Saint Joseph of Arimathea (Fictional Copy) - Removing, or limiting connections to Fictional profiles

Thanks for starting this discussion, David. I strongly agree.

I'm happy to help on the technical piece but I'm unsure of the right process & labeling? A cheat sheet for me to follow?

I agree unlink the fictional profiles

If they want to create a fictional path to a fictional version of Mary and Jesus, that's fine, as long as its documented that it's setting a path to a fictional version as defined in the Grail Mythos. Just looking at the people though, you can see that the dates don't match up.

There seems to be no objection to disconnecting the Arthurian St. Joseph from the Biblical St. Joseph, so -- done.

The next question in this area might be whether to also disconnect Arthurian Bron(s) "the Fisher King" (Fictitious Person) from Celtic Bran. I expect the answer will be the same but it deserves an opportunity for comment and discussion.

I would. Don't link any of the literary versions of people to their real incarnations. The literary version is just a fiction based on somebody who may, or may not, have once existed.

I don't see anyone speaking up in support of keeping Brons, so I'm disconnecting him.

For many of these fictitious people we can probably disconnect without a discussion, but some (like Brons) have had advocates in the past. It's better to give them a chance to speak up.

I did more work in this area, cleaning up some of the paths to the fictitious Brons. If we want to get serious about isolating the Arthurian legend from real genealogy we need to tackle King Arthur, Geoffrey of Monmouth Text himself.

Thoughts?

Having been a "victim" of Fictional Genealogy on Geni in the past, my family's personal preference would be to not be misled any further in the future. In fact I can take the credit for adding the "Fictional Person" label to Arthur's display name not so long ago in pursuit of said preference.
I assume "Fictional" was recently replaced with "Fictitious".
Either way is fine by me, just so long as members know for sure when what they are being told about their ancestry is False.
Obviously Mickey Mouse is not my cousin, but I really fell for the old "you are connected to the Ancient Kings" gag, and my mis-placed belief really did cost me the good opinion of an old friend in the real world when I shared the Big News. And the loss of that good opinion caused other very tangible losses. In short, Geni should place a disclaimer on the front page. It could read, "Geni . . .where we are all related (but not really)."

Labeling profiles as fictitious or fictional is one of the best first steps. It alerts other users that the line is a fantasy, and it also flags the profile for sourcing and ultimately disconnecting.

Lloyd,

The "front page" isn't enough, there really needs to be a disclaimer on every path, every time. But it would hardly be a good marketing policy.

Alex,

There comes a time when marketing policies should cease to be more important than the actual market. Cashing in on the ignorance of the general public by misleading them isn't a very noble way to build wealth.

True in all aspects of life, but i do not need convincing, MH board of directors, or marketing manager perhaps, make those decisions, not me.

Of course I know that you do not make those decisions, Alex.

An example of how different perceptions can be. On this thread people are complaining about fantasy connections. On another, people want to keep them: http://www.geni.com/discussions/138944

;)

I didn't really see the argument made for keeping the connection between fictional (literary) versions of characters vs real world. The Arthurian connection is different from some others, because it was a work of fiction, attempting to make a connection to antiquity, to explain why the Grail, might possibly be someplace in England. But they cut hundreds of years out of the time line between characters. I like what you did with Magog. That seems reasonable. That way if somebody wants to continue to follow the trail up from there, they can. BTW, studies have shown that the Irish are actually descended from a Scythian race, as they claim, so it might even be true. Everybody other than the Irish are descended from a group of people who used to live by the Black Sea. This includes the Angles, Saxons, Franks, and the Vikings who came down from the north several hundred years later.

I like the idea of disconnecting fictional tyes I not sure if thats possible! Hopefully it is!

David, last I read the newest genetic evidence suggests the Irish largely migrated up from what is now Spain. Amazing that this is what the old legends say. I haven't heard anything about the Scythians, but you could be right.

I think the case to be made for not disconnecting fictional lines without a discussion is that it is possible the line is not fictional. Just because I say it is, or some other user says it is, doesn't mean we're right ;)

Another, related reason is that there might be a better place to make the cut.

So, our Geni culture of collaboration requires that we take the ordinary precaution of having a discussion before we make a change that affects many users.

Can anyone identify where the Chretien de Teyes romance characters begin? I seem to recall where Uther Pendragon seduced Ygraine. Can they be separated?

disconect them all..only true ancestry by paper records on geni otherwise its a walt disney ride for skizophren
King Arthur, Geoffrey of Monmouth Text also disconect him

Erica, I've been thinking about how to answer your question. It might not be too difficult to disentangle the various traditions, but it's not just Chrétian de Troyes and his successors against the earlier tradition.

At the simplest level, there are at least three strands:

1. The truly archaic sources, such as Nennius. Not much genealogy there, but this is where we might see the historic Arthur.

2. The Welsh tradition, which has Arthur at the center of a group of people descended from Amlawdd Wledig, king of the Britons.

3. The pseudo-historical account of Geoffrey of Monmouth, which differs in some major ways from the Welsh tradition.

4. The romances of Chrétian de Troys and his successors, which turned the Arthurian material into a rollicking good time and a lot of purely invented (and often allegorical) genealogy.

This article has a nice overview of the Welsh material versus Geoffrey of Monmouth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur%27s_family

It could all be disentangled fairly straightforwardly, but would require duplicating a dozen or two profiles in order to keep the areas separate.

Can we / should we start doing that then? I could take some of the fictional, I just wouldn't know when it's source supported as possibly actual. And to me it would seem easier to set up the separate streams and cross reference?

A quick glance shows that King Arthur's current family mostly draws on Welsh tradition for his ancestry, and on romance mostly for his descendants. His siblings are a mix of the two.

As someone complained earlier, the Geoffrey of Monmouth line doesn't seem to be represented on Geni.

We could create tabular genealogies for the three lines in this project: http://www.geni.com/projects/Arthurian-Fiction/8905

The honor of creating a new King Arthur (or two) should go to Erin Spiceland, who has done so much work cleaning up the lines the last few years.

maybe hes related to the london werwolf . we should add him to geni, his ancestor are suposed prehominent wealty family must be from the noble maybe the werwolf of london is related to the Gévaudan of france

Justin,
Tradition holds that the Irish people originally settled in what is now Portugal, and crossed over from there. Current DNA studies show no genetic links between the people now living in Portugal and the Irish. At least, that's the claim they make on this website: http://www.englandandenglishhistory.com/origins-of-ethnic-english

Have a read and see what you think. It's pretty interesting and convincing if it's true.

I remember seeing something along those lines, but here's a more recent study:

http://www.sott.net/article/263587-DNA-shows-Irish-people-have-more...

"One of the oldest texts composed in Ireland is the Leabhar Gabhla, the Book of Invasions. It tells a semi-mythical history of the waves of people who settled in Ireland in earliest time. It says the first settlers to arrive in Ireland were a small dark race called the Fir Bolg, followed by a magical super-race called the Tuatha de Danaan (the people of the goddess Dana).

"Most interestingly, the book says that the group which then came to Ireland and fully established itself as rulers of the island were the Milesians - the sons of Mil, the soldier from Spain. Modern DNA research has actually confirmed that the Irish are close genetic relatives of the people of northern Spain."

Míl Espáine ("Soldier of Spain"), the legendary ancestor of the Irish is on Geni here: Milesius Galamh (Lebor Gabála Érenn).

Back on topic -- I added a few snippets to the Arthurian project. If I get time tomorrow, I'll add some from Chrétien de Troyes, Thomas Malory, etc.

http://www.geni.com/projects/Arthurian-Fiction/8905

but the discussion is

Saint Joseph of Arimathea (Fictional Copy) - Removing, or limiting connections to Fictional profiles

but i wish to give you a smile :)

http://www.apothecarysrosetours.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/DSCN...

http://europeupclose.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/king-arthurs-bu...

i vote to deleted all fictious profile
merci