Has anyone ever mentioned that ...

[Garth Blackwood]

Imagine if Burke had turned out to be a Collins! Whoa!   

Well we know that Burke's second incarnation looked suspiciously similar to Jeremiah Collins, so ..... 

[Mysterious Benefactor]

True - though so far as we know, Jeremiah didn't have children. And since Jeremiah's looks were a product of both his father and his mother, one wouldn't assume that just anyone within the Collins bloodline could produce a son with an extremely similar look. 

[Garth Blackwood]

True - though so far as we know, Jeremiah didn't have children. And since Jeremiah's looks were a product of both his father and his mother, one wouldn't assume that just anyone within the Collins bloodline could produce a son with a similar look. 

Well, anyone who is genetically related to Daniel, will definitionally share some genes with Jeremiah, since they are related. It just so happens that I do research in the area of genetics so let me tell you, that it certainly could happen.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Well, one would presume that the ancestor would have also have had to have been descended from Jeremiah's mother for the descendant to look virtually identical to Jeremiah. I mean, she did contribute a signiifcant amount of her own genes when it came to Jeremiah's looks.    One might assume someone solely of Jeremiah's father's line could produce someone who looked similar to Jeremiah - but I'd strongly question whether or not they could produce someone virtually identical.

[Garth Blackwood]

Well of course it is unlikely for people to look identical to each other if they are not twins. This would be the case even with Father/Son pairs. In the real world this would never happen ... But in DS world, if you are genetically related to someone, and you are the same gender as them, then you have a pretty substantial chance of looking identical to them. We can both agree that Jeremiah is somehow related to the current Collins family, since Daniel was clearly related to Joshua somehow.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

My major point is that for someone to look virtually identical to Jeremiah, they most probably need to be a direct descendant from Jeremiah's mother as well as his father. And since no one of that branch of the family had children to our knowledge... 

But again, this topic is also going in circles, so...

[Garth Blackwood]

Somewhere back there, Jeremiah shares an ancestor with Daniel (probably grandfather or great-), therefore making Jeremiah the second (1/32 shared genes) or third (1/128 shared genes) cousin of Daniel. Now consider the fact that Millicent looks just like Carolyn. I'm pretty sure Daniel is 6 generations back from Carolyn. So she shares 1/(2^6) = 1/64 of her genes with Daniel, and therefore 1/128 of her genes with Millicent. However, anyone is Carolyn's line is liable to be identical to Millicent, despite sharing at most 1/256 of their genes with her. So very few shared genes are required to produce identical appearance in DS world.

This was the crux of my argument, but whatever it was fun, I'll say no more.

[GooberCollins]

We also have to take into account that Quentin probably had dozens, if not hundreds of lovechildren running amok thorughout the country, so hey, who knows? Who on Dark Shadows might not be a Collins is a better question. And I again point out that we don't know how phoenix births work. David could be the son of one man, or two, or two dozen for all we know.

Come to think of it, [spoiler]Carolyn and Chris[/spoiler] are cousins, though not first cousins. Good thing they never dated too seriously. Julia's comment to Cassandra that the Collins were very inbred is extremely accurate.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Who on Dark Shadows might not be a Collins is a better question.

Possibly true! 

[Midnite]

Who on Dark Shadows might not be a Collins is a better question.

Possibly true! 

LOL, quite possibly!  Wouldn't the explanation for Liz's strong resemblance to Barnabas' mother, for example, have to be that Naomi was a Collins?  Since Jeremiah was strongly encouraged to court Millicent, marrying your cousin was apparently not seen by the early Collinses as a bad thing.   

[Mysterious Benefactor]

OMG, Midnite- you've hit on it! If Jeremiah's parents were cousins, then perhaps somehow the genes that produced his mother might have survived in some other Collins line, and if they mixed with Jeremiah's father's line again, well there's the fantastical explanation for how Burke could conceivably be a Collins who looks virtually identical to Jeremiah! 

Those Collinses - forget Carolyn's suggestion that their family motto should be "Hypocrisy above all" - it should be "Incestuousness above all"! 

[Garth Blackwood]

Some people who might not be a Collins (by blood):

Bruno
Sky Rumson
Jeb Hawkes
Nicholas Blair
Laszlo
Ezra Braithwait
Frank Garner
Matthew Morgan
Count Petofi
Evan Hanley

[Midnite]

If Jeremiah's parents were cousins, then perhaps somehow the genes that produced his mother might have survived in some other Collins line, and if they mixed with Jeremiah's father's line again, well there's the fantastical explanation for how Burke could conceivably be a Collins who looks virtually identical to Jeremiah!   

Heh heh!  Hey, there could be several such events that explain the Collins' unusually "persistent strain."  Just because a child directly receives 50% of his/her DNA from each parent (as Garth Blackwood wrote it, a 1/2 genetic relation) doesn't mean that the genes inherited from one of the parents differ entirely from the genes inherited from the other.  GB's calculations (which were great, btw) don't take into consideration that there could be additional relationships between the family members, such as the added twist to David's line that:

[spoiler]Technically speaking, Roger Collins married his grandmother[/spoiler]

Those Collinses - forget Carolyn's suggestion that their family motto should be "Hypocrisy above all" - it should be "Incestuousness above all"! 

 

[Willie Loomis]

Come to think of it, [spoiler]Carolyn and Chris[/spoiler] are cousins, though not first cousins. Good thing they never dated too seriously. Julia's comment to Cassandra that the Collins were very inbred is extremely accurate.

[spoiler]so, she's joe's cousin too?[/spoiler]

[Midnite]

Willie Loomis, check out the thread "A Family full of incesters" starting here:

Joe is not a Collins relative. ...

and in the following post:

As for Chris and Carolyn.  They're third cousins.  A union that is perfectly legal in all of our 50 states and as far as I know, the rest of the world. ...