A silly thing I did as a genealogy writer

When you're working seriously on family-history research, and attempting to blend all the data together in the form of a pleasant book, it's fair enough that the writer should have a little bit of fun.

That typescript sort of exploded little by little in my face. First, I discovered that a young brother of one of my great-grandfathers said his family name was Latton, and pretended to descend from an ancient nobleman. Then I discovered that another great-grandfather said his family name was Courtenay, and also pretended to descend from an ancient nobleman. In both cases, this crazy make-believe gave rise to genuine offspring bearing the fake family names. Talk about my mad ancestors...

The only bit of innocent fun I had as a researcher/writer consisted of looking for proofs that one of my first-known X-great grandfathers (where the X can be replaced by a few dozen "great" terms) was in fact the Norman fellow known as William the Conqueror. At the time, I truly imagined this as a playful item that wouldn't bother anybody. But readers are inevitably impressed by such trivial facts.

Today, after ages of separation, I've just been brought in contact with a much-appreciated Australian cousin. And the first thing he did was to tell me that he was proud to be related to William the Conqueror. Maybe I should have never even mentioned this Norman war-lord in my otherwise serious family-history study.