On 17/06/2017 4:55 PM, taf wrote: > On Friday, June 16, 2017 at 9:54:13 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote: >> In a 2016 article available here: >> >> http://www.irbis-nbuv.gov.ua/cgi-bin/irbis_nbuv/cgiirbis_64.exe?I21DBN=LINK&P21DBN=UJRN&Z21ID=&S21REF=10&S21CNR=20&S21STN=1&S21FMT=ASP_meta&C21COM=S&2_S21P03=FILA=&2_S21STR=kraeznavstvo_2016_1-2_18 >> >> Elena Yasynetska proposed that Maria-Dobronega, the wife of Kasimir I >> the Restorer, duke of Poland, was a daughter of St Boris (a son of St >> Vladimir the Great, prince of Kiev). Incidentally it was suggested that >> Agatha may have been a sister of Maria-Dobronega. >> >> The name Agatha is traced back to the family of the Byzantine emperor >> Romanos Lekapenos, along with St Boris' baptismal name Roman, through >> the latter's mother who is identified as a daughter of Boris II of >> Bulgaria (a great-grandson of Romanos). >> >> The wife of St Boris, the putative mother of Agatha and Maria-Dobronega, >> is supposed to have been descended from emperor Otto I and his English >> wife Eadgyth, through their son Liudolf and his conjectured daughter >> Richlind, duchess of Swabia. > Unfortunate error in the last table. It took me a while to figure out what I was looking at, with Christopher Lekapenos having a brother Christopher Lekapenos, who married Christopher Lekapenos. (The latter couple, of course, are Helena Lekapene and Constantine VII.) It caps the repetition by mistakenly giving the triplicate Christopher the death date of his father (all three times). She does the same thing with Richlind in that last table, repeating her name four times, in a line that is supposed to consist of Otto I, Liudolf, Richlind and (? Adela). It looks like she copied the cells in the table intending to substitute in the other names, then never got around to making the swap (and it doesn't speak well for the editor that something this obvious would not be detected, assuming the PDF represents the final published form). > > I note she also shows Empress Theophanu, wife of Otto II, as daughter of Romanos II, a placement that is very much out of favor. Thanks for explaining, I didn't take further notice of the tables after seeing the generations were weirdly skew-whiff with Richlind as her own daughter, granddaughter, etc - unfortunately this kind of carelessness is not too unusual in Ukrainian publications. It's interesting that some historians are prepared to base theories on the names given for princes of Rus' when these are so often inaccurate, in this case relying on "Odo" being correct but his stated relationship to Roman literally not. I have some shares in the Brooklyn bridge available for anyone who would buy into either side of that. Peter Stewart

As more and more theories of Agatha's origin appear, actual evidence seems to become less of a requirement. In that spirit, I offer a few additional theories of my own, which I think are just as interesting (and perhaps even just as true) as some recent offerings. (I have no idea how many theories have been proposed, and the numbers are pure conjecture.) Agatha Theory #85: Agatha was a daughter of an Armenian Bagratid, which, after accepting a dozen or two "dotted line" conjectural relationships, gives you a DFA. Agatha Theory #86: Agatha was a daughter of the Emperor of Japan, thereby forming an important "gateway" to Japanese royalty. Agatha Theory #88: Agatha was a descendant of Mayan kings who was brought to Europe as a baby on one of Leif Eriksson's return voyages. (After all, the collapsing Mayan cities were only a few thousand miles from where the Vikings landed in America, and why let a few thousand miles get in the way of genealogical guesswork?) Agatha Theory #89: Agatha was a daughter of Godric Gryffindor. (Hogwarts is in Scotland, and Agatha's daughter was Queen of Scotland. Q.E.D.) (The missing number is due to the likelihood that someone else published yet another theory during the time that it took me to type this.) Stewart Baldwin