Family Resemblances

[Supermac]

It's strange, though, it's difficult to see where Queen Mary's distinctive face that seems so pervasive in the current British Royal Family originates. Her father seems to have similarly elegant features to Queen Mary in her youth (same nose and arrangement of facial features) and her mother seems to have had similar, small eyes when she was younger, although these became larger and more Hanoverian as she got older. I've found it becomes impossible to trace even the most distinctive facial features back through the generations. You either meet dead ends (Prince Philip's nose seems to be only able to be traced back to August von Senarclens de Grancy, for instance, and the Oldenburg baldness gene that has infiltrated the British Royal Family among many others in Europe is untraceable past a certain point - Christian IX - because of wigs and flattering portraits) or the genes become completely dispersed: you'd think something as simple as a nose would be traceable, but going back further and further you find one parents has the same nose tip and the other has the same nose bridge - and then one has the same sort of eyelids and the other as the same brow and the other has the same eyes and before long you've lost track of what you were doing.