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Melissena
Melissena was the granddaughter of a Holy Emperor of Byzantium, Michael
I Rangabe.
In the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire the
Merovingians ruled Gaul completely independent of Papal authority, but
this changed with the Carolingians. For a period beginning with
Charlemagne, the
Kings of the Frankish kingdom
also held the title of Holy Roman Emperor, but required papal sanction
before being crowned. When Charlemagne became emperor though, he
didn't
get his papal seal of approval from Rome - he got it from Michael I
Rangabe, the Eastern Holy Emperor of Byzantium.
Michael Rangabe's anscestry is unclear, but a cursory look
into the genealogy of the royal Byzantines in general shows them to
have been a
mix of
royal
Khazars and Armenians, some Bulgars (the Bulgar Khans descended from
Hunnic kings), with a royal Bagratid appearing here and there.
(The Bagratids are addressed in a post I am working on,
'Georgia and Ex-Caliber'.)
The anscestry of Melissena's grandmother, Michael Rangabe's wife
Procopia on the other hand, is known. She was the
descendant of royal Khazars, Bulgars and Huns.
This
is quite interesting and worth mentioning. On the chart at
the right one can see Bulgar Khans and Hunnic kings in the history of
Procopia's great-grandfather Constantine
V. Constantine's wife was Irene, Princess of the Khazars.
Irene's Khazar Kagan anscestors in turn can
be traced all the way back to the Han Dynasty of China - not
through the Xiongnu as is the case with the Huns, but rather through
Ch'ang-lo, a Xi-Wei Princess and mother of one of the first Khazar
Kagans (!).
Constantine's father, Emperor Leo III, also inherited royal Khazar
blood from his mother Fabia Proba, whose mother in turn is thought to
have been Theodora of the Khazars. This is pretty likely, for
Constantine V's son Leo (not shown) is known as Leo IV "the
Khazar".
When Melissena married Inger the Scandinavian, the Khazar and
Viking
branches of the dragon were (re-)united. This union was
apparently so significant to the
elite of medieval Europe that it was commemorated in myth - the story
of Melusine.
In the myth, Melusine is a beautiful sorceress. She meets a
French noble in the forests of France (he is alternately Raymond de
Poitou, Raymond de Vere, or a Count of Lusignan) and wins his
heart. They marry,
however she insists that he can never enter her chamber on
a Saturday. In truth, Melusine is half serpent, her lower half
actually being twin
serpent or fish-like tails which are revealed on the Sabbath.
Eventually her husband finds out her secret. Melusine is
heartbroken,
transforms herself into a dragon and flies away.
If you like Starbucks Coffee, you have seen her often. The mermaid of
the Starbucks logo is Melusine. She also shows up on the
crests of a couple of towns in Bavaria, such as Isen and Zusamaltheim.
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Isen
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Zusamaltheim
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The myth of Melusine has "dragon" written
all over it and I suspect that her split douple-tail represents the
joining of
the Khazar/Hun and Viking/Frank branches. Some of the important
family houses which were infused with blood from Melissena include (to
varying degrees of certainty)
Hohen, Babenburg, Wittelsbach, Wettin, Brusse
(which later
became the Bruce clan of
Scotland), Arpad and the Varangian Rus rulers of the Ukraine.
I have prepared a simple (and by no means
comprehensive) genealogy chart below which shows some of the
familial relationships I'm about to talk about. I hope the reader
can follow me here, this can get confusing - but it
is very interesting and
important in grasping how the various branches of the dragon
intermingled to shape the aristocracy of medieval Europe and the
British Isles.
I recommend opening the genealogy chart below in a new window so as to
follow along more easily. melissena_genealogy.html
The story begins in the 10th and 11th cenuries and revolves around two
royal families, the Varangian Rus rulers of Kiev (Ukraine),
specifically
Vladimir I and his children, and the Arpad family who
ruled Hungary.
The Arpads are descended from Attila the Hun, and they led the Magyar
tribes of Khazaria. These Magyars along with another Khazarian
tribe, the Kabars, migrated into eastern Europe in the 10th century
settling in Hungary, where the Arpad family became the ruling dynasty.
The Varangian Rus were essentially Vikings from Skaneland (southern
Sweden) who migrated southeast into Russia during the 9th and 10th
centuries, conquering and ruling the Ukraine and other parts of Russia
for many generations. Vladimir is one of the best known 'Grand
Princes of Kiev', and had many wives. One of them was a
descendant of
Melissena, Anna Porphyrogenita Princess of Byzantium (Melissena's
great x3
grandaughter). Melissena and Vladimir can be found in the middle
of the
genealogy chart I have prepared near the top.
Vladimir was very prolific (to say the least), siring around 20
children legitimately
through a half-dozen wives, not to mention illegitimate children, which
must have been many for Vladimir reportedly kept hundreds of concubines
around his kingdom. One of his sons was
Yaroslav "the Wise", who most sources list as the son of Vladimir's
Polotsk wife Rogneda. However, I don't buy it. I believe,
and will continue on the assumtion that, Yaroslav was the son of
Vladimir by his Byzantine wife, Anna Porphyrogenita. (See
at the bottom of the page for arguments in favor of Anna being
Yaroslav's mother.)
After Vladimir's death and just around the time that Yaroslav was
consolidating his power in Kiev, England fell under the Danish rule of
Canute. The Saxon hier to the English throne,
Edward "the Exile", fled to Kiev where he lived under Yaroslav's
protection.
In Hungary in the early 11th century
there was a stretch of eight years when two kings, one a Kabar and one
an Italian with an Arpad mother named Peter Orseolo "the Venetian",
controlled
the Hungarian throne. During this short period Andrew, the Arpad
hier to
the throne, lived in exile in Kiev with two of his brothers (along
with Edward the Exile).
Peter the Venetian proved very unpopular with the nobles of Hungary
(most of whom had lost their positions to make way for Peter's Italian
friends), and the nobles started an uprising. Peter was thrown
out, Arpad rule was restored, and Andrew
returned
to Budapest and ascended the throne. Edward the Exile also moved
to Hungary with his family, probably at the same time.
Edward and his wife Agatha had a
daughter following their move to Hungary, Margaret, who would later
become the Queen of Scotland. More about this world-changing
event in a moment.
There was a riot of royal blood-mixing between important Khazar, Hun,
Viking, Frank and Saxon blood-lines which followed these events,
coinciding with the rise in importance of various ruling houses of
Germania. Many of these houses can be traced back to
Melissena through the Rus rulers of Kiev and the Arpad leaders of
Hungary. Additionally, this same blood
found its way into the veins of the subsequent rulers of Scotland and
England.
For starters, Yaroslav's sister, Arlogia Vladimirovna of Russia, who
was also I believe a daughter of Anna Porphyrogenita (see arguments at
the bottom of the page) married Rognvald
Brusse, the Earl of Orkney. Two
generations later their grandson Robert II Le Brusse married Agnes St.
Clair, adding the blood of Rollo the Viking's line into the mix.
The Brusses would later
rule Scotland under the name Bruce and, after Marjorie Bruce, the
daughter of
Robert I the Bruce (the confidant of William Wallace and a central
figure
in the movie
'Braveheart') married Walter Stewart, the combined Bruce/Stewart rule
of Scotland proceded under the Stewart family name. (Middle of
the chart.)
Vladimir I's son Yaroslav the Wise had 3
daughters. One he
married off to Harald III of Norway, another to Henry the king of
France, and
a third, Anastasia, married Andrew I King of Hungary.
While Vladimir's son Yaroslav was marrying his daughters to royals of
Europe, Danish rule in England came to an end and Edward the Exile
and his family
returned
to England with a few Hungarian royals in
tow. Edward was immediately killed (undoubtedly by a
competitor for
the throne). Nine years later Duke William of Normandy conquered
England and Margaret and her entourage fled to Scotland, where
Margaret married king Malcom III. They had a daughter,
Matilda, who married King Henry I of England (son of William
the Conqueror), as well as a son, David I, who inherited the Scottish
throne.
Hunnic/Magyar blood flowed
generously into the royal houses of Europe from the
Arpads, and often was mixed with the Byzantine/Khazar blood of
Melissena which the Arpads received from their Rus cousins. The
Germanic houses of Hohenstaufen, Brunswick,
Babenburg, Wittelsbach,
Wettin and Hapsburg all intertwine
with the Arpads through three Hungarian princesses, Elizabeth, Sophia
and Ilona. Elizabeth
Arpad married Frederick Przemyslide of
Bohemia whose mother was a Babenburg. They had a daughter,
Ludmilla, who married Ludwig I Wittelsbach
of Bavaria. Ludwig I was in turn the descendent of Sophia Arpad,
Princess of Hungary, through his ancestor Otto IV Wittelsbach, as well
as being descended from Melissena through Frederick I Duke of Swabia
(the
grandfather of Frederick I "Barbarossa", the first Holy Roman Emperor
of Germania). Ludmilla and Ludwig's son Otto II
married Agnes Welf of Saxony, another link which traces back to
Frederick "Barbarossa" (and by extension Melissena), to Henry "the
Lion" who started the house of Brunswick, and to Henry's wife Matilda
who was the granddaughter of Malcom and Margaret, King and Queen of
Scotland.
Hey, if you think it's tough following along, imagine trying to sort it
out in the first place ... the intermarrying between these families
was nothing less than incestuous!!!
Anyway, Otto II Wittelsbach's marriage to Agnes Welf of Saxony
effectively merged the combined Arpad/Wittelsbach bloodlines
with those of Margaret and the houses of Brunswick and Hohenstaufen.
Meanwhile, yet another Hungarian princess Ilona married Leopold
V of Austria, combining the Arpad line with that of Babenberg (far
right on the chart).
Along the way this bloodline merged with that of Wettin, and finally
Frederick II de Wettin married Matilde von Wittelsbach effectivedly
merging all of these branches together (and there are undoubtedly other
routes by which all these lines mix and merge - again, the
intermarrying
was
incestuous). One big happy (when they weren't fighting...),
family.
The Arpads connect to Vladislov's ruling house of Kiev through one
other marriage, Yaraslov's son Vsevolod I (who became Grand Prince) to
Anastasia of Byzantium (she was known by other names as well, such as
Maria von Byzanz, or, get this, Irina Maria Theodora Monomakh
(!?!)). Anastasia was the daughter of Constantine IX and
was a Byzantine princess. Anastasia and Vsevolod's
granddaughter Euphrosyne later married Geza II, tying the royal Kievan
Rus to the Arpads by this additional thread, and their children included Ilona and
Elizabeth Arpad, who married into German royal houses as detailed
above.
It would have been beyond my wildest expectations were it to turn out
that
this Byzantine princess Anastasia was somehow connected to Melissena,
and I was almost sure it wouldn't be so, for I have poured over the
available genealogies of all of Melissena's close descendants and I
knew
pretty much what names are in there. Then I discovered
something, the possiblity of which had never occured to me ...
Melissena had a sister (!). Sure enough, Anastasia of
Byzantium was descended from Melissena's sister, Procopius, whose
genealogy I will offer in an addendum to this post.
A few words about George, one of three sons of Andrew I King of
Hungary. Most
sources fail to even mention him for some reason - go look up Andrew I
of Hungary
on Wikipedia, his children are listed as Adelaide, Solomon and
David. No George. In fact, good luck finding much about
George anywhere. Why? Could it be because George was
unimportant? Quite the contrary!
George accompanied Margaret to Scotland and begat the
Drummond clan. (Nearly all sources show George's son Maurice
being the patriarch of the Drummonds, but George did indeed travel to
Scotland with Margaret, in fact Maurice would have been only a small
boy
when Margaret and her entourage arrived in Scotland.) The
Drummonds married later into the Scottish royal family (James I of
Scotland was the son of Robert III the Bruce and Annabella Drummond
- see chart) while becoming a
prominant banking family in Britain.
Since Andrew I Arpad's wife Anastasia (I'm speaking of Yaroslav's
sister, not Vsevolov's wife) was the granddaughter of
Anna Porphyrogenita of Byzantium, their son George inherited the
blood of Melissena through her ... and since the Varangian Rus
were essentially Vikings and
since the Arpads were Huns, George carried a full compliment of royal
Viking, Hun and Khazar dragon-blood. Keep that in mind and
contemplate this ... roughly around the period when George and Margaret
showed up in the British Isles, the flags of
England and Scotland were established. (I do mean roughly, the Scottish flag wasn't
established until the following century.) A red cross on
white was chosen for the flag of England while a white saltire
cross on blue became the flag of Scotland, the two of which would
eventually be combined into the "Union Jack" of Great
Britain. The flags of England and Scotland are known respectively
as - the Cross
of St.
George and the
Cross
of St. Andrew.
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Cross
of St. Andrew
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Cross
of St. George
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original
Union Jack
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Get it?
(NOOOooooh!!!???)
Officially, the
Cross of St. George is named for St. George the dragon slayer while the
Cross of St. Andrew is named for St. Andrew, the disciple of John the
Baptist and Jesus. However King Andrew of Hungary and his son
George were also undoubtedly named for these two saints, and the timing
of the appearance of the flags is conspicuous. No one can say for
sure, but if the flags of England and Scotland were actually named in
honor of the Arpads George and Andrew, it is maybe the best kept secret
of all time.
I honestly can't remember, but credit for this discovery
should probably be accredited to "John", the somewhat anonomous author
of a book
entitled 'Tracking Ladon Gog and the Hebrew Rose', who is a verifiable
genius IMO with regard to untangling the (dragon) roots of the
elite.
Another of John's discoveries, which I will close this post with, is
absolutely mind-blowing. I hope you stick with me long enough to
enjoy
it. (Obviously, it won't be as enjoyable if you cheat!)
Another big marriage in the history of Europe's elite was that between
Theophanu of Byzantium, another close
descendant of Melissena, to Otto II of Saxony, a Holy Roman
Emperor. Otto II was
the son of Otto "the Great" and the grandson of Henry "the Fowler", who
connect back to the Saxon kings of England and the Carolingian
Franks. Their descendant,
Hildegarde of Swabia married Frederick III von Buren, and their
grandson Frederick II in turn married Judith Welf of Bavaria.
(Judith was the granddaughter of Sophia Arpad and her nephew Henry "the
Lion" started the House of Brunswick.)
Frederick "Barbarossa" von Hohenstaufen was their son and a Holy
Emperor and, this is
what I
find really interesting, Frederick's son Heinrick VI married
Constance de Hauteville, who was the daughter of a Templar, Roger II of
Sicily (!). Roger II is allegedly the namesake of the
"Jolly Roger", the skull and crossbones flag which became the well
recognised symbol of piracy, and Roger's father, Roger I Guiscard, is
central to the mythical origins of the skull and crossbones symbol and
its significance to the Templar Knights. (This is explained
in 'Uroko' - with great relish. :)
Roger in turn was, believe it or not, a direct descendant of Rollo the
Viking (!)
through Fredesende of Normandy, the daughter of Richard I "the
Fearless" (left side of chart). And, if you look toward the
center-right of my chart, you will see that Bela III, King of Hungary
and brother
to Elizabeth and Ilona Arpad, married Ann de
Chatillon-sur-Loing. Ann de Chatillon-sur-Loing was a close
descendant
of
Robert I Guiscard of Hauteville, Fredesende of
Normandy's son and an uncle of Roger I.
Absolutely incestuous.
OK, enough genealogy. There is something interesting about the
ruling houses which
inherited Khazar
blood from Melissena - the coats of arms of a conspicuous number of
them are blue and
white. Check out the crest of Wittelsbach for example, or the
flag of Bavaria, both similar and both blue and
white. The crest of the house of Lusignan is blue and white and,
while I haven't been able to tie the Lusignans to Melissena directly,
they are implicated in the myth of Melusine. The crest of the
German branch of the Drummond clan features blue and white wavy bars,
and the crest of the Leslie clan, another Scottish noble family whose
patriarch is yet another royal Hungarian who accompanied Margaret to
Scotland (Bartholemew Ladislav) is blue and white as well. The
most startling of all these is the crest of the Vlad family, which I
assume connect to Vladimir I of Kiev (for various reasons), the
implications of which are significant enough that I intend to devote a
whole post to it. (When you see it you'll understand why.)
So
were blue and white the school colors of the Hungarian Arpads?
The Kievan Rus? - Nope. It turns
out that this color theme apparently derives from Melissena's
grandfather.
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Coat
of Arms of
Michael I Rangabe
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St.
Margaret's Chapel,
Edinburgh
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The coat of arms of Michael I Rangabe
features a white cross on a blue
background with small Greek letters placed in the four quandrants
separated by the cross. A near duplicate of his crest shows up in
a peculiar place ... in St. Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh, where
there is a stained glass image of Margaret, Queen of Scotland.
Above her head is the same white cross on a blue background with
small white
birds arranged in the 4 quadrants (a minor variation from
Michael
Rangabe's crest).
This clue, if you ask me, goes
a
long way toward answering one
of the mysteries of medieval genealogy - who was Queen Margaret's
mother?
Margaret's mother is known only as Agatha - various theories
identifying
her as German, Polish, Bulgar, Hungarian or Rus have been
proposed. Since Margaret's father was a Saxon of the English
royal family and there's
no way she could have inherited the blue and white cross shown
above her head in the Edinburgh chapel from him, she had to get it
from her
mother. I propose that Agatha, mother of St. Margaret Queen of
Scotland, had Khazar blood in her veins. Since the
cross in St. Margaret's church and the cross of
Michael I Rangabe are almost identical (right down to the fleur-de-lis
tips of the cross), one is tempted to assume that Michael I Rangabe
lied somewhere in
the ancestry of Margaret's mother.
I should note that the precious Khazar blood which Melissena passed
on to the Brusses, the Hohenstaufens, the Varangian Rus and other
lines
did not
necessarily come from her grandfather, Michael Rangabe. It
could have come from her grandmother Procopia,
for she would have shared her husband's crest.
Indeed, as I showed above, Procopia descended from a long line of
Khazar Kagans (kings).
There's one other place where this blue/white theme shows up which
shouldn't be overlooked - the coat of arms of Cohen, which features
blue and white checks. This to me is pretty good
confirmation that what made Melissena's line
significant were her royal Khazar ancestors, simply because the name
Cohen
is in fact an alteration of Kagan. 'Kagan' in Khazaria meant
'King'.
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German
Cohen family crest
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Hohen
family crest
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Stewart
family crest
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I mention in 'Uroko' that the royal houses of Stewart and Hohen are
offshoots of the house of Cohen, as evidenced
by their coats of arms. The Stewart crest features the same blue
and white checks as does the Cohen crest, pointing to Khazar Kagans
somewhere in their family history. Stewart was not originally
the family name actually, it was a hereditary title, the High "Steward"
of
Scotland, which was first awarded to a Walter FitzAlan of Brittany.
Walter FitzAlan came to England to support Margaret's granddaughter
Matilda's claim to the English throne during 'The Anarchy', a period of
civil war in England caused by a dispute of succession between Matilda
and her cousin Stephen.
(Matilda was married to Henry "the Lion" of the House of Brunswick as I
have mentioned.) Matilda lost out to Stephen, but her son Henry
was named
Stephen's successor (as per the Treaty of Wallingford), and Walter
FitzAlan, for
his efforts, was named the first High Steward of Scotland by King David
I, Margaret's son.
Hooold on there a minute, king David!??
David, a Hebrew name, would have been a very unusual choice for the son of
an 11th century Scottish king ... but not necessarily so for the son of
a
Scottish queen with Khazarian roots, further evidence that Margaret had
some Khazar blood in her. AND, this dovetails perfectly with the
implications of the blue and white Cohen checks of the Stewart crest,
for if the families of both David I and Walter FitzAlan shared common
roots in Khazaria, it could explain why Walter fought for Matilda's
cause and
why David invented the office of High Steward to thank him.
(Note: Andrew I of Hungary also named one of his sons David, and there
is a plausible theory, explained at the bottom of the page, that would
make Andrew the nephew of Agatha, Margaret's mother.)
... On to the Hohens. There were several branches of the house of
Hohen, the Hohenbergs, the Hohenzollerns, and the very important
Hohenstaufens, three of whom were crowned Holy Roman
Emperor. The
Hohen coat of arms features red checks instead of blue, but is
otherwise
identical to the Cohen crest and the names Hohen and Cohen are a near
match.
But for the longest time I was at a loss as to specifically how the
house of Hohen (or for that matter Stewart - a puzzle I fear I will
never crack)
got its "Cohen" checks. Nothing in the genealogy trees I
looked over gave any indication of a connection ... or so I
thought. Finally
it hit me - Melissena was the
link. Frederick "Barbarossa" got his Khazar blood from his
great-grandmother
Hildegarde of Swabia, who was a direct descendant of Melissena.
But, Melissena wasn't a Jewish Cohen, was she? I mean, for
heaven's sake her grandfather was a Holy Emperor of the Christian
Church
of Byzantium, right???
She was descended from Kazarian KAGAN's, and through her so was
Frederick Barbarossa, a "Holy Roman Emperor".
There's the rub!!!! Kagan = Cohen! Forget about religious
affiliation. With regard to the ruling elite, don't
think
"Jewish" when you read the name Cohen ... think Kagan, "King".
As promised, I saved a little treat for last, a discovery by "John",
author of 'Ladon Gog'.
John has stumbled on to the (very plausible) notion that a handful of
important royal houses of medieval Germania (most of
which have already been introduced in this post) are represented in the
characters of a
well-loved Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon ... the Flintstones (!!!).
The
clues lie in the similarity of names, correllations between the
colors
of the characters' outfits and the
coats of arms of the respective houses, and alliances. Fred
mirrors the house of Hohen (Frederick I and Frederick II being two
Hohenstauffen emperors), Wilma that of Flanders, while Barney
represents the house of Brunswick. Betty mirrors
the house of Wettin (and maybe the house of Wittelsbach as well, which
was closely related to that of Wettin and the family crest of which is
blue and white like Betty's outfit), Bam-Bam represents
the house of Babenburg, while Pebbles is probably the house of Babel
and/or Baden.
Also note that Fred and Barney are masons - members of the
Water-buffalo lodge.
So somebody in-the-know in Southern California before the 1960 debut of
the Flintstones, not unlike the myth-writers of ancient Greece, thought
it
might be fun to immortalize the Germanic houses in which Melissena's
Khazar blood mixed with that of the Franks, Huns and Vikings in a
cartoon.
Who'd a thunk?
Notes on
the maternal parentage of Yaroslav "the Wise":
Vladimir married Rogneda around 980 - the story of their marriage is
quite shocking. Vladimir heard that Rogneda was betrothed
to his half-brother, Yaropolk I, and decided he wanted her for
himself. So he invaded Polotsk, raped Rogneda in front of her
parents, killed her family and took her home with him.
In 988 Vladimir took his next wife, Anna Porphyrogenita, a Byzantine
princess. Upon his marriage to Anna, Vladimir converted to
Christianity and divorced his other wives, probably a condition of the
union, and had the entire population of Kiev baptised in the Dneiper
river.
Nestor the Chronicler placed Yaroslav's birth at 978, a full 10 years
before Vladimir's marriage to Anna, a date which has is widely
accepted. However, Nestor was biased against Greek influence in
Kiev and some have argued that Nestor purposely omitted any information
from his Chronicles which reflected Kievan-Byzantine ties. This
included misrepresenting the year of Yaroslav's birth to fit with him
being a son of Rogneda. Nestor slips up though, referring at one
point to Yaroslav as being 28 when he ruled Novgorod, This would
have been at the year 1016, placing Yaroslav's birth in
988.
Furthermore,
Yaroslav's
bones were tested and dated, and the results were that Yaroslav was
born sometime between 988 and 990, in agreement with the later date and
which would have
been after Vladimir's
divorce from Rogneda and marriage to Anna.
The names of Yaroslav's children also point to Anna Porphyrogeneta
having been his mother. While Yaroslav's sons all took Slavic
names including his eldest son Vladimir named for Yaroslav's father,
his daughters all bear Greek names, one of them Anna, which would make
perfect sense if Yaroslav's mother were in fact Anna
Porphyrogenita.
Daughters
of Yaroslav:
Anastasia
Elizabeth
Anna
Sons of
Yaroslav:
Vladimir
Izyaslav
Sviatoslav
Vsevolod
Igor
Vyacheslav
Agatha:
The most persuasive hypothesis for Agatha's identity I have read has
her as being a daughter of Vladimir and full-sister of
Dobronega, by Vladimir's last wife Ragneda of Ohningen. Ragneda
Ohningen was the niece of Holy Roman Emperor Otto II of Saxony,
satisfying the condition whereby Agatha is noted as having been related
to the Emperor ("filia germani imperatoris Henrici"). Another
clue to Agatha's identity comes in the form of Geoffrey Gaimar's
statement in Lestoire des Engles that Agatha was a daughter of the king
and queen ("Li reis sa fille") and places her marriage
to Edward at a time when he is still thought to have been in
Kiev, while William of Malmesbury states in De Gestis Regis Anglorum
that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary ("reginae sororem").
There are other clues which contradict these, but some of
the confusion may have arisen because Vladimir died only a few years
after marrying Ragneda. Had Agatha been Vladimir's daughter by
Ragdena it is likely that she would have been raised in the household
of Vladimir's son, Yaroslav. One of Yaroslav's daughters was
Anastasia who indeed became king Andrew of Hungary's wife and queen,
and if Agatha were mistaken for a daughter of Yaroslav rather than his
Aunt, this could explain the "reginae sororem" entry as well as some of
the confusion surrounding Agatha's parentage.
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Fresco
of Yaroslav's daughters in St. Sophia's Cathedral in Kiev
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In the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev there is a fresco of the daughters
of Yaroslav - but four girls appear in the fresco ... Yaroslav
had
only three daughters, Elizabeth, Anastasia and Anna. Could the
mystery girl be Agatha, mother of
Margaret?
The proposed genealogy above wouldn't result in Khazar blood from
Melissena flowing into Margaret, for Ragneda of Ohningen doesn't
connect directly to any of Melissena's descendants, nor does
Vladimir. However Vladimir's son Yaroslav does connect to
Melissena though his mother
Anna Porphyrogenita, as does Ragneda of Ohningen's uncle Otto II of
Saxony
through his wife Theophanu. Close - and maybe close enough to
explain the Rangabe white cross on blue shown above Margaret's head in
her chapel in Edinburgh.
Arlogia:
Arlogia, the wife of Rognvald Brusse Earl of Orkney and one of
Vladimir's
many daughters, also appears to have been a
child of Anna. Some sources claim that
Arlogia, like
Yaroslav, was a daughter of Vladimir's Polotsk wife Rogdena, but this
is clearly erroneous, as Arlogia was born a full 20 years after
Vladimir divorced Rogdena. Two sources I like both
list
Arlogia as Anna's daughter.
http://fabpedigree.com/s045/f820541.htm
http://www.genfan.com/getperson.php?personID=I29090&tree=MASTER
(The 'Anna Lekapene' listed as Arlogia's mother in the second link is
in fact Anna Porphyrogenita. Porphyrogenita just meant "born in
purple", i.e. of royal birth.)
It is known that Vladimir, who died
in 1015,
survived Anna by four years, so this would mean Anna died around the
year
1011, also the year often cited as that of Arlogia's birth. Could
it be that Anna died giving birth to
Arlogia??? I'm no expert on this stuff, but it seems like a real
possibility to me.
I find it
interesting that the names Rogdena, (Vladimir's wife prior to Anna
Porphyrogenita) and Ragneda (Vladimir's last wife) are similar.
Some sources have Arlogia (rather than Agatha) being a daughter of
Ragneda, Vladimir's last wife. Could this be a source of
confusion pertaining to the parentage of
Arlogia, leading some
sources to claim that she was the daughter of Vladimir's earlier wife
Rogdena?
This is all very muddled and frustrating - but I tend to go with
Arlogia being a daughter of Anna Porphyrogenita - not just because two
genealogy sites I trust agree on the point, but also because the Brusse
family into which she married rose to such dominance in Scotland and,
interestingly, adopted a blue and white crest.
http://www.houseofnames.com/fc.asp?sId=&s=brusse
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Uroko. All rights reserved.
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