Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ancestry of the kings of Britain


 * Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 00:23, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * 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.  Spinning Spark  20:43, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Ancestry of the kings of Britain

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Inaccurate Original Research, misnamed, and a WP:COATRACK for an editor who has now created three different pages (the other two already up for AfD or merger) in an effort to find a way to force this bogus genealogical ephemera into Wikipedia somewhere, anywhere. Agricolae (talk) 20:37, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Agricolae (talk) 20:39, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Agricolae (talk) 20:39, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep (Now supporting re-direct to Ancestry of the kings of Anglo-Saxon England) I am just being creative. No OR or COATRACK here. What information is bogus? Let's change it if there is any. The topic is super-notable and an interesting aside to List of legendary kings of Britain and Ancestry of the kings of Wessex. It could be a group header page for various similar ones such as the Ancestry of the kings of Saxony and Ancestry of the kings of Mercia. The other pages being deleted are the manuscript sources that needed a link in order to make this one. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 20:44, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * You shouldn't create pages for the sole purpose of being sources for other pages. Likewise, the fact that you are super-interested in something is insufficient to demonstrate that the material is super-notable.  And no, we don't want the other pages you have named, which are equally inappropriate.  Quit trying to turn Wikipedia into a repository for sketchy genealogy. Agricolae (talk) 21:42, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * What is sketchy about it? I've added some illustration that I hope will clarify. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 21:52, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. Not independently notable.  Paul, I think it would be best if you waited to let these discussions come to consensus before creating further articles, in case the consensus is that this material is not notable.  I suggest the closer closes this in conjunction with Articles for deletion/Genealogia Lindisfarorum and possibly also the merge at Talk:Anglian collection, if enough people have commented there, since they are all related discussions. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 22:57, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment A quick Google search brings up two good book references and a Google scholar. If you search for genealogy instead of ancestry there are lots more hits, but this fits with the Wessex precedent and is probably the terminology used by a lot of folk in cafés all around Britain. I'll give room for further discussion on articles in this direction until this is resolved as you suggest. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 23:48, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Just because there have been detailed studies on, specifically, the Wessex pedigree, does not establish a precedent for creating whatever article one wants for the ancestry of other kingdoms that have not been studied to nearly the same level of detail. For that matter, maybe the Wessex article doesn't belong either - WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not a valid argument. None of this justifies the COATRACKing being done to make a third Wikipedia home (it is all already on the Wessex page along with the scholarly refutation of it, and some of it is also on the Anglo-Saxon genealogies page) for the ancestry of Woden or Icel or Ealdfreath, which will never be more than a string of made-up names without the slightest context because they are entirely unknown to history, with some legendary heroes thrown in that already have their own pages and aren't really ancestors of their supposed descendants. It is effectively an extended exercise in POV forking, trying to throw around the raw list of names so as to be uncluttered by the scholarly analysis that shows it all to be nonsense. Agricolae (talk) 00:15, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. Out of the four references for the introduction, full page references are only given for one, and the John Glover book is not a reliable source. No sources are given for the list itself, and it appears to be original research. The wikilinks suggest the list is somewhat random. Offa points to the 8th century king, and is followed by Angeltheow which redirects to kings of the Angles, and then Eomer which points to a diambig page. One of the external links is a commercial genealogy site. As Agricolae has argued, a list of legendary names without context does not provide the basis for a notable and sourced article. Dudley Miles (talk) 00:30, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment This isn't original research. I can't make up original king lists. Everything should be referenced fine now I've added an improved Cambridge University source for the concept. Thanks for noticing that. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 01:01, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Decorating an introductory sentence with a non-reliable medieval pedigree compilation that has nothing to do with the genealogy presented on the rest of the page does nothing to improve the situation, even were it cited properly (specific information comes from specific pages, not an entire book or all of a book after a given page). These aren't original kings lists, but original pedigrees (it would be useful if you understood what the material was before you created a page trying to describe it), large parts of which have indeed been made up (albeit not by you) and we do no service in propagating such bogus genealogy long rejected by the scholarly community. Agricolae (talk) 02:36, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I am not doing any of this. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 22:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete - you need to show notability of the comparision of the various manuscript versions - has anyone written a number of scholarly articles that compare and contrast the various legendary genealogies? And do so in this exact manner? I'm pretty sure that the 1885 source isn't useful as a indicator of notability ... and I've seen the Stenton piece (have it somewhere, in fact) and it's not set up like this article either... If you don't have scholarly articles which compare the various genealogies, you ARE engaging in OR to compare them in this manner. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:50, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Only for that part of these genealogies that the various kingdoms have in common, the scholarly analysis of which is already discussed in detail (maybe too much detail) in an existing article. Please note, however, that the part in purple is not a comparison between two pedigrees - it is just two distinct adjacent pedigrees that have nothing in common except that that they converge on Woden and the editor wants them to appear somewhere on Wikipedia.  When someone doesn't know the nature of the sources they are looking at (above, a genealogy and a kings list are entirely different things) and creates whole sections of pages based on a misreading of those sources (as when trying to attribute the lineage from Anglian collection mss V instead to Genealogia Lindisfarorum, based on a severe misreading of Stenton), and makes bullocks of the SYNTH they don't even realize they are doing (this page discussed here), there is a legitimate question of WP:CIR. Agricolae (talk) 02:36, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll freely admit I've not paid that much attention to the early medieval manuscripts that describe the legendary ancestors of the various kings - it's a bit outside my field. On the other hand, this is extreme genealogical trivia - it's better covered somewhere other than Wikipedia, quite honestly. This is seriously the most extreme trivia of trivia as far as historians are concerned. No one would seriously argue any more that these ancestor lists or king lists are anything but stuff some scribe made up to fill in gaps of knowledge. Thus, they really don't need coverage in a serious encyclopedia, and certainly not as total reproductions of the lists! Ealdgyth - Talk 02:44, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Further, I've gone back to Barbara Yorke's Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England where she discusses the ancestry of the Mercian kings. She says "No Mercian origin legend survives comparable to those from Kent or Wessex, though the Mercian kings apparantly claimed descent from legendary kings of Contintenal Angeln." D.P. Kirby in Earliest English Kings says "Early eighth-century dynastic and genealogical tradition remembered Oisc, reputed son of Hengest and father of Ochta, as the first of the Oiscingas kings to rule in Kent, Wuffa as the first of the Wuffingas kings to rule in East Anglia, and Iel as the first of the Icelingas who, according to the early eighth-century Life of Guthlac, came to dominate Mercia, but details for the period before c.550-75 (and sometimes much later) are too uncertain for these men to be placed in very precise genealogical or historical contexts." Seems clear to me that the historians who study the period don't place much credence in these legendary lists, so neither should we. Remember, we follow the secondary sources here - and if the historians who specialize in the area don't discuss the subject in this manner, then we shouldn't either. Ealdgyth - Talk 20:41, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * None of the recent changes have made any improvement in the article .. now we have a digression about how Thomas Jefferson wanted Hengst and Horsa on the Great Seal of the United States in the lede - this has no bearing on the purported subject of the article, which is quite impossible to figure out except it should relate to something about the title - I guess. My impression is the article is a coatrack for putting forth some weird ideas some writer proposed in some fringe self-published book. It's certainly not a scholarly treatment of the purported subject. Utterly unsalvagable. Ealdgyth - Talk 00:40, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete for lack of notability, agreeing that Paul needs to hold back on article creation while these discussions are ongoing. I'm sure that are clearly notable articles that he could write. Dougweller (talk) 12:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete -- It all feels like WP:OR to me, perhaps based on a self-published book. Peterkingiron (talk) 13:31, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I am suprised everyone deleting on notability has judged this less noticable than the Ancestry of the kings of Wessex. Britain is far more notable than Wessex. That will now need taking to deletion discussion based on your judgement of this article, which is one of the most notable in the field of Geneaology. I'll suggest a merge into this one to help clarify and save it from deletion too. Still have the Ancestry of the Vikings, Ancestry of the kings of Europe and the Ancestry of the kings of Outremer to create, so hopefully all this info will fit in somewhere. As for OR, that's when you chop chunks out of king lists and make up your own, as Agricolae has done on the List of monarchs of Mercia page. He is just trying to hide something as part of a cover up of this information and I suspect as part of a personal witch hunt to protect his hacked apart lists and the legends and myths of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 16:06, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * What I chopped from List of monarchs of Mercia was not from a king's list - please recognize the distinction between a king's list and a pedigree. A kings list explicitly is listing people who ruled a kingdom (usually with the number of years that they ruled) and often has been compiled to serve as a chronological framework around which the history of a kingdom can be viewed, while a pedigree is a list of the ancestors of a given individual, irrespective of whether they ruled or not, and usually was constructed to demonstrate political or cultural affiliations (ancient or current to the time of construction).  What I removed were names from a pedigree that made no claims to the individuals in question being kings of anywhere - it just claims that each is father of one and son of another person in the descent.  It is OR to decide they must have been kings of Mercia (at a time before Mercia even existed) without reliable secondary sources, not to remove this unfounded conclusion.  Further, it is OR to use a primary record, be it a pedigree or a kings list, and draw any conclusions from it.  And again, I would point out that one should not create pages simply in the hopes of finding someplace to force information that has been deemed inappropriate - that is the COATRACKing that has brought us here twice already, nor should one propose that material be merged into a page that has been deemed unuseful, for the sole purpose of rescuing it.  The decision on this page has no relation to the worthiness of any other page - remember WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS.  It is only a judgement on the value of this page.  If you feel that the Wessex page should be deleted, go ahead and nominate it.  Let me point three things, however.  First, that every word of it and every chart in it derives directly from an explicit statement in an extensive published study of the topic in reliable secondary literature, 2) it was originally created as the result of an earlier AfD that explicitly called for such a page to be made, and 3) notability is not determined by logic - it is determined by the coverage given material in the secondary record.  By virtue of having given rise to the crown of England, the kingdom of Wessex has received more attention from those evaluating the medieval genealogies. Further, the study of the Wessex pedigree has included much of the material you keep trying to force onto other pages, e.g. the mythical ancestry of Woden. Agricolae (talk) 17:06, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment The kings listed are called Legendary kings on the List of legendary kings of Britain page. What do you say to renaming that page?
 * A critical difference is that, even though there is no historical basis for it, Geoffrey (or some other source) explicitly called those people kings, while the names you tried to add are never called (even wrongly) kings of Mercia - they are simply listed as ancestors in a pedigree. Agricolae (talk) 18:26, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * A cover up??? A witch hunt??? Some grand conspiracy to protect Geoffrey of Monmouth???? Now we're moving into fringe topic territory ... Again - notability (which is what determines whether we have pages on subjects) is determined by coverage in reliable secondary sources. A manuscript is the PRIMARY source here - you need scholarly commentary on the subject in secondary sources (see WP:SECONDARY) to show that this article should be kept. Bringing up things like cover ups and witch hunts rather than showing secondary source coverage is not helping to show this article's notability. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:16, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Sure, good advice, just give me 5 minutes to fend off the Spanish inquisition. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 18:07, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know what Paul meant by "fend off", but see Talk:Ancestry of the kings of Wessex. Dougweller (talk) 18:31, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Merge to Anglian collection -- This is horrid WP:ESSAY. It should certainly be kept separate from the Wessex article.  The title is inaccurate since these were not kings of Britain but of Anglian kingdoms.  Legendary genealogies are a potentially encyclopaedic subject.  Just what these genalogies mean is no doubt the subject of scholarly debate, which could be reflected in an article, but I doubt that many scholars are interested in something quite so obscure.  We have a Mercia article that is currently propeosed for merger there.  I think this one might be a useful addition.  Peterkingiron (talk) 19:19, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * re-voted below. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:07, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know that the Anglian collection is an appropriate target, as it deals specifically with one document (that exists in four copies) and not the topic in general - there is a page, Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies that deals with the more general topic that the page in question talks about (but is not named for), but it is already more scholarly than the material in the page under discussion here, and would only be damaged by a merge. Likewise, the use of 'British' in the page name, as you well know, represents the opponents of the Anglo-Saxons (in the 8th century sense of the words) and so I don't think the namespace should point there (namespace and content are two separate issues here because the name of the current page is misleading, using the modern meaning of Britain but talking about a period for which Britain has a distinct meaning to historians that is not at all what the page is about). There used to be a page on the Ancestry of Queen Elizabeth II - don't remember the exact name of it - maybe the redirect (but not the content) from this namespace should go there if it still exists. Agricolae (talk) 20:15, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That page is already covered in English monarchs family tree, which is also part of the Ancestry of the kings of Britain, as is your Ancestry of the kings of Wessex article which I have suggested this is merged into. Full and complete sets of information have equal rights to exist and should be organised properly. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 21:59, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reconsideration Peter. I won't let you down. Working on the article right now and will be extensively after the Wessex merge proposal with Britannica external link to overwhelm questions about place on Wikipedia. Also made a critical point producing Creoda as Cretta being the first generally regarded historically-"real" British king by modern source David Hughes to express the need for original sourcing and to correct other confused lists. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 19:30, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Err... you linked David Hughes to a disambiguation page - none of which are historians... who are you referring to? Ealdgyth - Talk 19:46, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * For the convenience of time, read the book. I'll make a page on him later, when I've improved this one. Have a nice Winston Churchill quote to reassure you.  Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 20:18, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * He is referring to the author of some self-published fringe books in which he traces European dynasties to King David and Noah and, believe it or not, to an ancient King of America. He has actually stated publicly that he is absolutely opposed to scholarly evaluation of genealogies because it deprives people of good stories about their ancestors (by revealing them not to be their ancestors).  In attempting to 'save' both versions of alternative accounts of the same relationship, he has turned people into their own great-grandfather, and he never met a connection to antiquity he didn't like, as long as it let him extend the pedigree.  He is another ancestor-collector and his work is the antithesis of a reliable source. Agricolae (talk) 20:15, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * David Hughes (astronomer) seems to have an article already after all. I've used him before and not had any problems. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 21:40, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * This book is clearly not a reliable source (full of claims about Atlantis, visits to America, etc) and needs to be removed from several articles. Dougweller (talk) 22:04, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, I had to laugh at this part from that link, Doug - "Carausius [Carawn "Wledic" of ancient Welsh annals], called variously a Roman, British, or Dutch prince, who, the Roman Governor of Britain, married to Oriuna [sister of St. Helena], one of the three daughters of the British "wledic" [later king] Cole [II] [not to be confused with Old King Cole, an earlier king], revived the British Monarchy in Year 286 after a hundred-year interregnum, or rather founded a new British kingdom modeled on the Roman imperial system, and later united the British crown to the imperial crown of the Roman Empire at the time of his election to the consulate in Year 289/292 when the empire was decentralized into thirds with three co-emperors, of whom Carausius was one, whose successors reigned in Britain during the last half of the Roman Era, to Empress Marcia [GM’s Queen Marcia], the last of the British imperial line, whose position dissolved in the midst of civil wars in Britain following the [third] evacuation of the Roman Army in Year 418." - REALLY? 289/292 the Roman empire divided into thirds? (Must have been news to Diocletian..). Clearly not a reliable source for this information or any information on wikipedia. And he's an astronomer? Why should his word on early medieval history be taken as better than ... medievalists? Ealdgyth - Talk 22:10, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I removed every reference I could find in article-space a few months ago, and have just gone through and knocked off a half-dozen more that either I missed the first time or have crept back in - let me know if you are aware of any others I may have missed. I am not sure what the basis is for identifying the genealogical fantasist with the astronomer, but if they are the same person, it just goes to show how expertise is specific and not general. Agricolae (talk) 22:15, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair point. I won't use it again. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 00:36, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * You are finding material in David Hughes' book and adding to articles but using other sources. For instance, this edit - the 75 AD claim seems to come straight from Hughes.|Hesus+Jesus&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-besUK_YE4PU0QWl64HwDA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Esus|Hesus%20Jesus&f=false. I've reverted the whole thing as badly sourced (eg "some scholars" actually means one scholar noted its use in fictional works). Dougweller (talk) 11:34, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you Agricolae, since I couldn't make heads or tails of Paul's response at all. I was kinda curious as I'd not heard of a medievalist named David Hughes. I'm still not sure what a Churchill quote (and which Churchill - and which quote?) has to do with anything but... Ealdgyth - Talk 20:21, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * He is referring to the Churchill quote that has been twice put on the page (and twice taken off - it is probably back on again in the time it takes me to respond here). It doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but if a page quote's Churchill, it must be about something notable, right? Agricolae (talk) 20:58, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete: WP:OR, WP:ESSAY and WP:BOLLOCKS. Also meets none of the notability guidelines. Non-notable original essay. "Bogus" is putting it kindly. Agree that Paul needs to receive a stern warning about creating articles on clearly non-notable topics such as this. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 20:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment Agricolae has started some sort of edit-war to remove valuable information and hide his lack of knowlege in the field of genealogy that this article is trying to explain, such as the name of the first real British King, Cretta and his migration to Mercia (Agricolae puts Icel). This is nothing but book burning. There is lots more to come, but I won't write while being edit-warred at. This page could be a quality featured article. Please replace the original text of the article as it stands tonight, which should read:
 * .
 * Peter Paul, it is a waste of time to insert a copy of the article here. If you want to refer to a version use a link to the history. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 21:26, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Paul, actually, who should perhaps read WP:OWN, WP:SOAPBOX and WP:NPA. Agricolae (talk) 21:39, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * And I think we should read up on where Icel is mentioned in the historical record. Nice work, whoever did the makeover on the list by the way. Thanks all. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 00:38, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * So delete Icel from the page too; I don't care as long as more non-kings don't get added. And if you mean fixing the table, that was me (you know, the one who needs to "hide his lack of knowledge in the field of genealogy that this article is trying to explain" but still could tell that the article had two separate pedigrees erroneously combined one on top of the other to make Woden his own great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, but I'm the one who doesn't know what they are talking about.) Agricolae (talk) 00:55, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * So delete Icel from the page too; I don't care as long as more non-kings don't get added. And if you mean fixing the table, that was me (you know, the one who needs to "hide his lack of knowledge in the field of genealogy that this article is trying to explain" but still could tell that the article had two separate pedigrees erroneously combined one on top of the other to make Woden his own great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, but I'm the one who doesn't know what they are talking about.) Agricolae (talk) 00:55, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete -- On reconsideration, I now NOT do think this article has any merit. The three sources are completely dis-parate, with the exception that they both include Woden and a man called Eomer/Eamer.  Pagan genealogies commonly name a god as the father of the earliest known ancestor, so that the two alleged "sons" of Woden cannot be regarded as brothers.  The two genealogies are thus completely unrelated and should not appear together.  I continue to maintain that "British" or "Britain" are inappropriate in the genelaogy of Anglian kings.  I suspect that there will be some academic discussions of these.  If we are to have articles on things such as this, they should be cited.  Icel of Mercia is essentially only known from legend.  Pybba of Mercia stands on the fringes of reliable history.  Even his father Creoda of Mercia is only known from genealogies.  Further back we are into the realms of legend.  We have a reasonable article on the Iclingas, though it is currently located at List of monarchs of Mercia.  Possibly earlier legendary ancestry might be added (as a list) to this.  However my recollection of the Wessex genealogy in ASC is that early ones trace ancestry back to a god.  Later ones have a string of further names going back to Adam.  These are clearly purely the invention of later Saxon chroniclers and are disregarded by modern historians.  The ancestry of Woden in these Anglian genealogies is similarly to be disregarded.  The sources are certainly ancient, but they are far from being contemporary ones and are thus not a WP:RS.  It might possibly be appropriate to have an article dealing sceptically and separately with each royal genealogy, with a summary of scholarly discussions of them.  However this article just will not do.  Possibly userify.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:07, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Inadvertent omission of NOT corrected.
 * Comment I have expanded the article since then, there are a lot more sources now. And note that Creoda is in the historical record of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The flag needs replacing in the article to better explain how the Ancestry of the kings of Britain needs to be discussed as a whole article and will continue further work on that tonight. It's not all about Woden. It's about all the info on ancestry that we can find, be that in genealogy, ethnography, archaeology, anthropology, geography, geology or philology. Now I accept Agricolae as an expert in possibly several of those fields, and am quite proud to be working with him, he's proved himself with the assistance making this article in various ways. I just hope we can co-operate and meet mutual goals, like the removal of legendary kings from the historical record, starting with Icel and his two successors to make Creoda the first mentioned king. Then we can get on talking about what happened to his family. Asterix needs an Obelix. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 18:16, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Creoda is not called a king in the ASC, it was Henry of Huntingdon who called him a king and Professor of Medieval History Nicholas Brooks wrote "Despite Professor Davies's tentative advocacy of the historicity of this material, it cannot be said that it is yet clear that what lies behind these scattered entries in the works of Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris is anything more important than some inventive conjectures by an English monk, perhaps as late as the early twelfth century, on the basis of the names available in Bede, the Mercian royal genealogy and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. On such an interpretation it would not be surprising that they should more or less fit the fragments of information that we have on the early history of Mercia; for the compiler of these entries may have had access to the same sources as arc available to us." This sentiment is shared by another professor of medieval history, Barbara Yorke, who wrote " Although it is possible that some kind of regnal list could be the source of the information (though the Worcester lists begin with Penda), these entries could be nothing more than intelligent guesswork based on names derived from Bede and the genealogy of jEthelred, while the dates seem to be influenced by an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the death of a West Saxon Creoda.17 The post- Conquest annals' date of 610 (or earlier) for the accession of Penda seems too early. The surviving sources allow us to say with confidence little more than that the kingdom of Mercia was in existence by the end of the sixth century." The article on Creoda of Mercia was short and misleading. Dougweller (talk) 19:53, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that, I've edited the page accordingly with that info. Might pinch some of that for Ancestry of the Vikings (which as a note to closing admin will be written with majority of text and Agricolae's table produced after these 3-source votes). As a sidenote Monty called me tonight, out of the blue. He's going to get working on finding a Serbian press source mentioning himself as the president of a University, having already provided an electronic copy of his presidency certificate (which is not permitted due to forgery concerns). So, you never know who or what might be able to make a comeback oneday... Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 23:50, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Two of the mss of the Anglian collection (CCCC and Tiberius B v) include regnal lists for Mercia. Both of them begin with Penda.  Creoda as king looks to be a very late innovation. The pages for Icel, Cnebba and Cynwald need to go away, as for the latter two one will never be able to say anything more than that the pedigrees make him son of X and father of Y, while Icel would merit just one more sentence, calling him the eponymous ancestor of the Iclingas, but to which page should they be redirected.  Agricolae (talk) 23:43, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I've managed to get Cearl on the historical record via Bede. Working on Crida. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 23:50, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Further Comment I think all the kings before Penda (or possibly his father) might usefully be merged into one article on Iclingas - or early Iclingas, possibly a separate article from the list of kings of Mercia. I recall seeing a long article, possibly in Midland History arguing that Pybba was a historical king of Mercia.  Peterkingiron (talk) 10:46, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Suggest Move to Ancestry of the kings of England later tonight. I'm having problems invading Scotland. There are problems over the flag, and they're an unruly bunch up there. They're threatening to invade this article and make it unfeasibly big. Technically, there are also more kings of England than of Britain, so it may be more notable. This is a bit of a sideways movement, hopefully explainable because most of this article's material has been written about and now getting sensibly discussed after the votes. Anyone who has a problem can have another go trying to delete the Ancestry of the kings of England, but I really hope we are discovering this to be a fascinating and perfectly qualifiable topic when dealt with correctly. We can go and get the Ancestry of the Vikings/Aethelings later, then regroup and attack the Ancestry of the kings of Scotland seperately with cavalry. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 12:20, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Godulf Geoting (This part of the discussion has been indented in an attempt to avoid it appearing to be part of the AfD on that article.)
 * I put a on Geot as I can't find him listed in Stenton's book. It's in the external link to an ancient Britannica, but both that and my  have been mysteriously removed and I don't consider it particularly reliable anyhow. I go with Stenton and can't find Geot. He lists the five kings before Woden differently to us, and I think we should go with modern sources, so I'm changing that table. Barbara Yorke's list shows those five names listed by their last surnames and included (ing) after Geot in the name of the first one.  Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 18:52, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * They are not kings, they are just names in a pedigree. Likewise, those are not surnames, they are patronymics.  To suggest that "Godulf son of Geat" does not include the name Geat rather misses the whole point of the pedigree. In the process you have screwed up the table again. That being said, this is not the place to talk about the fine details of the page - it is solely for discussions of whether or not the page should be deleted.  You want Talk:Ancestry of the kings of Britain. Agricolae (talk) 20:48, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, on this subject, I have replied comprehensively to all your arguments and addressed all the points that I can see in work done on the article. A whole new lede has bee written tonight, I am suggesting a new title Ancestry of the British monarchy (see discussion page) and the table improved to cover Yorke's West Saxon lines, which have been incorporated into the table as best I can, based on Yorke suggesting Crida and Cwichelm died in the same year. Also disputed the factual accuracy of your Ancestry of the kings of Wessex page. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 22:08, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions.  Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 01:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Atheism-related deletion discussions.  Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 01:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions.  Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 01:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ethnic groups-related deletion discussions.  Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 01:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Northern Ireland-related deletion discussions.  Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 01:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Wales-related deletion discussions.  Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 01:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Scotland-related deletion discussions.  Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 01:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment - the page says nothing abut Northern Ireland, nothing about Scotland, nothing about Wales, nothing about ethnic groups or fictional elements (at least as those terms are used in sorting AfDs), only has the most peripheral relationship to social sciences, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Atheism. What gives? For those just joining us, this page is poorly focused, superficial and arbitrary in its coverage. It was created as a way to get a single pedigree onto Wikipedia after it was deemed inappropriate on two other pages. It has since had material added with no particular plan or obvious organizational scheme to try to keep it from being deleted. What information it contains that is reliable is already provided in a more scholarly, more organized and more comprehensive fashion on other existing pages that would be reduced in their quality by merging this material into them. Agricolae (talk) 02:10, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Northern Ireland and Scotland are part of Britain. It speaks of the Yales of Wales. Early houses were ethnic groups. It contains a list of kings with fictional elements. It traces kingly lineage from a human called God -ulf, hence athiest related. I just want all of your bogus pedigrees and poor naming conventions off Wikipedia and I'll get them one way or another. Agricolae it just hiding his fabricated genealogies. Time I perhaps left this article and took my technical issues directly with them. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉
 * By definition, if it involves a God (which seems to be the argument here) it is the antithesis of atheism. Agricolae (talk) 18:43, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete: mostly per Agricolae, in particular the way he laid it out over at ARS. Like him, I find the numerous tags disturbing, as do I find the trifurcating of the information  p  b  p  02:15, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, per, well, everything that Wikipedia stands for. A misleading title, badly-written original research, and at the end of it the reader can only wonder what the heck it is the page is trying to say: "The study of English ancestry has long been an fixation of historians. Fascination with the ancestry of ancient dynasties is called "progonoplexia" and is not a recent phenomenon. It has been made popular by the television series Who Do You Think You Are?" along with numerous websites and computer programs to build family trees. Horsa and Hengest were two semi-legendary chieftans suggested to have led a fifth century Anglo-Saxon conquest of England. Thomas Jefferson proposed placing replicas of these two characters on the Great Seal of the United States". Possibly. But why should our readers care. Not an article... AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:59, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment The page is trying to say family history and ancestry is important and give brief look at it's origins. Aparently we don't think so. Sad. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 17:42, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Utter nonsense. We have a perfectly respectable article on the subject of family history and ancestry already. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:59, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep the specific "family history" of monarchs is the very basis of general political history. This isn't about family history in general--we do have an article on that--it's about the history of several geographically and historically related royal houses in particular. I'm not sure how we should title this and the related articles, or whether we should merge them: i think a rewrite of the general group of articles is very much needed, &  I see this as a general article, with the individual documentary sources separate.  I do not see this as OR. Andy says the reader will not see what  "the page is trying to say." -- if the page were trying to say something, it would indeed be OR: WP pages are not supposed to have a thesis to prove. Rather, the page is trying to present and organize historical material, and while I agree it is not doing it as clearly as it should, that's not a reason for deletion.  "Why should readers care?" is not an argument for deletion. Some readers will care, and we do not judge by personal interest. I have just a little amateur knowledge of this period, and I found a few sources here I had not known about, and will follow up on them.  Agricola seems to be arguing that the material is contradictory and semi-legendary, with some parts being entirely mythical. So it is, but that is no reason whywe should not cover it--it is in fact a good reason why we should, to explain and present it clearly. He further argues that Wessex is justified, but not the other parts of it,because Wessex is so much better documented. So it is, but that Wessex is very fully documented as the early middle ages go, does not mean the other parts are undocumented--Each of the kingdoms is important and covered by primary and extensive secondary sources.  DGG ( talk ) 19:39, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * A page shouldn't be 'trying to say something' in the sense you are using it, but it should be 'trying to say something' in the sense that Andy is - it should be about a coherent topic rather than just a magpie selection of bright shiny factoids that neither cover the general topic nor relate to each other. You also are not characterizing my arguments accurately. 1) It is the material in this page, not the primary material, that is (or at least when I said it, was) contradictory. The core pedigree material is semi-legendary and mythical, but that is not the problem - it is a fringe interpretation of this material that is being inserted for the third time (two previous ones having met with resistance), that is the problem.  2) Wessex is more notable because its pedigree has been subject to published scholarly evaluation at a level of detail that has not been done with the others; and 3) the evaluation of the Wessex pedigree included an evaluation of the early part shared by the other kingdoms, and this information is included on the Wessex page, and another page already exists addressing the other kingdoms. Both existing pages are more scholarly and more organized and just about anything that would be merged into them from this page would make them worse. This page from the start was a POV fork, intended to COATRACK fringe interpretations that would not find a home in the more scholarly articles.  It has since been decorated with a lot of irrelevant material, but it remains a badly named unfocused attempt at replicating existing material with a different spin. Agricolae (talk) 21:13, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks Obelix, I ain't alone now Agricolae, so I'm arguing back...


 * 1) The article makes perfect, coherent logical sense to me. Even after extensive sections have been removed for various reasons, it starts with a two-sentence lead to show high notability. It continues with a paragraph showing the importance of the ancestral monarchies to the everyday person. It then gives and overview of the subject and divides into the different "houses" of England, which is only part of Britain and therefore...
 * I will accept that it makes logical sense to you. Agricolae (talk) 22:55, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * 2) Not at all less notable than Wessex, which is a minor county of England, and was more precisely called West Saxony or WEST SAXORUM at the times concerned in this article and is most notable and accurate as, and known, at least by British scholars as West Saxony, bringing me on to
 * Notability is not determined by the size of a historical entity, but by the coverage given it by scholarly secondary literature. The same goes with the name used to describe a historical entity - it has nothing to do with accuracy and everything to do with what term scholars use. Agricolae (talk) 22:55, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * 3) Your article the Ancestry of the kings of Wessex is long-winded, hard to understand, factually innaccurate and needs a complete re-write as DGG suggests applies to this whole section.
 * It may be long-winded, and you may find it hard to understand, but it is not factually inaccurate. There is nothing in the page that is not verifiable, and every statement in it is directly cited to scholarly secondary literature. Agricolae (talk) 22:55, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

As an example, I've created a substantially altered version of this page (it contains only five names that have been copied) over at Godulf Geoting to show the necessary expansion suggested. Paul Bedson ❉ talk ❉ 22:33, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I have initiated an AfD for this new page Godulf Geoting, who as nothing more than a name in a medieval pedigree with no known biographical information will never receive the substantial coverage by historians that is the requirement for notability. Agricolae (talk) 22:55, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Your "paragraph showing the importance of the ancestral monarchies to the everyday person", to the the extent that it makes sense at all, is synthesis. If you have a source that says that 'ancestral monarchies' are of importance to 'the everyday person', then cite it. If you don't, the paragraph doesn't belong in the article. This is basic Wikipedia stuff, and shouldn't be hard to understand... AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:40, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Good point, that someone seems to have come along and addressed by editing better than me already and linked with the "inclination towards entitlement" bit. Magic! Plus I think the fact that Thomas Jefferson saw the importance of the topic appropriate and makes notability apparent. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 00:25, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thomas Jefferson is dead. He's been dead a long time. He cannot possibly be cited as a source for any statements regarding "the importance of the ancestral monarchies to the everyday person" - and you have not provided evidence that he made any such statements. Please read WP:OR, and stop filling this discussion with nonsense. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:34, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Point taken. I've revised that paragraph so that it makes sense chonologically now. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 13:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Redirect to something along the lines of Ancestry of the kings of the English Heptarchy or Ancestry of the kings of Anglo-Saxon England and make this title a redirect. "Britain" is obviously the wrong term here, but the rest of the article passes muster. Faustus37 (talk) 01:09, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Support Redirect to Ancestry of the kings of Anglo-Saxon England. Works well for me. Easier to understand than Heptarchy for the layman. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 13:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note to closing administrator - this is a duplicate vote from this editor, who already voted 'Keep' and has not struck it out. Agricolae (talk) 16:01, 24 November 2012 (UTC) has now been struck Agricolae (talk) 18:08, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I have stuck my keep vote out. I've given this much consideration along with the alternative Ancestry of the monarchs of Anglo-Saxon England, we have plenty of later monarchy information such as List of English monarchs, List of British monarchs. I was however unable to find any female monarchs in this time period, so go with "kings". I think that Faustus37 has come up with the best solution here and as TommyPinball notes, we are short of coverage in this area. I would also request that if the closing administrator does decide on a delete, that the talk page is noted as an addendum to the deletion discussion for future reference if possible. Thanks. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 16:56, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Um, how can we redirect to an article that doesn't exist? And before Paul Bedson asks, using the content of this confused essay to create it is no way to start one. If the sources cited in the article are the best that can be found on the subject, it appears that there is little that can be said with any confidence anyway regarding the actual genealogy of real kings, and we shouldn't confuse mythology with historical fact. If there is enough usable material regarding a particular Anglo-Saxon kingdom, we are better off covering it in individual articles, where myth and fact can be better distinguished, rather than duplicating it here - none of the kings were kings 'of England' anyway, and it appears likely that a good few probably weren't 'kings' at all... AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:30, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * We already have a page, Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies, that talks about the pedigrees as a whole and has sections for evaluation of each individual kingdom. There is no reason to create or preserve a POV fork for this topic, and no reason to create a redirect from namespace that everyone agrees does not describe the topic being covered. Agricolae (talk) 16:03, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * So we do. I'm cool with a Merge and cleanup. Faustus37 (talk) 08:38, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep adds a little bit illumination to Britain in the dark ages. Counter-arguments seem to be based on ad hominens Tommy Pinball (talk) 09:04, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note to closing admin the editor who put this up for deletion has also introduced factually innaccurate material into the article in an attempt to promote it's deletion. I declare a mistrial. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 23:22, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * This is both blatantly false and an extreme example of failure to WP:AGF. Agricolae (talk) 01:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * This isn't a trial. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:24, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Good point. Here's another one: If we merge it into Agricolae's Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies, we'll make that factually inaccurate too as Cearl is the only royalty in the lists. The rest are mythological figures or deities. Paul Bedson  ❉ talk ❉ 23:31, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Well there is something we both agree on. Ancestry of the kings of Britain is factually inaccurate, and that Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies will be made worse for having factually inaccurate material merged into it.  Unlike as stated above (that the reasons are just ad hominems), it is precisely because it is both duplicate and inaccurate that the page should be Deleted rather than merged.  It has also been mentioned that this page was created as a WP:COATRACK. This has been denied, but the creator of the page just today seemingly admitted it, saying that interpretations counter to his are "critically flawed by centuries of Christian Dogma", that "The listing of names in that manuscript is all I care about publishing", and that his plan for success is to "...overwhelm the opposition with so many articles that some of the truth[sic] gets through" .  That is COATRACKing, as well as flying in the face of WP:SOAPBOX and WP:BATTLEGROUND. Agricolae (talk) 01:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That last statement about overwhelming the opposition so some of the truth gets through is particularly concerning. Two administrators (me being one) have warned Paul about using Wikipedia to promote new ideas and 'the truth' as he sees it. He was also given a formal notification of Pseudoscience Discretionary sanctions for pushing a pov and misusing sources about a year and a have ago. One of the two administrators involved in the closing noted "A reading of Paul Bedson's comments above does not inspire any confidence in his understanding of Wikipedia policy or his willingness to edit neutrally. He views this AE request as "a direct attempt to damage mankind by hindering research into the central Levantine archaeological site of the neolithic revolution in Aaiha."". Dougweller (talk) 05:52, 27 November 2012 (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.