Talk:Ancestry of the kings of Wessex

Untitled

I have been bold and created this page as a target for redirects from genealogical inventions that do not merit pages, one after a deletion vote that determined it should be merged to a page yet to be created. If anyone thinks it would be better to have a more general page on the Anglo-Saxon legendary royal genealogies as a whole and not just Wessex should feel free to move, expand this page - I just don't have the resources to to anything beyond the Cerdic Wessex pedigree. This is a first draft, presumably with much cleanup needed. Agricolae (talk) 01:36, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I must say, I really like this page. Great job! I have ancestors that follow the lines of Cerdic, so I have a special place in my heart for some of these legends. Thanks a ton for making this page! :D CaradocTheKing (talk) 23:40, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

added Esla section

What about this supposed king merits special mention amidst all of the other supposed kings? Is there a reliable source for the Welsh Osla speculation. That is the only thing that isn't just a recapitulation of material covered elsewhere in this article, and I think it would be best dealt with as has been done with analogous speculation regarding Heremod and Finn. Certainly we do not need a full section with succession table dedicated to each fictitious ancestor, when they are nothing but an ordered string of invented names. Agricolae (talk) 02:11, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Since the 'under construction' tag was removed and there has been no change, I have deleted the section in question because it is redundant and provides inappropriate weight to this one pseudo-king. Agricolae (talk) 02:21, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

What a great new section!

I must say that as a historian I find that the new Individual Kings Reference really adds a lot to the article and has been hugely useful to me in my research for a (partly fictional) book about Esla and Gewis I am in the middle of writing. It would be great, though, if you could add a few more kings to the reference so I don't have to trawl through the whole article to find them.

Keep up the good work, Agricolae!

J.Gowers (talk) 17:04, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

• Wow. Congratulations to you too--left hand, meet right hand. That section is of course completely unverified and will not be allowed to stand. Good luck with your book. Drmies (talk) 17:26, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Oi!

Hey! What on earth happened to the Individual Kings Reference on this page? I'm trying to write a book here and I need historical information about these kings for inspiration. You must understand that I simply don't have time to trawl through this article: I need short, sharp, to the point information!

Could an administrator please undo the changes and bring the Individual Kings Reference back? Please!!??!

P.S. IT WOULD BE GREAT TO HAVE SOME MORE KINGS IN THE INDIVIDUAL KINGS REFERENCE And why does Elesa currently link to an article about a Pokemon trainer? Seriously, you'd think the guys who wrote this stuff thought I was writing a Pokemon story not a history story! J.Gowers (talk) 17:43, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Administrators generally have better things to do than involve themselves in simple content disputes. However if you feel that events here need further oversight, there are mechanisms for both dispute resolution and arbitration which you can pursue.

P.S. Here is short and to the point: they are all made up. Agricolae (talk) 00:19, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Time to edit

OK, you think given time you can make the individual sections useful, so go ahead and demonstrate it, but it will do you no good to begin with 'succession' tables when there was no succession, speculation about the Gewesse that puts the cart before the horse, or material copied and pasted from a Talk page that was never intended for article space. Agricolae (talk) 01:22, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. J.Gowers (talk) 17:52, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Critical Analysis Section

I would like to call your attention to the statement in this article which reads: "... alliteration...would have been difficult for a family to maintain over a number of generations". This statement is untrue. It is possible for a family to maintain an alliteration over many generations. For example, the Celtic Britons maintained a kingly family line: Vitalinus, Vitalis, Vortigern, and Vortimer. (source: Nennius 49) Additonally, the Saxons had a family line of: Cerdic, Cynric, Ceawin, Cuthwine, Cutha, Ceolwald, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:558:6002:6:3C17:1B2E:39D0:7463 (talk) 00:58, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

That's not what is being referred to - yes, a family can easily maintain single-letter alliteration: A,A,A,A,A,A,A,A,A is not uncommon as you show, but that is not what we are seeing here. We are seeing A,A,B,B,C,C,D,D,E - I challenge you to find a single example of such a complex pattern anywhere in the Anglo-Saxon historical record, where a family alliterated two, and only two, successive names, and then switched to a different letter and alliterated two, and only two names, and then switched and did two and only two, then switched and did two and only two, then switched. Never three in a row and never a singleton. Naming patterns of this complexity stretching over 250 years are never seen. Anyhow, this is Sissam's argument, whether we like it or not. Agricolae (talk) 01:27, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I have recently created the higher order page Ancestry of the kings of Britain that this page forms one of the sub-categories of.

It has been proposed for deletion on notability grounds.

In order to save this page from impending deletion or trimming by certain vested interests, I suggest we merge it quickly into Ancestry of the kings of Britain to fend off this attack on truth and enlightenment. The rationale I give is because Britain is bigger and more notable than Wessex and has a bigger ancestry. The ancestry of the kings of Britain also includes the Ancestry of the kings of Mercia, which I have also recently created and am trying to save from the Anglican collection. Paul Bedson ❉talk❉ 18:22, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

• Reject - the target of the merge proposal, as the proposer well knows, is up for an AfD and currently has 5 Deletes to one Keep. There is every reason to believe that this merge proposal will be rendered moot before it runs its course by the decision of the AfD - you cannot merge into a deleted page. At a minimum, this proposal should be put on hold until there is certain to be a target. In the mean time, the talk of an "attack on truth and enlightenment" makes me think benefit might come from reading WP:BATTLEGROUND and WP:SOAPBOX, while there is also a clear misunderstanding of WP:NOTABILITY. Agricolae (talk) 18:44, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose -- This article brings together the legendary genealogies of various English royal dynasties, and the syntheses of scholars on them. The target is at present a poor article. This one might be renamed Ancestry of English royal dynasties - not British, as British in this period should be reserved for the Celtic realms of the West. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
• Comment So does our List of monarchs of Mercia page, listing 3 non-kings amongst the early part of it's list. Please fix your own pages before targetting mine so quickly. Paul Bedson ❉talk❉ 22:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Pages don't belong to anyone. See WP:OWN. Agricolae (talk) 22:06, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose: Target of abysmal quality and likely to be deleted. Besides, this isn't a RfM. It's common soapboxing. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:09, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Different merger

Since this was not a formal RfM to begin with, the target is up for AfD and there is a better target anyhow, and the only responses were negative, I have decided to be proactive and Bold and do what should have been proposed at the start, rather that waiting for the mess to get cleared up first (or not, depending on how the AfDs go). From the time I first composed this page, I entertained the possibility of broader coverage (see first post on this Talk page) dealing with all of the Kingdoms. This is particularly the case since half of this page discussed a pedigree claimed in common by the royals of all the Kingdoms. Since that time, someone created such a page which would be the perfect host for such shared material (the lack of which there is being used to justify several newly-created duplicate pages covering the same pre-Woden material as here). I decided that the pre-Woden material went better there than here, and also used some of the general introductory material here to improve that there. That left so little on this page that was Wessex-specific and not duplicated that I decided to just merge the two pages and be done with it. If anyone feels this was a bad idea, it can always be reverted and go through a formal RfM, but I think the newly combined page is better than the two parents. Agricolae (talk) 02:53, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Factual accuracy of Geat in Vespasian B Vi (Lindsey)

Sorry to bother you, but I have to put a on Geat as I can't find mention of him as the original dynast in my sources of Vespasian B Vi (Lindsey). It should read Godulf Geoting. Frank Stenton lists the five kings before Woden differently to us, and I think we should go with modern sources. Barbara Yorke's list shows those five names listed by their last surnames and included (ing) after Geot in the name of the first one. Dr Barbara Yorke (1990). Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England, p. 143. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-16639-3. Retrieved 22 November 2012. Paul Bedson ❉talk❉ 18:52, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

You are telling me that a text saying "Godulf son of Geot" does not name Geot? Anyhow, this is all from Sisam - a scholarly secondary source, and not my interpretation of the text, so don't inject your alternative interpretation of the text into it. Agricolae (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I have told you before, I don't understand your secondary sources because I have all the primary ones. I'm not saying you did anything wrong, we all make mistakes and misinterpret stuff and stand corrected. You've taught me that. I can get majority of secondary sources agreeing with me on this. My Stenton and Yorke beat your Sisam tonight, but I'm sure we'll be back with another House of Cards to tear down soon.

Again, what part of "son of Goet" is unclear to you that you continue to insist that it doesn't name Geot. Agricolae (talk) 01:05, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

You misunderstand, Paul, what wikipedia is. It does not interpret primary sources, it summarizes secondary sources. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:10, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, this whole article really should be in factual dispution because the Kingdom was called West Saxony during the period you are talking about. It wasn't called Wessex until the tenth century. Paul Bedson ❉talk❉ 00:52, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Paul, the kingdom was not called West Saxony or Wessex prior to the 10th century because those are both Modern English forms, while before the 10th century, there was no modern English. Fortunately this encyclopedia is not written in Old English. In Modern English the kingdom that was ruled by Cerdic and his successors is referred to as Wessex. Agricolae (talk) 01:05, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

THis would be why Yorke's book is called Wessex in the Early Middle Ages when she's discussing the period from 400 AD on. Wessex is the term folks used. And it wasn't "West Saxony" it was "West Saxons" ... (as our article on Wessex states quite properly in the first sentence ..."Kingdom of the West Saxons") Ealdgyth - Talk 01:10, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Gah! There you go with the presumption again. I'd have thought that "Saxons" being a plural word might have given you a clue as to why it can't be the name of a singular monarchy or kingdom. Alfred the Great is on record as a King of West Saxony in various, numerous sources I could find. What you're missing out on is that I'm from Britain, at school here we were split up into "Houses". I was a Saxon and I came from West Saxony. If you go to Ethelred's gravestone, or similar ones, you'll see it reads "WEST SAXORUM", the last word of which certainly wasn't plural. Now Alfred was a real king, and if you are going to make an article about mostly legendary kings, you should use the correct terminoligy. Godulf Geoting wasn't a king of Wessex. Paul Bedson ❉talk❉ 16:53, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

This is not an article about legendary kings, but legendary genealogies. Godulf Geoting wasn't king at all. Whether you were a Saxon or a Hufflepuff at school is hardly relevant to the name used by historians to refer to this kingdom. Agricolae (talk) 18:33, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Requested addition of factual information

Now is it okay if I put a genuine copy of the Vespasian B Vi (Lindsey) genealogy up here or do we have to go with your Literary forgery? Paul Bedson ❉talk❉ 17:20, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Articles in Wikipedia should follow secondary sources. This article follows such a source, Sisam, that is not inaccuarate. So no, it is not OK to inject your personal alternative interpretation into it. Agricolae (talk) 18:29, 23 November 2012 (UTC)