My copy of this book was already an old used copy when I first obtained it years ago, I think when Church was still with us, everything highlighted and underlined in it was already like that when I got it. I used to be a big fan of Prophecy In The News but never agreed with them on everything and over the last decade my views on a lot of subjects have changed.
This book is an American Evangelical Christian response to/appropriation of the Holy Blood, Holy Grail/Priory of Sion conspiracy theory before it was cool, before The DaVinci Code made it a mainstream cultural phenomenon.
Starting on page 14 is a genealogy of the supposed Grail Bloodline that has a lot of historical errors in it. But I don't know how much that is Church's own fault and how much comes from the original Priory of Sion hoax documents forged by Pierre Plantard.
It starts as a genealogy of the Merovingian Dynasty which seems pretty accurate down to Dagobert II. Then it lists a Sigisbert IV as a son of Dagobert II which is the foundational claim of the Priory of Sion hoax. It's not impossible that Dagobert II had a son not known to the contemporary historians because of how weak our documentation of that era is in general, and also because the Merovingians tended to delay Baptizing and officially naming their children. So it's a plausible claim, but right now any genealogy listing Dagobert II as having a known documented son is doing so based on that hoax.
So everyone on this list from Sigisbert IV until the first Eustace of Boulogne is probably purely the fiction of the original hoax. I don't know whether or not the original hoax claimed Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers were part of this bloodline or if that was simply added by Crusades Nerds later. Their real Pater-Lineal ancestry can only be traced back as far as Baldwin I Margrave of Flanders who lived in the 800s and married a daughter of Charles The Bald an heir of Charlemagne. It's not impossible he descended from an unknown cadet branch of the Merovingians, but it can't be proven.
This genealogy then makes two weird mistakes at the First Crusade generation. 1. It claims they had a sister named Alex who was married to Henry IV Holy Roman Emperor which is not the case, all known children of Eustace II of Boulogne were sons. Henry IV had a couple different wives, none were directly related to the houses of Boulogne or Flanders. 2. It merges Baldwin I of Jerusalem who was a brother of Godfrey with Baldwin II of Jerusalem who descended from different noble houses, so that it can claim one individual has both the ancestors of Baldwin I and descendants of Baldwin II.
The next weird error is pretty much claiming all descendants of Fulk V of Anjou King of Jerusalem descended from Melisande of Jerusalem, in fact the Plantagenet Dynasty as well as other later Counts of Anjou descended from Fulk V's first wife.
However the most randomly weird claim of the genealogy is that Philip II Augustus of France was a son of Henry II of England. That one really baffles me.
But from Philip II Augustus of France down to Karl Von Habsburg on page 18 it is accurate. The next section which is about tracing the Holy Roman Emperors to the Habsburgs I can't comment on, I haven't looked into that history nearly as much.
The main objective of this genealogy is to trace the House of Valois-Anjou to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. Amusingly the Valois Dynasty does descend from Henry II of England.
The Kings of France descend from Henry II of England starting with Louis IX and his full brother Charles of Anjou. Their maternal grandmother was Eleanor of England a daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Meanwhile their paternal Grandmother descended from a daughter of Fulk V, and was also descended from the counts of Hainaut (another offshoot of Flanders) through a sister of the first Latin Emperors.
Louis IX was the direct Paterlineal ancestor of Charles Valois as well as the Bourbon Dynasty, and Charles of Anjou was the direct Paterlineal ancestor of Margaret, Countess of Anjou and Maine the wife of Charles Valois from whom he inherited his claim to Anjou. Charles Valois through his mother descended from Agnes of Antioch a granddaughter of a sister of Melisande, and from Yolanda of Flanders & Peter II of Courtenay, as well as Eudokia Komnene a Byzantine Princess.
I talked about the Valois Dynasty including a little bit it's connection to Anjou in the post I made in April about the Crusader Crown of Jerusalem. But ultimately that focused more on the Burgundian branch of the Valois Dynasty which descended from the youngest son of King John II of France. The Valois-Anjou dynasty descends from an older son of John II, Louis I Duke of Anjou.
Direct Paterlineal descent from the Valois-Anjou line ends with sons of Rene I of Anjou and so the line continued long term through his daughter Yolande of Anjou who married Frederick of Lorraine. In addition to being the progenitors of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty they also sired the Guise, the arch enemies of the Hugenots during the French Wars of Religion.
Rene I of Anjou is also on the list of alleged Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion, but it's weird because that timeline has him Grand Master already as a nine year old in 1418. His family also played a role in the history of Jeanne d'Arc.
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