The tool starts with a person (I started with my great grandfather) , then you can click to show his or her parents, then you can click to show his or her parents as long as it will let you. I am playing with this today, and most branches just come to an end when (apparently) the information runs out. But others lead back through royalty and well known figures from antiquity including those in the title. Am i right to be suspicious?
I don’t know that this is strictly a history question. You may want to ask it over at r/genealogy. However, as an avid genealogist I can tell you that you are absolutely right to be skeptical.
Statistically, every person of Western European descent is a descendant of Charlemagne. In genealogy what matters is whether or not you are able to prove it. Do you have actual documentation in the form of historical records (records of birth or marriage specifically, tying your ancestors, all of them, in an unbroken line back to some royal figure)? Documentation is not someone else’s family tree that they uploaded to the internet.
Places like FamilySearch and Ancestry.com are rife with false genealogies because many people don’t do proper research and piggy back off of what someone else has compiled, never checking for errors, never bothering to verify anything. People just love to be able to say they’re descended from royalty. This isn’t to say that those websites are useless. They can in fact be extremely useful. But if you see a tree taking you back to some Roman or pre-Roman nobility I would guarantee it is a fake.
The familial relationship between the Frankish nobility, of which Charlemagne was a member, and the earlier Roman elite is something that is still being debated by historians and genealogists. So any family tree telling you it can connect Charlemagne to the Romans would be cutting edge research, let alone connecting you all the way that far back.
It should be noted that it actually is possible to connect yourself through the documentation process to old European nobility, including Charlemagne, by means of what are known as “gateway ancestors.” Gateway ancestors were real people, often Europeans who came to the Americas in the 1500’s and 1600’s who were themselves able to prove descent from nobility. It is possible to prove descent from such gateway ancestors and many Americans are able to do just that, myself included. These gateway ancestors are really the only way a modern person could trust their descent from the old nobility of Europe.
Again though, it requires thorough vetting of the physical records. And even if you have a gateway ancestor or five and can prove it in the records, it is unlikely to be able to go much further back than a few generations before Charlemagne. I do not believe it is possible to document descent from Roman emperors at this time.
You are quite right, especially when it comes to Ancient figures, as simply put, there are no broadly accepted family trees connecting to them. Many legit ones exist for Charlemagne, at least, but plenty more frauds. I wrote about this a long, long time ago... but the answer from way back then touches on a lot of this for you.
A quick question. Wasn’t the line of Phillip wiped out a few years after Alexander died?