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One of the biggest issues is that once you go back a few generations (in my case, only one or two), most of our ancestors were farmers. So the further you go back, the fewer records there are. And, of course, the stories are far less dramatic.
Also, the further you try to go back, you run into a few other problems. Going back about 20 generations, or 400 to 500 years, gives you theoretically over 2 million ancestors. That's a bit hard to fit into a family tree, but don't worry! You don't actually have that many ancestors, because you are all inbred to some degree. Far more of your ancestors married their cousins than married a princess or a knight. It was unavoidable when most people were born, lived and died in the same village or parish.
I suppose the parish churches aspired to keep the most meticulous records possible just to ensure that you didn't marry too close of a cousin, and they were probably a bit more successful as the royal families of Europe infamously were. Though no doubt a good deal more successful than the sibling-marrying Egyptian pharaohs. As long as they kept to 3rd, 4th or 5th cousins, or lesser degrees of consanguinity, the risk of genetic issues was minimal. Hell, 1st-cousin marriage is legal in New York to this day (or at least it was when I took the bar exam).
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