Genealogy - The Foundation of the Order of the Knights of Rondmons

Genealogy in all its forms...

Everyone has royal blood in their veins!

Excerpted and adapted from "Sexomonarchie" by Henri de Romèges, published by Michel Lafon

Genealogy obeys the following basic rule: if we consider that a couple has an average of two children per generation (30 years), a man (or woman) born in 1950 has 2 children in 1980 and 4 grandchildren in 2010. His father, born in 1920, who also had 2 children, has 4 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren. The theoretical number of descendants is equal to 2 to the power " n " (2ⁿ), " n "being the number of generations. We quickly arrive at some significant figures. For example, a man born around 1700 (10 generations), like Louis XV, theoretically has 1,000 descendants today. A man born around 1600 (14 generations), like Louis XIII, has 16,000 descendants. And a man born around 1500 (17 generations), like François I, has 130,000 descendants. Louis IX (Saint Louis) born in 1214 (over 26 generations) has 67,000,000 descendants, more than the entire population of France in 2020.

This law is obviously thwarted by nature, otherwise the Earth would be populated today by thousands of billions of men... Charlemagne alone would have a thousand billion descendants! Infant mortality, epidemics, wars, emigration and, above all, the union of even distant relatives, considerably reduce this average. Nevertheless, let's do a little actual calculation with our own families, over the 3 generations that precede us, to realize this reality.

The history of monarchies is a long sexual chronicle.

Courts, even before they were organized and codified, have always been lupans. Idleness was the primary cause. The example of the Valois and Bourbons (both descended directly from the branch of Louis IX - Saint-Louis -) is edifying in this respect: it's a contest of adulteries. The monarchs' entourage was not to be outdone: courtiers, favorites, ministers and even servants vied with each other in imagination. Everyone slept with everyone.

The monarchy was not in unison with the people: it was a den of princes and lords living apart, in this area as in many others. A caste apart. This freedom from common rules was also due to the prevailing social order. Just as kings and princes are imbued with their rank, so too are the high nobility. All the high nobility, whether of chivalric extraction, robe or sword, quickly adopted the mentality of this aristocracy, whose ranks they swelled. It's not that they think they can do anything: indeed, they can. Their self-importance, which today seems unbearable, is as much the result of the organization of society as a manifestation of their nature. They are entitled to everything.

It's hardly surprising, then, that they act as they please in their private lives, and throw convention to the wind. The conventions of marriage, starting with the first of these, marital fidelity, were not taken into account by either men or women, since in the majority of cases, unions were merely a matter of convenience. By dint of fornication, they had come to regard sex as the most banal thing in the world. They didn't hide much, nor did they show excessive modesty. Morality and sex were as totally disconnected as love and sex. You'd send a sweet bill at noon to your sweetheart, and you'd send another one at midnight. Historians don't shy away from the subject.

Judgment aside, this addiction was not without consequences. One of the more unusual consequences of these monarchs' sexual follies is that every Frenchman, Belgian, Swiss, Monegasque or any European, in fact, is likely to have a few drops of royal or imperial blood in his or her veins. It's impossible to count the exact number of natural children born of royal liaisons, whether fleeting or lasting. One thing is certain: they are legion.

Two renowned and erudite genealogists, Joseph Valynseele and Christophe Brun, have devoted a book to the descendants of Louis XV 's illegitimate children, "Les Bâtards de Louis XV et leur descendance", Paris, Perrin, 1992. After a meticulous analysis and the elimination of those for whom the slightest doubt remained, they retained only 8 illegitimate children and listed over 500 families descending from them today - i.e. directly from the king by the left hand. In other words, several thousand individuals.

Their estimate, however rigorous, is certainly far below reality, as all historians agree. Louis XV, in fact, slept with hundreds of women, perhaps 1,000, perhaps even more. Our genealogists count only 8 sure natural children (others say twice that number...), because there are corroborating testimonies, and sometimes even written records, concerning them. But 8 children for a man who has known so many women over 40 years is surprisingly few. Admittedly, not all of them became pregnant. Admittedly, infant mortality was very high at the time. But the pill didn't exist either...

Moreover, for Louis XV as for all other sovereigns, many births, especially those resulting from active adventures with "low-class" women, were carefully concealed and rarely recorded. When they were not simply ignored by the interested parties themselves. A girl seduced for one night, or one hour, could disappear into thin air, never to be heard from again. Did Henri IV know that the peasant girl he had spent a few minutes with in a haystack on a French road had given birth to a baby boy nine months later? Did Louis XIV know that the maid he had hastily shagged in a corner of the Château de Saint-Germain had to leave her job six months later because she was pregnant? Was Louis XV aware of all the births that took place after his visits to his private brothel, where virgin girls were reserved for him? His answer is clearly "no".

Louis XV, Henri IV, Louis XIV and Napoleon I, who tells the story, knew nothing about the woman they had briefly held in their arms: neither her identity, nor her origin, nor her situation, nor what had become of her...

But let's face it, Louis XV only had a dozen illegitimate children. And that's just one sovereign. Since Francis I, some fifteen have occupied the French throne. Most have also had numerous bastards. There are officially fifteen known bastards in the case of Henri IV, as many in the case of Louis XV, and ten or so in the case of Napoleon III.

But above all, they all had brothers, sons, cousins and nephews who, like them, collected adventures and mistresses. Over nearly four centuries (1500 to 1870), this population of princes of royal or imperial blood who led the beautiful city numbered in the hundreds. In all, they had thousands of illegitimate children. Hundreds of thousands of families, and therefore millions of individuals, now have royal or imperial blood running through their veins.

These individuals belong to all strata of society, from the highest to the most modest. Indeed, kings and princes were not particular about the social origins of their passions, or even of their favorites: Louis XIV's eldest son, who should have been king had death not taken him before his father, lived with actresses; Louis XV's mistress, the Countess du Barry, née Jeanne Bécu, was the daughter of a servant; the Prince de Condé's companion was a former prostitute; Napoleon III, before becoming emperor, lived with a linen maid, with whom he had two children...

All of them blithely screwed many girls of the common people or petty bourgeoisie, regardless of their origin. The children born of these brief encounters, illegitimate and unrecognized - which is the case for most of them - were not always aware of their parentage: there are many examples of this. Thirty or forty years ago, historian André Castelot unearthed a direct descendant of Louis XIV who was... a cleaning lady.
(end of extract and adaptation from Sexomonarchie)

Moral: (even if there never were, or very few!)

Every European can claim to have Charlemagne's imperial blood in their veins. Every citizen of French descent is mathematically descended from Saint-Louis. In short, everyone has imperial or royal blood... Equality everywhere!

Failing that, everyone can claim a quarter of the nobility of the ancien régime, the unlikely and unexpected legacy of a caste that claimed to hold its power from God, jealously preserved until democracy separated its head from its body. A "Counts' rule" in fact, and a magnificent return on investment for the subjects who would have just as much right to boast about it! A true revolution...