Wikipedia:Peer review/Royal intermarriage/archive1

Royal intermarriage

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've been steadily working on this article for the past couple of weeks. It started off rather Eurocentric and pretty poorly sourced. I could do with some feedback on the writing style and overall tone and perhaps some input on the overall layout/order of the content, with a view to nominating at some point in the future as a GA.

Thanks, Sotakeit (talk) 13:50, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Tim riley

• The lead should summarise the main text, and should contain nothing not covered in the main text. Warning bells ring on this when there are numerous citations in the lead. Thus the mention of the Late Bronze Age should be in the main text as well as the lead, and the citation should go in the main text and not in the lead. See WP:LEAD and WP:CITELEAD.
• One thing that looks like a typo, but one never knows, is the repetition in "Princess Princess Ana Gruzinsky".

Agreed and fixed Sotakeit (talk) 14:01, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

• Prenominal letters (HM, HRH etc) are omitted from the article (sensibly, in my view) except in the Islamic Monarchies section, which has a whole rash of them.

Agreed and fixed Sotakeit (talk) 14:01, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

• Section and sub-section headings should be in sentence case, not title case (see the Manual of Style), and so "Islamic Monarchies" should be "Islamic monarchies", and "Morganatic Marriage" should be "Morganatic marriage". Not sure about the third and fourth words of "Medieval and Early Modern Europe".

Agreed and fixed Sotakeit (talk) 14:01, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

• References
  • Too many statements lack citations:
    • Medieval and Early Modern Europe para 3. fixed Sotakeit (talk) 15:12, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
    • List of Ancient Roman examples, each line of which needs a citation here. fixed Sotakeit (talk) 15:12, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
    • Thailand, paras 2 and 3 (which, by the way, I think you could combine to avoid stubby layout)
    • Africa – Solomonic descent and Umar Tali Fixed Sotakeit (talk) 08:59, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
    • Islamic Monarchies – throughout apart from the last item on the list.Fixed Sotakeit (talk) 09:36, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
    • Morganatic Marriage – last sentence of opening para, and all items on the list fixed
    • Inbreeding - Jean V of Armagnac: no evidence etc. fixedSotakeit (talk) 15:22, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
    • Post WWI era – almost all items on the various lists fixed Sotakeit (talk) 12:15, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • There is no hard and fast rule about this, and I know some editors disagree with me, but I find it helpful to our readers to distinguish between the references we want them to look at and the ones that just give citations (which the casual reader can safely ignore). Thus note 36, which contains useful additional information, should, in my view, appear in a separate section from the lists of citations. You can see an example of this layout here. agreed and fixed Sotakeit (talk) 12:15, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • You include ISBNS for some books but not for others. For books too old to have ISBNs you should add OCLC numbers. WorldCat will oblige. fixed Sotakeit (talk) 10:22, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Access dates not always given for website refs, e.g. refs 29 and 30.
  • Format of retrieval dates is inconsistent: sometimes "Retrieved…" and sometimes "(retrieved…"
  • I have no idea what ref 18 is meant to convey. fixed Sotakeit (talk) 12:15, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Foreign language refs: be consistent in naming the language: compare the wording of refs 6, 38 and 40: respectively no language mentioned, "(French)" and "(in Spanish)". fixed Sotakeit (talk) 12:15, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Ref 28 – not sure why the editor has his given name before his surname, unlike other authors in the list.

I hope these few quibbles are of use. It is an interesting and well-constructed article, and has the potential to be a good GA candidate, I'd say. Tim riley talk 09:24, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks! I'm working my way through your suggestions. Most of the issues with reference formatting seem to be because I've used "{{cite book|", "{{cite journal|" formatting, and some of the older references left over from before I started editing the article aren't formatted like this. Similar situation with the ISBNs. I'll definitely make an attempt at getting around to reformatting them! Sotakeit (talk) 15:30, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I strongly recommend cutting the "In fiction" section: it's nothing more than trivia in my opinion. It's wholly reliant on primary sources, whereas notability guidelines indicate that this sort of material should only be included when secondary sources comment on it. DrKiernan (talk) 12:08, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I suppose you're right. Removed. Thanks, User:DrKiernan! Sotakeit (talk) 12:15, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not clear on what the criteria for inclusion of examples, but there are a number of examples one can draw on from the Byzantine period. One example would be the marriage of Andronikos II Palaiologos to Irene of Montferrat, which led to conflict in the later years of Andronikos' reign as she struggled for a share of the empire for her own children's inheritance. (See Donald Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantintium 1261-1453 for further details.) There is also the political tactics of the Grand Komnenos, the rulers of the Empire of Trebizond who were known for the diplomatic tactic of marrying their daughters to the Emirs & Sultans of neighboring Muslim monarchies. The best examples of rulers who did this were Alexios III Megas Komnenos & John IV Megas Komnenos. (I'm currently at work expanding on the last two articles, & compiling information on the women involved, such as Theodora Megale Komnene, who became the wife of Uzun Hassan. A bit of trivia is that thru her the rulers of Persia descended from Ismail I could trace ancestry from one dynasty of the Byzantine Emperors, making the Tsars of Russia their distant relatives.) -- llywrch (talk) 13:57, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Great idea Llywrch. Maybe you could be of some help regarding where to place the section? Is it Asia or Europe? Sotakeit (talk) 14:33, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

The Palaiolgoi & Komnenoi families fall into that debatable grey area where they could be considered either European or Asian -- or both. I'll see what I can add to the article. (BTW, I think there were earlier examples of Imperial Byzantine families marrying into other royal dynasties, but I can't recall any off the top of my head. -- llywrch (talk) 16:42, 5 June 2014 (UTC)