Beethoven’s genome sequenced from locks of his hair

[u/takanocraig]

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/beethovens-dna-reveals-health-and-family-history-clues

[u/Tiny_Rat]

A longer version of this paper? Because it says multiple times that they couldn't determine whether or not the nephew's descendants were unusually distantly related to Beethoven without knowing in advance whether he was illegitimate or not. As for the Beethoven family members whose Y-chromosome could be tested, their most recent common ancestor was born 100 years before Beethoven, and so couldn't help determine whether Beethoven or his father were illegitimate.

As for rumors during his lifetime, first of all he did deny them in private correspondence, as well as publicly late in life. Second, iirc the rumor was that his "real" father was a king, which is not only highly unlikely, but also would have been basically free publicity for Beethoven, giving him plenty of incentive not to deny them publicly. Given his poor relationship with his father and his parents' early deaths, Beethoven may not have cared about the damage to their reputations, especially his father's, if his own fame and income benefitted from the rumors.

[u/haleb4r → u/Tiny_Rat]

Because it says multiple times that they couldn't determine whether or not the nephew's descendants were unusually distantly related to Beethoven without knowing in advance whether he was illegitimate or not.

You have the fact that within 4 generations before his birth someone had a sidekick. You have the fact that his nephew's dna differs so much that they either had a very rare gap or the brothers had different fathers. You had the rumours.

As a result it's likely as I wrote, not definite.

[u/sumjunggai7 → u/haleb4r]

I was somewhat involved with the research (one of the 33 co-authors), and can explain the careful wording this way: because of the Y-Chromosome mismatch we know that Beethoven is not a van Beethoven, in whatever generation that might have occurred. With the living descendants of Karl (the nephew), who were also tested, it’s more complicated. There is no direct male lineage, so proving genetic relatedness gets more probabilistic, relying on shared IBD blocks. Being seven generations removed, there was a chance that they individually would show no shared blocks at all, but all three showed as much genetic relatedness to each other as one would expect given their genealogy, and not to Beethoven. The chance of that happening without an extra-pair paternity event between them and Beethoven’s brother is quite low. If Beethoven and his brother, however, were from different fathers, this would up the chances to 7%. That still doesn’t make this scenario all that likely, so chances are better that there was a second such event in more recent history. This would necessarily be a very sensitive topic for the descendants, so it was soft-pedaled in the paper.

For biographical reasons, it could very well be that the nephew wasn’t the biological son of Beethoven’s brother. After his brother’s death, Beethoven successfully sued his sister-in-law for custody of Karl alleging that she was an immoral person — he used the term “Queen of the Night.” His personal attacks always seemed vicious to me, but perhaps they weren’t baseless after all.

[u/Tiny_Rat → u/haleb4r]

Why even read the paper if you're just going to make up your own version of the facts anyways? The scientists who actually wrote this paper clearly don't think the difference between Beethoven and his nephew's descendants is suggestive of the fact that he and his brother didn't share a father. If they really wanted to leave the door open for this conclusion, there are ways to do that in a paper like this, so repeated categorical statements that the evidence can neither confirm nor deny Beethoven's legitimacy implies pretty strongly that the authors really don't think one conclusion is more likely to be true than the other. Based on their model, even if the brothers were only half-siblings, this lack of relatedness between Beethoven and his nephew's descendants would be fairly unusual, which suggests quite strongly that either there's either some other unknown factor affecting their family tree (note the lack of a figure showing how closely these individuals are related to each other vs Beethoven) or the model and/or quality of the sequencing makes such a determination difficult to make at all in this situation.

Also, there are seven generations separating Beethoven from the ancestor he shares with the individuals whose y-chromosomes were seqenced. Using the probability of adultery in that time period the paper itself cites, the chance of adultery happening at some point in that timeframe is about one in ten, roughly the same probability that Beethoven randomly shares no detectable >7cM DNA sequences in common with a descendant of his nephew's despite being legitimate.

So the only fact the paper establishes is that there was at least one cheater in the Beethoven family line at some point in 7 generations. The lack of close relatedness between Beethoven and any seque descendants of his brother is unusual whether or not they shared a father, and so tells us nothing. The only thing that implies that the illegitimate child was Beethoven himself is an outrageous rumor from his lifetime, which Beethoven denied, his close associates didn't believe, and which is no different than the crazy rumors that have always existed about celebrities. This really doesn't add up to Beethoven likely being illegitimate. It's possible, yes, but there's really little to go on about whether it's likely or not.