That reminds me of the story when a reporter asked Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor (the Duke of Westminster) if he had any advice for young entrepreneurs and he replied “Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror.”
In a similar vein, I remember reading Proust’s novels some time ago and one of the protagonists was explaining to some other protagonist that you could be seen as a very respected member of the society of that time (think France of the 1800s - the 1900s) only if some of your ancestors had taken part in the crusades as noted (meaning non-anonymous) individuals, ~700-800 years before.
