Seraphina's Maternal Royal Ties
Cholmondeley Castle, England
Cholmondeley Castle is a country house in the civil parish of Cholmondeley, Cheshire, England. Together with its adjacent formal gardens, it is surrounded by parkland. The site of the house has been a seat of the Cholmondeley family since the 12th century. The present house replaced a timber-framed hall nearby. It was built at the start of the 19th century for George Cholmondeley, 1st Marquess of Cholmondeley, who designed most of it himself in the form of a crenellated castle. After the death of the Marquess, the house was extended to designs by Robert Smirke to produce the building in its present form. The house is designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building.
Proto-Illyrian Bronze Age Croatia Bezdanjaca Cave- 1150 BC
mtDNA: T2b11
Y-DNA: I2a1a2b1a1 (CTS5966)
Closest Ancient: Scythian + Gepid
Closest Modern: Austrian
Formation of I2a1a2b1a1 (CTS5966) – 1240 BCE
Descendants: 6,192
Royal Ties: House Cholmondeley
Y-DNA: I2a1a2a1a2
Byzantine Period Outlier Marmara Ilipinar Anatolia - 750 AD
mtDNA: W6
Y-DNA: I2a1a2b1a1
Genetic Match: White Croat
Closest Modern: South Polish
Formation of I2a1a2b1a1 (CTS5966) – 1240 BCE
Descendants: 6,192
Royal Ties: House Cholmondeley
Y-DNA: I2a1a2a1a2
New Slains Castle (Scotland)
Slains Castle, also known as New Slains Castle to distinguish it from the nearby Old Slains Castle, is a ruined castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It overlooks the North Sea from its cliff-top site one kilometre (5⁄8 mile) east of Cruden Bay.
The core of the castle is a 16th-century tower house, built by the 9th Earl of Erroll. Significant reconstruction of the castle has been carried out a number of times, lastly in 1837 when it was rebuilt as a Scots Baronial mansion. At one time it had three extensive gardens but is now a roofless ruin. Plans to restore the castle have been on hold since 2009. It is a Historic Environment Scotland Category B listed building. The castle is mentioned in two locally set novels written by Bram Stoker, The Watter's Mou' and The Mystery of the Sea.
Scythian Ukraine - 600 BC
mtDNA: J2b1a6
Y-DNA: R1b1a1b1a1a2b1 (L2/S139)
Genetic Match: Scythian
Closest Modern: East German
Formation of R1b1a1b1a1a2b1 (L2/S139) – 570 CE
Descendants: 110
Royal Ties: Clan Hay (Scotland)
Y-DNA: R1b1a1b1a1a2b1
Carvajal Castle (Spain)
The palace of Carvajal is a building located in the monumental city of Cáceres, in Spain.
The lineage of the Carvajal came to the city in the fifteenth century from Plasencia and build their palace next to the most important religious building in the city: the Cathedral of Santa María. Due to a fire that took place in the 19th century, it is also known as the burned house . Currently used as the headquarters of the Board for the promotion of tourism and crafts in the province of Cáceres
The curse of Carvajal Palace contains all of the injustice and superstition a good medieval curse should. The story begins with two brothers of the noble Carvajal family, Juan and Pedro Alfonso. During the reign of King Ferdinand IV of Castile and Leon, there were rumours of the king and his favourites weeding out those nobles who stood opposed to the king’s plans and then either disgracing them or simply murdering them.
When one of the king’s favourites, Juan Alfonso de Benavides, was discovered by the Carvajal brothers to be building a case against them, a fight ensued which resulted in Benavides’s death. The brothers claimed they had done so in self-defence and pleaded their innocence right up until the moment of their death, which was especially gruesome due to King Ferdinand’s outrage at the death of one of his favourites. The king ordered that the brothers be thrown from the top of the tower in the Carvajal palace, into an iron cage filled with spikes on the inside.
Just before they fell to their deaths, the brothers declared their innocence once again and cursed Ferdinand to submit himself to the judgement of god within thirty days. Of course, the 30-day period was not over before the king of Castile and Leon fell down dead. Since then, the Carvajal family crest has had a mournful black diagonal band across its family crest, which was golden before the death of these two brothers.
Gleb Svyatoslavich Prince of Novgorod Rurik Dynasty - 1078 AD
mtDNA: H5a2a
Y-DNA: I2a1a2b1a1a2
Closest Ancient: Scythian + Early Slav
Closest Modern: Polish
Formation of I2a1a2b1a1a2 – 270 BCE
Descendants: 547
Royal Ties: Carvajal Castle (Spain)
Y-DNA: I2a1a2a1a1a
Kreisau Castle (Poland)
Kreisau Castle (Pałac w Krzyżowej ) is a castle in Krzyżowa in the rural municipality of Świdnica in the Świdnica County ( Powiat Świdnicki ) in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship in Poland.
The castle was built around 1720 on behalf of Sigismund von Zedlitz und Leipe. After 1772, the von Dresky family purchased the castle, from whom Helmuth von Moltke acquired it in 1867. In 1891, the property passed to his nephew Wilhelm von Moltke, the grandfather of Helmuth James Graf von Moltke . From 1940 onwards, members of the resistance group "Kreisau Circle" met at the castle; most of them were executed in the spring of 1945. Following the cession of Silesia to Poland as a result of the Potsdam Agreement, the castle was nationalized in 1945.
As early as the 1970s, members of the Breslau "Club of Catholic Intelligentsia" contacted Freya von Moltke to establish a memorial to the "Kreisau Circle" within the castle. On November 12, 1989, a reconciliation mass was held.
In the spring of 1998, the International Youth Meeting Center was opened in the restored estate.
Izjaslav Ingvarevych Prince of Dorogobuzh Rurik Dynasty - 1223 AD
mtDNA: H7
Y-DNA: R1a1a1b1a1a1c1h
Closest Ancient: Kievan Rus + Early Slav
Closest Modern: Ukrainian
Formation of R1a1a1b1a1a1c1h – 120 BCE
Descendants: 82
Royal Ties: House von Moltke
Y-DNA: R1a1a1b1a1a1c1
Melville Castle (Scotland)
Melville Castle is a three-storey Gothic mansion situated less than 2 km west-south-west of Dalkeith, Midlothian, near the North Esk.
The castle originally dates back as far as 1155, when it was owned by the Sheriff of Edinburgh and Governor of Edinburgh Castle, Galfrid de Malle. From there, the estate remained in his family until it was passed to Sir John Ross of Halkhead in 1371. The Ross family would continue to run the estate for several generations afterwards. The castle was then bought by Rennie (Rannie), who had made his money overseas in Asia, but unfortunately died a few years after returning, and the Castle was inherited by Elizabeth Rennie, his daughter, who married Henry Dundas at the age of 14 years, and he received the castle through marriage. They divorced in 1780, and the Tower Castle was demolished to ground level in that year.
The present castle was designed in 1786–1791 by James Playfair for Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville. The castle remained in the ownership of the Dundas family until after the Second World War, when the ninth Lord Melville moved to a smaller house on the estate and the castle was leased as an army rehabilitation centre, and then later as a hotel. It was owned by an American couple and then a Norwegian couple. By the early 1980s, the hotel fell into disrepair and was unoccupied. In the late 1980s, the estate and the adjoining farms were sold, but remained closed.
In 1993, the castle was purchased by the Hay Trust, which extensively restored the property over an eight-year period. The castle was reopened as a hotel in June 2003.
Kievan Rus - 1130 AD
mtDNA: W3a1
Y-DNA: I2a1a2b1a1a1a1c (A16681)
Genetic Match: Kievan Rus
Closest Modern: South West Russian
Formation of I2a1a2b1a1a1a1c (A16681) – 190 CE
Descendants: 15
Royal Ties: Melville Castle (Scotland)
Y-DNA: I2a1a2a1a1b3a1