Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cousin relationships between British monarchs and consorts (2nd nomination)


 * 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. I don't see very much in the way of bright-line policy-based arguments on either side. Most of this is WP:ILIKEIT vs WP:IDONTLIKEIT. I was tempted to close this as NC, with a note that people should work on cleaning up the specific issues pointed out here, but it's been tagged for cleanup for 8 years now, so that doesn't seem useful. I'm also taking into consideration that if the closer of the previous AfD had a a crystal ball and knew to ignore all the users who would eventually be shown to be socks, it would have been unanimous to delete.

I'd be happy to userfy this for somebody if they want to mine it for data to merge somewhere. But, please, only ask if you really want to do this, not just to warehouse it.

Full disclosure: I'm not entirely uninvolved here. While I'm not (to the best of my knowledge) royalty, there are two (that I know of) instances in my family of first cousins being married, including my grandparents. Maybe that explains something about me :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 16:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Cousin relationships between British monarchs and consorts
AfDs for this article: 
 * Articles for deletion/Endogamy in the British monarchy
 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Since its creation this has been a repository for WP:OR. Article consists almost entirely of extensive tables reporting the results of original research using on-line unreliable genealogical databases. Previous closing admin found convincing an argument based on it being interesting (not a criterion for notability) and that the tables took a lot of work (also not a basis for notability, and passing unnoticed the fact that all of this work was Original Research). While every time there is a royal marriage, some people try to cash in on the publicity by reporting how they have found the couple are related, but unlike, for example, the Iberian royalty of the early middle ages, I am unaware of any scholarly study of endogamy in the British royalty, nor of popular press reporting of the broad topic (as opposed to individual instances). This indicates a lack of Notability that means the article can't be fixed by simply removing the extensive OR and stubifying it. Agricolae (talk) 16:39, 23 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Agricolae (talk) 16:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Agricolae (talk) 16:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Scotland-related deletion discussions. Agricolae (talk) 16:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Note: I can't figure out how to get the template to report the first AfD which was under a different namespace: Articles for deletion/Endogamy in the British monarchy. Agricolae (talk) 17:15, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment - This article could be seen as a sub-article of List of coupled cousins - I don't like grouping AfDs and don't recommend that here, but I do want to point this out. Smmurphy(Talk) 17:24, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Weak delete - My impression is that a list of couples who are very closely related may be notable, but including people whose relationship is more distant seems OR. Further, this article basically comes down to adding how closely related a monarch and consort is to the lists at Monarchs of the British Isles. Such an addition seems a bit WP:INDISCRIMINATE. In the previous AfD, one argument is that endogamy in the British monarchy is notable. I agree that it is, but as an article with notable examples discussed and not as a list with no context. Smmurphy(Talk) 17:24, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment - This article's subject could be seen as notable, but the article as it stands looks like it could be partly based on original research and I share the concern that it is tending towards WP:INDISCRIMINATE. I think something could be written on this, with proper sources that make clear that specific royal marriages to relatives were notable (William III and Mary II is an obvious one) and that there is a notable trend, but I think the list format here is not really suitable for Wikipedia. Dunarc (talk) 19:49, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. As I said in the last deletion discussion, the content that can be cited here is already covered in articles such as Royal intermarriage, and where the relationship is individually significant, in the individuals' articles, but there aren't any citations that draw together all of the relationships in a list like this and most of them cannot be cited anyway because they are original research. I also note that all of the accounts who voted to keep the article in the last discussion are now blocked, two of them for sock puppetry. Celia Homeford (talk) 10:12, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete This is not a useful thing to devote a whole article too.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:39, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep -- This is an interesting subject (to some). It is surprising how many British monarchs where within what the medieval church regarded as prohibited degrees.  I note that it is heavily tagged, including for further referencing, but I do not think that this is a case where it is particularly useful to show the full workings.  I think this is a case where the info is verifiable, rather than verified.  This is partly because monarchs were marrying into a limited pool of foreign royal and noble families; in the case of Scotland often into Scottish nobility.  The non-monarch section at the end is limited to those through whom the throne was inherited and those who might inherit it in coming decades.  Peterkingiron (talk) 17:29, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. I'm not feeling it. Sure, it is possibly of interest to some reader, but that's never a good argument. Is it a topic? It doesn't seem to be, or it doesn't seem to want to be--it is merely a set of lists; there is no lead that explains what the topic is. Is it a list? Well, yeah, but a list of what? "(1st, 2nd, 3rd, ...)" indicates that there isn't a well-defined criterion here, and toward the bottom it seems to be getting really random. It is possible to have an article on this topic (for Spain one can easily imagine it), but this isn't it. Drmies (talk) 17:34, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep The nomination says "I am unaware of any scholarly study of endogamy in the British royalty" but a quick search soon turns up book-length works such as Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England and Royal Kinship. Anglo-German Family Networks 1815-1918. Andrew D. (talk) 18:34, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Books that focus on a single limited period do not justify blanket coverage of all of English and Scottish royal history based on Original Research. There may be room for a article on this generic topic, but this isn't it nor is the current article an avenue to get to that generic article.  It would need to start from scratch anyhow, so TNT. Agricolae (talk) 19:49, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
 * TNT is not policy; not even close. The actual policy is that poor articles, if they can be improved, are welcome. Andrew D. (talk) 19:57, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Imperfect is one thing. Big steaming pile of OR is another. Agricolae (talk) 23:29, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep Consanguinity is a topic in each biography of the, nice to have one sortable list. --RAN (talk) 19:53, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep notable due to all the coverage of such relationships both in anthropological fields as well as more recently in popular culture 92.9.152.175 (talk) 23:13, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete per Drmies. Of interest to some, perhaps, but tables like this are not what Wikipedia is for. George VI marrying his 13th cousin is not really an example of cousin marriage. Srnec (talk) 00:48, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz Humbug! 06:28, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete per Drmies. This is a poorly defined topic that is essentially pure original research. That is a valid deletion reason. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:58, 7 February 2018 (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.