the royal line

the other day, me and my three handsomest friends and orson went to a trivia night at a local pub. one of the first few questions was, “how many british sovereigns were alive in 1684?” orson, who is an actuary in real life* estimated that five was the maximum overlapage among generations. so we added one for good measure (ie. some sickly pipsqueak who ruled for 12 days, or whatever) and said six even though my other friends (who are more handsome than orson) thought this seemed way too high.

we were therefore quite floored when we found out that the answer was eight. it was at this point that i proposed that we adjourn the trivia game so i could go home and graph out the logistics of how exactly that this was possible.

a: it was a perfect shitstorm of joint sovereignty, the glorious revolution, and lord protectoring.

_

* not professionally