(Year 225) Ha! - I just could not stop myself from going the full way! A week ago I proudly presented my new The Sims 4 family tree for all today's 70+ households, including 3-4 generations for most. Then I thought, why not add all that I know? All their known ancestors, siblings, aunts and cousins - whether I played them or not? Especially for my nobility I keep detailed notes of most of their family lines, and just because I don't have their portraits shouldn't stop me from adding them to the tree! Now there is even a touch of long gone royals!
The family tree grew rapidly, of course, as most nobility can be traced back to year 0. That's 225 years of family history. And I got myself a few surprises too, seeing how some of today's families actually connect a few generations back. That is the point of a genealogical tree, right? Seeing how they all connect. It helps understanding their background, and possibly also their presence and future. It's not only useful for locating cousins with a couple clicks, it will also help me finding a person's heirs.
All portraits in the tree show the person as YA (or A). Most of these lived long enough to become elders, but I found that the YA portrait is more interesting regarding genetics. For sims currently younger than YA, the right age portrait will of course be displayed (from child and up). All this is handled automatically by the script, so if something looks not right, it probably was not right.
I realize it might get confusing scrolling the generations without seeing the names. Point the icons for personal facts. Keeping an eye on the year of birth will give you a hint on how far back you have gone, but also the portraits alone can help. The latest generations always have normal portraits, while everyone born before year 100 will have unsaturated/faded colors. Paintings are only used for persons who lived before photography was common, and the painting is often the only portrait thee exists. A full version Coat of Arms is used for the first peer of most peerages if no painting (or photo) exists - meaning we are likely back to year 0-100.
I added Coat of Arms to the portrait of any person who was/is a peer. Only the peer, not his/her spouse. This makes it easier to find the more interesting lines, see how they blend, and not the least it helps you to see whether a peerage is high or low nobility. High nobility CofA icons were given a glow, which might be easier to notice in the larger versions. I will need to double check a couple icons, as some peers insisted on adjusting their Coat of Arms, but each generation normally just changed one element, if any, so this is not essential to find those lines in the tree. I have plenty of notes on CofA too, I just did not create all graphics.
If a person obtained the peerage as an Elder, the peerage icon will only be displayed on his/her elderly portrait, which is not showing in the tree, but can be found on the BIO page (normally).
Those CofA icons also makes it easy to see who had multiple peerages, which could happen through inheritance, and would normally mean that the family was/is rather powerful at least for a couple generations. Here are direct links to a few examples - there might be more:
Bud von Kaching (still around, aged 77) is Baron of Gloom and Baron of Gibbs. He is known as Bud Gloom, and controls Gibbs remotely.
Victin Brixerwood (died aged 78 in Y168) was Baron of Gloom and Baron of Gibbs, and was known ad Victin Gloom.
Dominic Fyres (still around, aged 76) is Lord of Deadgrass, Lord von Dresden and Lord von Haunt. Deadgrass is the higher ranked, but he still resides in Dresden so he is known as Dominic Dresden. However, when visiting the Brindleton area, he is referred to as Dominic Deadgrass. He would need 3 sons or grandsons to pass on all his 3 peerages, which he has not (yet), so his heritage might get quite complex and interesting as only one peerage can be passed on to each heir...
Jarret Ross (still around, aged 55) is Duke of Rossie, and until recently he was also Baron of Verde. Logically, he is known as Duke Jarret Ross.
Raptus Cornelius Saxor (died aged 83 in Y93) was Duke of Meadows and Lord of Prome, known as Duke Raptus Meadows.
For those long gone generations I decided to exclude all children who died before reaching YA. This might seem weird, but unless you reach YA you won't have any impact on a fam ily tree anyway. And we are talking loads of extra work and lay-out challenges if they all should be added, because back in the old days many children did die at young age. I simply realized those kids have no function in this tree (sorry, kids).
There is also a backside to adding so many long gone persons. I do not intend to create a full fleshed BIO page for each and everyone who I never did play, and really don't need to know everything about, either - like favorite colors, traits, skills, hobbies etc. So, for a large group of long gone family members the only details found on their BIO page is name, title(s), at what age they obtained a peerage, and their YA portrait (or a default generic YA portrait). I made the script to opt out from showing most of those empty facts, but their BIO page still looks like not working correctly. If you access their BIO page you can still browse through relatives from there, or return to the family tree - no problem. At the moment these persons are not listed from the top menus (except from Lifestage=Dead).
On another tech note I should mention that the pops up from pointing at a portrait technically might require a mouse, meaning if you browse on your phone it might not work very well. I could try to add written names, but it would easily mess up the tree lay-out. Besides, I don't really expect the world to flock to my TS4 family tree anyway, so I chose to do this in in a way that works well with my own routines and needs - sorry for being such an egoist :)
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