Aliénor d'Aquitaine is one of the most fascinating women in European history. According to her profile on Roglo, a data base pretty much centered around European Aristocracy, Aliénor has over 1.3 million descendants in the said data base, this number representing more than 15% of the total number of profiles. The actual number of descendants of Aliénor is of course far larger than that, but how large?
My conjecture is that Aliénor stands at the right place and time to be a potential ancestor of about anyone living today and having European ancestors - that means I guess, over 99,99% of WikiTreers. What arguments have I to support this conjecture?
#1. Aliénor married a king of France and a king of England. In less than five generations, she had descendants all over Europe., from Russia to Portugal, and Scandinavia to Italy.
#2. The theoretical number of ancestors living in the 12th century, barring pedigree collapse, for someone living today, is in the 100 million range (based on a mean of 27 generations), which is the range of European population at the time. Of course if you are able to track your ancestors that far away in time, you are bound to meet pedigree collapse, and the more so if you attach somehow your ancestry to European aristocracy, who was pretty much endogamic.
If this conjecture is challenging, it's also certainly practically undecidable. If you actually have found Aliénor in your ancestors, it does comfort your belief in the conjecture, but it does not prove it true. But OTOH if you have not found her so far, it does not prove the conjecture false either, because you have not, and nobody will ever have, a complete list of your ancestors living in the 12th century (remember, potentially millions of them), which would be necessary to show a counter-example, if any.
True, false or undecidable, this conjecture is worth exploring, why not through a dedicated project here in WikiTree?
- Figuring out the actual number of Aliénor's descendants currently in WikiTree, and why not flag them (sticker, whatever)
- Working towards expanding the existing branches, in particular those spinning off the main trunk of European aristocracy.
- Any other idea ...
[edited 2021-08-03] : alternative form of the question : Who can track her ancestors back to before 1200, and has NOT Aliénor among them?
[edited 2021-10-12] : I have kept this post open, just to wonder how amazingly off-topic answers keep coming : most of them, sorry to say, seem to have just read the question title, and don't address the most important point of the post under the title, i.e., the possible (UN)DECIDABILITY of the conjecture.
Since this very point did not seem to get interest from anyone, the post is now closed.