henrietta of France from the Byzantine emperor though Medici, Germany and Castile rather than through France, Navarre and France, or through France, Savoy, Burgundy and Flanders to get to Brabant, also on the other side of the chart?  arbitrary.  Why is being cousin of Vlad the Impaler shown, but not being related to Ivan the Terrible?  arbitrary.  Why it traces from certain people is arbitrary, why it traces to certain people is arbitrary, why it traces through certain people is arbitrary.  It's all arbitrary, and there is no fixing it because the page is about a Category of things, with no governing criteria other than that it should be a genealogical chart and that it should have something to do with the British royal family. Agricolae (talk) 02:28, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm having trouble following you on this, mostly because of the contradictions. For example, you keep coming down on those who want to keep this article with "This is just about this one article," when it was you who didn't argue with Smmurphy's long list of related articles, and it was you who brought up the Medicis.  It seems that every part of your argument is about how this article is in disarray, which is a reason to improve, not to delete, and you don't seem to think that the notability of the subject is in question.  Can you be specific about precisely which of the 14 reasons for deletion you think apply in this case?  Then maybe I can put that together with the other things you've said and better understand your reasoning.   Paine Ellsworth   put'r there  11:11, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * An ancestry chart of the current British royal family is what is shown at the other articles. Hence it should be merged or renamed. We shouldn't have articles that duplicate existing topics or articles where the content does not reflect the information that a reader will be looking for at a page with that name. That name should instead redirect to a pertinent page. This article purports to show the important descents of the British royal family, but it fails to do that by instead showing their descent from Agnes of the Palatinate and Margaret of Bavaria when it should be directing readers to their descent from previous British monarchs, which is clearly relevant and important. Celia Homeford (talk) 11:35, 24 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Two different conversations have gone on here. Conversation 1 is that this page should be deleted.  Conversation 2 is that this page is part of a larger problem of duplication, overlap, content forking, original research, etc., among the royal genealogies on Wikipedia as a whole.  There is no contradiction between these two conversations - this page is abysmal and needs deleted, the larger area needs cleaning up.   I admit that the introduction of the second conversation perhaps muddied the waters, but, say what you will about the larger topic area, this proposal is still about deleting one specific article, not deleting all royal genealogy on Wikipedia, so generic arguments about royal ancestry as a whole fascinating people don't really address the question.


 * I do challenge the notability of this article. Let me try an analogy, a hypothetical article 'Pictures of the British royal family' - we use pictures to illustrate articles on notable members of the royal family, but the topic itself is not independently notable.  Were it to be made very specific, say 'Official portrature of Queen Elizabeth II over time', I think that would represent a defensible namespace, not only clearly defined but I have seen studies directly addressing this specific topic, but 'Pictures of the British royal family' is too nebulous, too much a catch-all topic that will invariably turn into a random collection of whatever pictures editors want to include, because to fit the topic a picture can be of anything, as long as it has a Brit royal somewhere in it.  Further, you can't 'fix' 'Pictures of the British royal family' because the topic is so vague that there are no non-arbitrary criteria for excluding one and including another royal-containing picture.  The same applies to 'Ancestry charts of the British royal family' - that authors have used ancestry charts to illustrate specific aspects of the British royals does not make the generic category of Brit royal ancestry charts itself a notable topic, and the result has been as would be expected, an unfixable collection of whatever.  Specifically, I think the article fails: WP:DEL5, DEL8, and DEL14 (and depending on how the rule is interpreted, DEL6, in so much as the unfocussed topic invites, almost demands, WP:NOR/WP:SYNTH). Agricolae (talk) 14:38, 24 May 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.