Who Do You Think You Are?

My DH was told that he is descended, on his father's side ,from a sister of Lady Jane Grey.
Another claim to royalty was on my maternal grandfather's side, he had cousins whose surname was Royal, but that could also mean their ancestors were servants to royalty.I can remember my grandmother, when two of these cousins visited them, boasting to her friends that she was having two royal ladies coming to tea.
There is a missing link on my paternal grandfather's side.He never knew who his father was, his mother was not married when he was born and she refused to reveal the identity of his father.The place for father's name on his birth certificate is left blank.He was brought up by his mother's parents with their surname, his mother later married a wealthy farmer then disappeared off the family tree

I know my great-aunt and great-uncle met Queen Victoria.
They also knew Edward VII and met the Russian Tsar and Royal Family when they visited the Isle of Wight in 1909.
But they weren't invited to tea!

My family , slate quarry workers in North Wales, Coal Miners in South Wales, a few baptist church ministers and a g uncle who was physician to Queen Mary, George V1 and the Queen.

I was upset to find baptism records in a county in North Wales
where an illegitimate child was described as a ‘base child’ .

On a similar theme there was a programme on ITV this week in which Charlene White (the black ITV newsreader) traces her background. It was fascinating, and beautifully presented.

Most of mine were farm labourers and fishermen
No royalty in my blood and I don’t mind in the least I do prefer the programmes with the family trees who had infamous folk rather than aristocracy so I wasn’t so interested in Josh s far far back royal family I like history but more from the point of social history than royal history
Judi Dench is very personable

So very moving tonight- the poor girl didn't know what hit her. And concurrently with Ridley Road- it showed how anti-semetism and fascism in London was real.

And both sides of slavery hit her hard too- the reality that black people also owned slaves. But one sentence will remain with me from her 'cousin' who helped her find the grave 'if you don't know where you come from, you don't know where you are going'.

So true- I know many people who just will not look into the past or acknowledge it, and personally, I feel they are really missing out- whether good or bad.

It’s often ignored that black people procured and held slaves.
The saying that you have to know where you come from to know where you’re going is so true. We don’t know what our families had to do so we could be here. That poor man put into a mental hospital and not being let out to be with his family that wanted him was shameful.
I would absolutely love them to do mine, whatever they found,

Me too, but I suspect mine would be too boring to be televised.

I think that ‘black people also had slaves’ would be better seen as ‘humans will exploit one another given the chance’, and reframed as being about the dynamics between rich and poor rather than about colour. Yes, colour-based racism grew out of slavery, and it’s legacy is still with us, but it didn’t cause it.

People had slaves from ancient times (eg Egyptians and Romans) based on who conquered whom and nothing to do with skin colour. Modern slavery is not colour-based either. Ancestors of people who were enslaved in, say, Roman times, would be better able to integrate as they wouldn’t stand out because of colour, and because there was no narrative that enslaved people were inherently inferior.