[CARDINALRULES]

The bad thing about finding the family blood lines is finding the ones you don’t want to claim. Even the ones not in the direct line. I have direct and indirect connections to at least one in that list.

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I have royal and titled bloodline connections all over Europe. Some are direct and others are indirect. Some like my connection to Charles Martel are both.

[Vigilanteman]

It is part of the genealogy game. A substantial portion of people claiming European ancestry will have royalty pop-up somewhere for the following reasons:

1. Sheer math: Get back to about 1400 or so and you have more potential ancestors than the entire population of 2-3 mid-sized European countries.
   
2. Royalty was infamous about spreading their "seed" around. William the Conqueror has at least 18 known bastard children, and an even greater number of rumored. The numbers may be staggering, but his situation (albeit not his quantities) is the rule, rather than the exception.
   
3. The upper classes often hired wet nurses rather than breast feed their own children. They weren't hard to find since infant mortality was endemic. The purposes of the wet nurses wasn't because they were too lazy to nurse their own, but because they wanted the opportunity to produce as many children as possible. This was seen as a necessity to ensure survival of their lineage even though it often meant that wealth often diminished from generation to generation.
   
4. Process of elimination: The more commonplace your ancestry, the higher the likelihood that your ancestral records will go totally blank by 1500, 1600 or even 1700 or later. Those which survive are likely due to intermarriage or close association with a line produced in #2 or #3.