Our European ancestors often did genealogy as propaganda. Nowadays it’s sometimes hard to convince new genealogists, people who might have only a limited historical education, that there wasn’t some secret, oral, underground stream of tradition that has been suppressed by clumsy academics. No. It was pure propaganda, and today we can see through it easily….
Tag: Medieval
Royal Fakes
One of my main academic interests is the way genealogical fakes are created and preserved. For many years I was active on Geni.com, working with other volunteer curators to round up and fakes, get them corralled, and so improve the quality of the medieval tree there. In the end it turned out to be a…
Battle of Agincourt
Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. I love this day (but don’t tell Laura). On this day in 1415, some 900 stout-hearted Englishmen defeated the flower of French chivalry. On the French side, some 7,000 dead and some 1,500 taken prisoner. On the English side, a mere 100 dead. The numbers are…