Kenneth I Mac Alpine, king of the Picts - Looking for the line where the Scottish kings become legendary

Question: Were the Picts matrilinear? Very possibly. With the early Britons the royal lines went through the mother. It may very well be that he married a Pict queen. Intermarriage for political and material gain was the norm for millennia. His mother may also have been a Pict. Instead of disconnecting the lines I'd add in "proposed" father of or "assumed" father of, something to that effect.

It's really important not to impose our own societal biases!

Thanks... xo

Yes, until definitive evidence is found to corroborate going further back.
Should be done for all family lines to define the point between factual and anecdotal evidence.

i'm cool with it. he'll still be my gggg.....gf

This looks like a good disconnect point, with links back within profile to the "traditional" ancestry.

Amy Anderson -- you are quite right that we must not impose our own biases on other cultures.

In this case, though, there's no evidence as to who the mother of his children was, so it does us no good to speculate.

And his father, as I mention above, gets added in later; he's not in the older manuscripts.

So there's no evidence that I'm seeing that he's actually his father.

However!

I will be very glad to hear if it's there.

Amy Anderson -- what we are trying to do is take out guesses and suppositions in these early lines.

Because they can of course be infinite.

What we are looking for is actual evidence, or, failing that, strong argumentation based on contextual evidence.

Dr. Stephen John Pratt, Ph.D. -- oh, lol indeed.

You would still be descended from him. Me, too.

I got into this because I am, in a larger project, trying to detach us all from https://www.geni.com/people/Gaodhal-Glas-Lebor-Gabála-Érenn/6000000... who is alas still my 68th grandfather, even though I've disconnected two humans from legendary daddies already.

yeah, i saw him pop up in my tree as 66th ggf. never heard of him and i don't walk like an egyptian

I have researched Kenneth I MacAlpin, my 33rd great grandfather through the Picts and Ri Na Dal Riata.

Kenneth's father Alpin mac Echdach, Ri Na Dal Riata, MP as listed here in Geni. Alpin is my 34th great grandfather.

Alpin mac Echdach, Ri Na Dal Riata, MP's father is listed as Aeda Find, Ri na Dal Riata MP as listed here in Geni. Aeda is my 35th great grandfather.

The following is from Wikipdia: "Kenneth's origins are uncertain, as are his ties, if any, to previous kings of the Picts or Dál Riata. Among the genealogies contained in the Rawlinson B 502 manuscript, dating from around 1130, is the supposed descent of Malcolm II of Scotland. Medieval genealogies are unreliable sources, but many historians still accept Kenneth's descent from the established Cenél nGabráin, or at the very least from some unknown minor sept of the Dál Riata. The manuscript provides the following ancestry for Kenneth:

...Cináed son of Alpín son of Eochaid son of Áed Find son of Domangart son of Domnall Brecc son of Eochaid Buide son of Áedán son of Gabrán son of Domangart son of Fergus Mór ...[7]

Leaving aside the shadowy kings before Áedán son of Gabrán, the genealogy is certainly flawed insofar as Áed Find, who died c. 778, could not reasonably be the son of Domangart, who was killed c. 673. The conventional account would insert two generations between Áed Find and Domangart: Eochaid mac Echdach, father of Áed Find, who died c. 733, and his father Eochaid.

Although later traditions provided details of his reign and death, Kenneth's father Alpin is not listed as among the kings in the Duan Albanach, which provides the following sequence of kings leading up to Kenneth:

Naoi m-bliadhna Cusaintin chain,
a naoi Aongusa ar Albain,
cethre bliadhna Aodha áin,
is a tri déug Eoghanáin.
Tríocha bliadhain Cionaoith chruaidh,

The nine years of Causantín the fair,
The nine of Aongus over Alba,
The four years of Aodh the noble,
And the thirteen of Eoghanán.
The thirty years of Cionaoth the hardy,[8]

It is supposed that these kings are the Constantine son of Fergus and his brother Óengus II (Angus II), who have already been mentioned, Óengus's son Uen (Eóganán), as well as the obscure Áed mac Boanta, but this sequence is considered doubtful if the list is intended to represent kings of Dál Riata, as it should if Kenneth were king there.[9]

That Kenneth was a Gael is not widely rejected, but modern historiography distinguishes between Kenneth as a Gael by culture and/or in ancestry, and Kenneth as a king of Gaelic Dál Riata. Kings of the Picts before him, from Bridei son of Der-Ilei, his brother Nechtan as well as Óengus I son of Fergus and his presumed descendants were all at least partly Gaelicised.[10] The idea that the Gaelic names of Pictish kings in Irish annals represented translations of Pictish ones was challenged by the discovery of the inscription Custantin filius Fircus(sa), the latinised name of the Pictish king Caustantín son of Fergus, on the Dupplin Cross.[11]

Other evidence, such as that furnished by place-names, suggests the spread of Gaelic culture through western Pictland in the centuries before Kenneth. For example, Atholl, a name used in the Annals of Ulster for the year 739, has been thought to be "New Ireland", and Argyll derives from Oir-Ghàidheal, the land of the "eastern Gaels".

Reign
Compared with the many questions on his origins, Kenneth's ascent to power and subsequent reign can be dealt with simply. Kenneth's rise can be placed in the context of the recent end of the previous dynasty, which had dominated Fortriu for two or four generations. This followed the death of king Uen son of Óengus of Fortriu, his brother Bran, Áed mac Boanta "and others almost innumerable" in battle against the Vikings in 839. The resulting succession crisis seems, if the Pictish Chronicle king-lists have any validity, to have resulted in at least four would-be kings warring for supreme power.

Kenneth's reign is dated from 843, but it was probably not until 848 that he defeated the last of his rivals for power. The Pictish Chronicle claims that he was king in Dál Riata for two years before becoming Pictish king in 843, but this is not generally accepted. It is also said that his reign began in 834 and ended in 863, this is especially predominant in the 17th and 18th centuries where many depictions of Kenneth would state his reign as either 834-863 or 843-863[citation needed]. In 849, Kenneth had relics of Columba, which may have included the Monymusk Reliquary, transferred from Iona to Dunkeld. Other than these bare facts, the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba reports that he invaded Saxonia six times, captured Melrose and burnt Dunbar, and also that Vikings laid waste to Pictland, reaching far into the interior.[12] The Annals of the Four Masters, not generally a good source on Scottish matters, do make mention of Kenneth, although what should be made of the report is unclear:

Gofraid mac Fergusa, chief of Airgíalla, went to Alba, to strengthen the Dal Riata, at the request of Kenneth MacAlpin.[13]

The reign of Kenneth also saw an increased degree of Norse settlement in the outlying areas of modern Scotland. Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, Sutherland, the Western Isles and the Isle of Man, and part of Ross were settled; the links between Kenneth's kingdom and Ireland were weakened, those with southern England and the continent almost broken. In the face of this, Kenneth and his successors were forced to consolidate their position in their kingdom, and the union between the Picts and the Gaels, already progressing for several centuries, began to strengthen. By the time of Donald II, the kings would be called kings neither of the Gaels or the Scots but of Alba.[14]

Kenneth died from a tumour on 13 February 858 at the palace of Cinnbelachoir, perhaps near Scone. The annals report the death as that of the "king of the Picts", not the "king of Alba". The title "king of Alba" is not used until the time of Kenneth's grandsons, Donald II (Domnall mac Causantín) and Constantine II (Constantín mac Áeda). The Fragmentary Annals of Ireland quote a verse lamenting Kenneth's death:

Because Cináed with many troops lives no longer
there is weeping in every house;
there is no king of his worth under heaven
as far as the borders of Rome.[15]

Kenneth left at least two sons, Constantine and Áed, who were later kings, and at least two daughters. One daughter married Run, king of Strathclyde, Eochaid being the result of this marriage. Kenneth's daughter Máel Muire married two important Irish kings of the Uí Néill. Her first husband was Aed Finliath of the Cenél nEógain. Niall Glúndub, ancestor of the O'Neill, was the son of this marriage. Her second husband was Flann Sinna of Clann Cholmáin. As the wife and mother of kings, when Máel Muire died in 913, her death was reported by the Annals of Ulster, an unusual thing for the male-centred chronicles of the age.

Wikipedia has some validity in its research. Are we to definitively enter into Kenneth I MacAlpin's history? I suggest that we leave this issue alone. I'm not qualified to vote.

personally i think there's too much questionable bs about his parentage and earlier to keep anyone said to be an ancestor of ken in the world tree until legit data can be produced from legit sources.

but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

SJP

He's got a great-grandmother named "NN" as part of his pathway to the Egyptian.
Can we remove that one?

Harald, it can probably be removed. Give me a link and I'll look.

Here is a link to the speech done by Clan Chief Donald MacLaren from Scotland talking about King Kenneth I Mac Alpine in the 2009 Clan Convention Morning Session at the Paramount. Please forward to the last half hour of the 2 hour video. They all seem to believe that King Kenneth I Mac Alpine was a real person. I’m sure I could ask Donald for some reliable sources. I’m also from clan MacLaren and meet up with Donald MacLaren when I was in Scotland. He is one person who knows Scotland history.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=7772s&v=yn91wG6K_Fk

Yep. He does indeed seem to be a real person.

The issue has to do with his parentage.

Anne, Wrold, Queen of the Picts

Anne and I were just discussing that one. These Pictish princesses are all hypothetical.

Can you show the link to Egypt? I'm guessing one of the versions of Scota, but I can't find it.

The Egyptian is the one Anne mentioned upthread: Gaodhal Glas (Lebor Gabála Érenn) - my 66th great-grandfather!

getting rid of Fergus' mother would break that particular path neatly in the middle.

This is an easy fix. I replaced her daughter's profile. The line would probably be removed anyway with the work on Kenneth mac Alpin, but this moves the speculative line out of the way.

I have cut the connection of Kenneth to his supposed father Alpin, and provided explanation and links.

Yay!

I adore this curator note:

There are arguments for the existence of Cináed; Alpin, however, does not appear until a 10th century pediegree created to give the kings of Scotland ancient ancestry, and is fictional. Please do not reattach.

Brian C. Brown says: It seems to me that this example should be treated the same as other "fictional" characters on Geni. List 'em and call them out. When one ventures into unproven links such as the Norse sagas, there should be a way to describe them.

An example of a fictional character added to the tree;
Herbastus de Crépon hypothetical person
b. 911 Denmark or, Crépon, Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France

Called out but, included

Post the link

Herbastus de Crépon (hypothetical person)

Thank you for spotting. The only reason he wasn't isolated is because at the time we didn't have the isolate tool -hence all the locks. I've done it now.

Same goes for: Alpín, Rí na Dál Riata Have isolated