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The page has been tagged now twice with a tag that suggests (without any assertion of on what basis) that the information contained herein is wrong. Please feel free to add any source that has considered the question of the biological paternity of Alexander & Marie of Hesse-Darmstadt and come to any other conclusion that that documented here and in the sources cited. But don't add tags simply on the basis of your general feelings. - Nunh-huh 09:06, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
- My "feelings" are that you are right, and that Alexander and Marie were not the children of Grand Duke Louis II of Hesse-Darmstadt. So clearly I am not relying upon those feelings as the basis of my objections here. An allegation that someone is not the child of his legal father, when that person has not averred such, has always been considered an aspersion, besmirching those who claim descent (and dowries or inheritance) from the legal father, and kinship to his relatives. The paternity of children born during the course of the mother's marriage is established to be the mother's husband unless there is very strong evidence to the contrary, e.g., credible denial of husband's paternity by the mother or by her husband, or lack of physical access of the husband to the mother during gestation, or the husband's documented physical incapacity to father the children in question. The attempt to get around this principle by alleging that what is being asserted in Wiki's article is biological rather than legal paternity simply introduces a tougher, additional (not a substitute) standard: proof of biological parentage. Even if Grand Duke Louis II was not the children's father who, in a position to know, has reliably verified that they were the children of Senarclens? As current reality television programs demonstrate through DNA paternity testing daily, it is quite possible for the mother not to know who the father is, let alone for her (alleged) sexual partners to know, and still less for third parties to be reliable witnesses on paternity. Yet Wiki's Evidence policy stipulates that "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. Any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a reliable source, which should be cited in the article." Note that this policy does not merely call for such allegations to show a source, but the source must be reliable. On that point, Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources states that "Sources should be appropriate to the claims made: exceptional claims require stronger sources." Stronger evidence is called for here in the face of the facts that:
- Persons born in wedlock are presumed to be children of their mother's husband, and unproven allegations to the contrary may constitute libel against the couple's living, legal issue
- No citation has been adduced showing that any of Grand Duchess Wilhelmine's children were ever paternally repudiated by her husband (and he lived until both reached adulthood)
- Neither the mother, nor the children (Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna and Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine, founder and male-line ancestor of the entire House of Battenberg/Mountbatten) are known to have repudiated the Grand Duke's paternity; and
- Marie, Princess of Erbach-Schönberg (née Princess von Battenberg) stated that her father, Alexander, was the son of Grand Duke Louis II in the introduction of her autobiography Reminiscences: Marie of Battenberg, Princess zu Erbach-Schönberg, published 1925 by Allen and Unwin, reprinted in 1996 by Royalty Digest. Lethiere 18:37, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
- It's not that I am right, it's that the cited sources were right. And people don't get to decide who is their biological child, or who their ancestors were. Repudiations and recognition relate to legal paternity, not biological paternity. If you'd like to add a footnote along the lines of "their descendants chose not to believe this" with a footnote to the Schönberg book, go right ahead. Just don't stick a silly tag on. And you're completely off-base on libel. All the children of the married couple in question are dead. You can't libel the dead. - Nunh-huh 20:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
- The parentage of many historical individuals is in question. Wikipedia deals with this by presenting both sides. Quite uniquely, this page does not. In the absence of any DNA eveidence, the sources quoted are conjecture, their authors don't know these individuals biological parentage either. The suspect, possibly correctly, but cannot know. It may well be true; Royal bloodlines are as broken by concealed illegitimacy as anyone else's, and it's an intriguing possibility. But it's not established fact. Quite simply, the page may be factually incorrect. As an alternmative, it could say that Senarclens de Grancy was the possible father of the two children, and quote your sources directly to support that. It must also be acknowledge that all parties denied it. Indisciplined 20:39, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
