Template talk:Wars of the Roses family tree

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Biography

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Reversion

If you don't like it (which I am 100% ok with!), can it be fixed without wholesale reversion? I'm trying to be bold. —GoldRingChip 15:03, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I do like it and I think a use can be found for it in some articles, though most individual biographies are probably better off with custom-tailored charts. However, I have one major concern about the template: it fails to indicate birth order among siblings. Normally, an older sibling is to the left of the younger sibling, so in this template it looks like Edmund of Langley was Edward III's eldest son. Illustrating birth order is essential for understanding this topic. Surtsicna (talk) 15:12, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the birth order is all wrong here. I wish it could be fixed, but with so many people and inter-marriages, it was just too difficult. —GoldRingChip 20:41, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It must be fixed, even if it means sacrificing something else. It is crucial. Surtsicna (talk) 21:19, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Birth order left/right

(Continuing from above)

Is it important to order siblings' birth order from left (first) to right (last)? I've put a notice on the template, (Birth/age order not indicated by left-right order.) in case readers expect it. There are some cases where it's nearly impossible to use the left-right order. This template mostly places York on one side and Lancaster on the other, with the Nevilles in between. Using left-right birth order would over complicate that. There are also cases in which siblings are put on different lines because they married different generations; for example: Edward of Norwich and Richard of Conisburgh, are brothers but 2 vertical levels apart because Richard married his uncle's great granddaughter. How do we prioritize? —GoldRingChip 22:28, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Birth order must be the highest priority. It is indeed tremendously challenging to create an accurate and comprehensive genealogy chart that would cover two centuries of intermarriage. It may even be impossible. I certainly gave up on it. But if it is not possible, we should probably settle for smaller, case-by-case charts. Surtsicna (talk) 22:34, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest starting from the tree I created at Edward IV (while keeping the birth order, of course). Perhaps you will be able to go further than I could. Surtsicna (talk) 22:37, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Let's see if I can do it. I'm working on it in my sandbox. —GoldRingChip 21:04, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You've achieved it! Now I wonder if the Neville connection between the Lancasters and the Yorks can be restored by moving Cecily further down. Surtsicna (talk) 11:47, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Can't be done without horribly confusing the chart. Just to make the birth order work (which I think is unnecessary), I had to make the chart very confusing with crossed lines. It would be impossible to indicate Cecily's marriage to Richard Plantagenet without making things worse. —GoldRingChip 13:45, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, if I were to do that, it would be logical and even more cumbersome to indicate the Kingmaker's paternity of George Plantagenet's and Richard III's wives. —GoldRingChip 13:45, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As it is, I'm getting understandable blow-back from my changes that messed up the simplicity of the old chart. —GoldRingChip 13:45, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Overall I think the new template is a great improvement - the old version was misleading with names not being arranged by order of birth, and removing borders where that are not needed, and using different shaped borders to mark kings makes thing a lot clearer too. It would be helpful to also use some other marker (such as L/Y/C or dagger/double-dagger/hashtag) to indicate allegiances as colour alone can be difficult for some users. I have tried working in my sandbox on how to include the Neville women with their connecting lines, it can be done, but there are numerous long lines across the table, notably for Cecily, which I feel some editors would probably object to in favour of having a more simple table. A possible solution may be to add footnotes for these marriages if this would allow for a chart that is easier to read. EdwardUK (talk) 21:38, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sandbox

Let's work on it collaboratively at Template:Wars of the Roses family tree/sandbox, and continue discussing here. —GoldRingChip 12:53, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Good job with Cecily, and I've straightened out Richard Plantagenet.
I agree that color is insufficient, but I'm not sure about the solution. Daggers, etc, are confusing becuase they require explananation and have other meanings elsewhere. Adding "York" "Lancaster" "York then Lancaster" is cumbersome, and we're really trying to make this short and simple. I've changed them to a solid/dotted/dashed box. —GoldRingChip 12:53, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The solid/dotted/dashed option looks clear enough (I was not aware that was possible). I won't get chance to try it over the weekend, but I was wondering how it might look if the Langley line, and Richard Plantagenet, was moved to the right of the chart next to Cecily – it would make Anne de Mortimer into the long connecting line but I would need to test it to see if it looked easier to follow. Alternatively could some marriages be written rather than linked to remove the need for the more complicated lines -

		Richard Plantagenet (m. Cecily Neville)

From looking through some of my books there appear to be lots of different ways to organise the chart, but they all either look complicated or miss out some of the information. EdwardUK (talk) 13:58, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's no room to the right of Cecily for the Langley line because we'd have to bump out the line from Conisburgh even further right of Cecily and that doens't gain us anything. It's already very wide on that line: Elizabeth Mortimer to Cecily Neville has 10 name boxes plus 9 spaces/lines between each, and 1 more line to the right of Cecily. As it is, I've deleted Cecily's sister, Eleanor Percy (wife & mother of the Henry Percys) to save room. —GoldRingChip 19:19, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The best way to fix the overcomplexity is to ignore the (apparently desired) youngest-to-oldest left-to-right scheme. Without that scheme, Langley can be to the left of Gaunt and Lionel, which fixes a lot of problems. That would also separate York and Lancaster nicely. (See, e.g., this old version I did). But without that change, we need to accept certain compromises to keep the complexity from getting out of control. —GoldRingChip

I've added an alternative version to the sandbox – I think it has the correct left-right birth orders including Elizabeth of York. ~~Henry V and Margaret Beaufort have been moved down a couple of lines to limit the overall width.~~ Keeping the Langley line on the right also seems to separate the reds from the blues and reduces the tangle of lines near the end. EdwardUK (talk) 03:51, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have put together a version with the Mortimer/Percy line moved down - which keeps the same width of ten names. It looks like there should also be enough space to include the marriages of John of Gaunt in a way that does not make the chart any harder to follow. EdwardUK (talk) 17:57, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's a good start, and I'm impressed you could make it work!

The "m." references cause some problems however. First, they add to much vertical text, making the template stretch long. Second, they lose some of the connection between the spouses, which is the purpose of this template: to show the intermingling and influence of the families. And third, you can say that Eleanor married Henry Percy, but which one?
Moving Philippa's children, Elizabeth and Richard, down two rows, confuses the generational attachments. It's bad enough that uncles, neices, and cousins intermarried.
Restoring Eleanor Neville was good. But her marriage to the elder Henry Percy loses its Nevilles-marrying-into-both-sides effect without the dotted line between them.
Restoring Gaunt's wives was good because it shows that Henry IV and the Beauforts were only half-siblings and that Gaunt was a Lancaster by marriage. But we can't add include every spouse otherwise we need to add lots of them; I made that guiding principle #2 at the top of the sandbox.

I like what you've done, and I've made some changes, see Version 3. —GoldRingChip 20:52, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For version 4 I have reworked version 2 to integrate the Mortimer/Percy line into the table - it looks to have removed several of the issues - the m. references are no longer needed, all marriages and almost all siblings are on the same line as each other, the only exception to this is the half-brothers Henry VI and Edmund Tudor (they would fit on the same line but it would cause lots of zig-zag lines for the adjacent names). The addition of names like The Black Prince is a good idea as many readers would be more familiar with these than their actual titles, I'll add them into this version as I straighten out a few names. EdwardUK (talk) 01:14, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. I'm working now on Version 5 to tighten up spacing. —GoldRingChip 14:56, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Great work, the spacing not only reduces the overall size, it also seems to have made quite a difference to the overall appearance. I spotted the change in version 3, but was already working on 4 at the time and thought I would concentrate on the overall arrangement before attempting something similar as the spacing is something I find can be a bit difficult to get right. (I even changed some of the codenames because for me it was easier aligning several lines of code if the names had no more than 5 letters, though this makes not visible difference to the finished chart.) The lines down from Joan Beaufort and the Kingmaker just did not look quite right to me on the previous version, I think this is because when I see a straight line down to one child and a bent line across to the other(s) it can look unbalanced and as if for some reason one is more important than the other – I have made a couple of adjustments to other examples of this happening for this reason. Removing Elizabeth Woodville makes sense as without the rest of her family and their link to the Tudors it adds little to the chart. The only problem is the small text for the nicknames, which was noted in an earlier edit as an accessibility issue, but overall I think it is a significant improvement on the earlier versions in terms of appearance and in the removal of awkward lines and potentially misleading elements. EdwardUK (talk) 17:48, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, then I'll port into the regular template. —GoldRingChip 21:17, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed

Can someone please figure out how to have this template expanded automatically? That is, it's not collapsed when we're editing it, and there's a way to indicate on the transcluded article that it should/not be collapsed? —GoldRingChip 20:43, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]