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22 Jan 2021

A break in 1925: no descendants of Queen Victoria born

1925 is remarkable in the twentieth century as not a single one of the descendants of Queen Victoria (and of her husband Albert, the Prince Consort) appear to have been born in that year. In consequence, there is a gap of twenty months following the birth of the younger Lascelles son in 1924, until the birth of his cousin, HM the Queen Elizabeth II (then Princess Elizabeth of York) in 1926. The family were taking a break. However, Margaret Thatcher was born in 1925. Thanks to Susan Flantzer for her work in compiling a directory of these.

You could argue it took 86 years from the date of Victoria and Albert's marriage (1840) to achieve 'genealogical singularity', with every year from 1926 onwards having a descendant being born (as far as is known). I will take a look at an example from my own family to see if that point has been reached.

[Ok so checked and Martha Scott married 1808 in Somerset, has at least a thousand descendants born. She hit the genealogical singularity in 1864 after 56 years. And we're excluding her husband's illegitimate child. I had a note some years back saying 'in 1957, her older sister's descendants overtook Martha's in terms of total number born'. That is not true. Martha has eaten her sisters for genealogical breakfast.]

The genealogist Anthony Wagner counted the first Tudor princesses' descendants and formed some interesting conclusions about the two sisters. He also wrote Pedigree and Progress of which an interesting follow-up is here: https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/3.1/laichas_column.html

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