Green or gold?

Question

Wondering  what the distinction is of the green box or gold box when running a connection query.

Answer 1

To expand on this, each alternating color band is a family related by blood.

For instance, when I view my connection to Queen Victoria, she is green.  Her blood relatives are also green.  

The first person related to her through marriage instead of blood is yellow. The following people who are also yellow are related to THAT person by blood.

The first person related to the 'yellow' family by marriage instead of blood is green again.  For me, this is one of my direct ancestors' brothers.  The rest of the chain from there is all green, because I am related to that family by blood, obviously.

If there were to be another family between me and Victoria, it would go back to yellow again and my blood relatives and myself would be yellow.

I uh... kind of use the connection and the relationship calculators a lot...

Answer 2

In the results, as you move along the chain the color stays the same for blood relations, and it changes for relationships by marriage.

Answer 3

Note that "blood relationship" is step-by-step, not end-to-end.

So you can go from yourself to a cousin of a cousin without changing colour, although you share no blood with the cousin of a cousin.

(This only happens if the parents of the cousin in the middle are unmarried.  Otherwise, the chain skips the cousin in the middle and goes from one parent to the other, changing colour).

A more common case is

yourself -> half-sib -> stepparent

Two blood connections, so no change of colour, although you share no blood with the stepparent.

if you don't have a half-sib, the chain goes

yourself -> parent -> stepparent

and changes colour.

Likewise if you have a step-sib, the chain will go through a common half-sib if you have one.

The math textbooks will say that blood-relationship isn't transitive.