The Half-Step, or How to Be Your Own Grandpa (Siblings)

Two weeks ago I began the complex and complicated discussion of cousins and close relatives. However, anyone who knows anything about royalty knows that the most common relationships in dynasties are not pure ones, but rather half- and step- ones. Case in point: the children of Henry VIII were all of different mothers and were therefore half-siblings rather than full siblings.

Some terms:

• Half — A half relative is someone who shares half of their normal relatedness with you due to a remarriage or birth out of wedlock. Thus, where a brother could hypothetically share 100% of your genes, a half brother couldn't share more than 50% because you have a different parent (it could be a father or mother, doesn't matter). Usually, only siblings are designated as halfs, although aunts and uncles can also be half (they are your father or mother's half-sibling). Cousins can only be half if your aunt or uncle is a half relative (in fact, the entire descent of that half-uncle or half-aunt are half-cousins). You can never have a half-parent or a half-child.



The Brady Bunch

• Step — A step-relative is either someone who shares none of their normal relatedness with you due to being the offspring of an ancestor's previous pairing or a person who is not biologically related to you but has married your ancestor. For all intent and purposes, a step-relative is not a relative at all and people throughout history have often married and/or bred with their half siblings. A great example of this is the ever-famous Brady Bunch. The family was composed of a father who had three boys from a previous marriage and a mother who had three girls from a previous marriage, who then got married and everyone had to live together. Part of the tension in a few select episodes was due to the fact that the children could hypothetically hook up. This same vein has been used in hundreds, if not thousands, of film plots where children hook up then hook their parents up, or vice versa. Virtually anyone can be a step-relative. All you need is to have at some point an ancestor remarrying with someone who already has kids. Step relationships have played an important and sometimes dangerous part in royal politics through the centuries.

With those terms thus defined, it is finally possible to answer the age-old question: Can you really be your own grandfather? The simple answer is "no". (Note: this section is addressed from a male point of view.) It is currently impossible for you to go back in time to impregnate your grandmother. However, it is much easier (albeit rather crude) to marry your grandmother. If you marry you grandmother, you instantly become your own step-grandfather. Viólà! If you ever read the lyrics to the song (made famous in the film The Stupids), you'll notice that it gets to the same conclusion eventually.

Now to return to a more serious note, why are these relationships so important to dynastology? It's because many succession disputes began between children of multiple marriages. We'll start with my example above. Mary Tudor was the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and was raised a proper Catholic. Elizabeth Tudor was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and was raised a Protestant. Jane was the eldest daughter of Francis, the eldest daughter of Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII and was also raised a Protestant. Now that we have our three major players, let's see what happened when Edward VI died in 1553:

Mary I, Queen of England 1553 – 1558

Elizabeth I, Queen of England 1558 – 1603

Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England 1553

When Edward died, the will of Henry VIII was overturned to bar both his sisters from the throne.
 Mary, since she was Catholic, was declared unfit to succeed while Elizabeth, who had previously been declared illegitimate since divorce was sort of frowned upon back then, was skipped because of her possible illegitimacy. Jane, therefore, was the next in line to succeed since the will of Henry VIII had clearly set the line of his younger sister Mary Tudor first since his elder sister Margaret was married to the King of Scotland. The problem was that Mary Tudor wasn't illegitimate and there were in fact no laws barring Catholics from the throne at the time. Furthermore, according to the Church of England, which Edward and Jane supported, divorce was perfectly legal and therefore Elizabeth wasn't barred either. So Mary Tudor tromped into London and took over from Jane who was executed a short year later. Elizabeth succeeded Mary a few years after that. Thus half-siblings managed to work things out in the fact of worse alternatives.

Emperor Romanus IV and Empress Eudokia of Byzantium

Step relationships rarely affected succession policy in Western Europe since ancient laws were fairly clear on the matter. However, in Eastern Europe, things were a bit different. There, the amount of betrayal and back-stabbing often made step-parents both powerful and dangerous. The case of Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV is such an example. Some years earlier, Constantine X married Eudokia and over the course of the next few years they produced three sons. In 1067, Constantine died and Eudokia was named regent for her underage son Michael VII. The next year she married the ambitious Romanus who immediately proclaimed himself emperor "by right of his step-son". A rather odd claim to power, don't you think? Romanus proved to be a crappy partner and when he was taken prisoner, Michael VII stepped in and took the reins of government finally. This "by right of step-child' was not a new phenomena in Byzantine politics and continued to a small degree in the Russian royal family. Indeed, where succession conflicts in the west often occured due to different interpretations of the law, in the east succession conflicts were often due to regents claiming the succession from their wards.

Emperor Tiberius

To end this dynastology on a happier note, let's go back further into the Ancient Roman Empire. The Julio-Claudian Dynasty to be exact. No dynasty seems more crazy and convuluted than that first century chaos. But there is a strange order to the madness. Julius Caesar, in his will, named his grand nephew Octavian as his successor. Octavian became Augustus, the first Roman Emperor. As his heir, he chose his step-son and son-in-law, Tiberius. Tiberius, in turn, allowed his step-grandson Caligula to succeed him. Caligula, changing things up a bit, was succeeded by his brother-in-law and uncle Claudius. But then Claudius returned to the norm and chose his step-son and grand-nephew Nero. Thus ended the Julio-Claudian Dynasty (Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio-Claudian_family_tree for a very detailed family tree). In other words, the early Roman Empire really didn't care directly about father-son successions and was perfectly content allowing relatives and step-relatives to inherit. This tradition continued for centuries, as was exemplified with Romanus IV.

Step and half relationships have shown themselves across royal family trees to be both dangerous and advantageous. Sometimes, a step-child may be the only thing that holds a dynasty together. Other times, though, the proximity to power may be too close for comfort.