Talk:Most royal candidate theory

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This article was nominated for deletion on January 2nd, 2006. The result of the discussion was Keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

Let's try to make this factual: [1] Harold Brooks-Baker was never editor of Burke's Peerage. Simple fact. And he didn't claim to be. What he did was to point out his (nebulous) affiliation with a company purchased from Burke's, and having "Burke's" in its title, and let people assume he was an editor of Burke's Peerage. Burke's 106th edition's preface takes no little trouble to dissociate the name of Burke's Peerage from that of Brooks-Baker. [2] the proposition is demonstrably false, not "brought into question". [3] "The apparent defense against this charge is simply that he who ultimately won is the one most royal.": but that's not what the "theory" says. And who made this "apparent" defense? [4] in fact, it's ludicrous on its face, as no quantitation of "royalness" or even definition of that is associated with it. [5] "Burke never proposed that there was some LaRouchesque conspiracy to fix the Presidential election through secret acts of succession.": why should this be included. There are lots of things Brooks-Baker never proposed. (Burke never proposed anything remotely like this. [6] one could easily make a case that Bush was more royal than Kerry, so 2004 is not "indisputably" an exception. (For that matter, you could make a case that Kerry "won", not that even that would salvage this press-release-masquerading-as-a-serious-theory. - Nunh-huh 06:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Pertinent portions of Brooks-Baker's Telegraph obit:

"Harold Brooks-Baker, who died on Saturday aged 71, was a self-appointed authority on all matters royal: his great advantage for journalists was that he was always available to make an arresting comment; his disadvantage was that he was often wrong.

"He and some associates acquired the rights to a series of spin-off books published by Burke's, Debrett's rival, but not its famous Peerage. Never the less a photograph of him holding a volume was often published. This venture, too, went into liquidation, and he next went in for marketing Scottish feudal baronies. Despite his carefully burnished image, he wrote little, apart from a few book reviews, and edited no books."

"If the tabloids and television continued to quote him, serious newspapers were careful to refer to him as head of Burke's Marketing Limited."

Yes, the Telegraph was pretty anti-Baker...that doesn't prove them to be an objective source.

And the point of the double elections was around for years while Baker continued to espouse the point, so it would make more sense to clarify the definition of the theory than to declare it "disproven" wholesale. What we have here is an obsessive PoV issue on your part with the article, and you're letting your rabid emotion bleed into it when you insist on using such biased wording and stating false absolutes, instead of keeping an NPoV tone in the article. Kaz 18:06, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

If you believe Brooks-Baker edited Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, you're simply wrong. And don't make arguments on Brooks-Baker's behalf that he never made. If you can document that he said "only the last election counts", put it back in the article. Otherwise, it doesn't belong there. - Nunh-huh 02:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd be interested to know if the more royal candidate is more likely to win, which can be established with high-school statistics and a lot of research. Has anyone reputable looked into this? - Miles Gould, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

No, probably because the reputable ones recognize that any operational definition of "more royal" is fairly arbitrary and could be manipulated to produce any results desired. One might define the "more royal" candidate as the one with the largest number of descents from royalty, the most recent royal ancestor (by generation, or by time), the soundest genealogical line to royalty, the greatest number of royally-descended immigrant ancestors, the largest number of grandparents with royal descent, the largest number of greatgrandparents with royal descent, etc. on up the generational chain, or any number of other ways. And for many presidents any of these operational definitions would have to be reckoned as "undefined", because their ancestry is not sufficiently well-known. The "theory" is pretty much something Brooks-Baker made up so he'd have something to issue press releases about, rather than a serious hypothesis. - Nunh-huh 16:18, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Andrew Jackson's royal ancestry?

"Jackson has no known royal descent (in fact, has no known ancestry beyond his great-grandparents!)" This family tree at Rootsweb.com would seem to contradict that statement. If you go further back by clicking on John Vance, then Joanna Montgomery, and then Alexander, it seems that Jackson not only has more known ancestry than three generations back, but that he in fact does have royal ancestry. Does anyone have a more authoritative source like one of Gary Boyd Roberts' books? --Michael White^T·C 00:48, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Never trust a Rootweb family tree. Gary Boyd Robert's Ancestors of American Presidents, p. 12, lists only 6 ancestors of Jackson.

									Thomas Jackson
						Hugh Jackson
									?
			Andrew Jackson, Sr.
									?
						?
									?
Andrew Jackson
									?
						---- Hutchinson
									?
			Elizabeth Hutchinson
									?
						said to be ---- Leslie
									?

No known ancestors beyond Kekule #8. And the ancestors given differ from those in the tree you cite, and do not include any Vances. - Nunh-huh 01:23, 31 December 2006 (UTC)