Seize Quartiers

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Seize Quartiers are literally a person's "sixteen quarters", the coat-of-arms of their sixteen great-great-grandparents, which are typically accompanied by a five generation genealogy outlining the relationship between them and their descendant. They were used as a proof of nobility ("the proof of the Seize Quartiers") in Continental Europe beginning in the seventeenth century and achieving their highest prominence in the eighteenth. For example, Frederick the Great was known to study the Seize Quartiers of his courtiers. They were less common in the British Isles, although seventeenth-century Scottish examples are known to exist. Now their use is generally limited to genealogical and antiquarian circles.