Royalty for Commoners: The Complete Known Lineage of John of Gaunt, Son of Edward III, King of England, and Queen Philippa (New 4th Edition) (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: prob dau, prob father, Princess of France, Count of Hainault, Duke of Swabia (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This is the new Fourth Edition of Royalty for Commoners, the first book ever to document the complete known genealogy of John of Gaunt, son of King Edward III and Queen Philippa. The importance of this documentation is that any commoner who can connect his or her own family lineage to that of John of Gaunt can now be shown to share the same basic royal heritage as the most noble knight--the complete heritage, not just the Plantagenet ascent. This is the usual lineage through which a commoner can enter the domain of European royalty, though one might enter the lineage at any number of points.

This new Fourth Edition is a nearly completely reworking of previous editions and includes the following changes:

*Two dozen lines have been lengthened
*Sources now include dates of publication
*There are two indexes rather than one, an every-name index and an index of royal titles
*Research now ventures into the years before Christ
*The Bibliography has been significantly refined and expanded

Product Details

• Hardcover: 394 pages
• Publisher: Genealogical Publishing Company; 4 edition (January 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080631687X
• ISBN-13: 978-0806316871
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #737,431 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Remarkably bad genealogy, March 13, 2002

By	Jared Linn Olar (USA) - See all my reviews

In my title I almost said "remarkably bad genealogical scholarship," but anyone familiar with the previous editions of this book will recognise that it would be inaccurate to associate the word "scholarship" with this book.

All of the serious flaws present in the earlier editions remain in this book: rampant spelling and transcription errors, erroneous and misleading bibliographical entries, and the presentation of purely conjectural genealogical theories as though they were a part of "the complete known ancestry of John of Gaunt."

These kinds of embarassing errors are found repeatedly on every single page of this book.

Due to the great amount of inaccuracy and genealogical nonsense, anyone seriously interested in royal medieval genealogy would do well to steer clear of this book.

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid this book, March 19, 2002

By	Chris Bennett (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews

No genealogical researcher should touch this book. All editions have been riddled with errors, and the latest is no exception. The spellings are frequently wrong, the lines are often inaccurate, mythical lines are not distinguished from historical ones, highly conjectural lines are not distinguished from proven ones, and most of the books and articles associated with many of the lines are completely unrelated to the material they allegedly cover. No statement in the book can be trusted at face value. Even if you want to use it just as a finding aid, double check everything.

Chris Bennett

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money, April 28, 2002

By A Customer

This book has reasonably valid information in it (checked against more reliable sources), but the author makes no attempt to differentiate the reliable from the unreliable, and far too much of it is unreliable. I suspect the author doesn't even keep his database in a computer genealogical program because there are many internal inconsistencies (I'm my own grandpa kinds of inconsistencies) that all the respectable genealogical software would catch.