Everyone Is Related: Difference between revisions

* In [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''[[Time Enough for Love]]'', protagonist Lazarus Long is the [[The Older Immortal|oldest living human being]], having survived over 2,300 years thanks to an abnormally long natural lifespan and the technology of [[Fountain of Youth|human rejuvenation]]. It is statistically estimated that, if you claim any ancestry at all from the Howard Families (humans who took part in a breeding program designed to improve longevity), there's an 80+ percent chance that you're his descendant, and the novel makes something of a [[Running Gag]] about everyone Lazarus meets telling him how closely related they are (fifth generation descendent of his eight wife, etc.). This even extends outside the Families, as he's had uncounted unregistered children over the centuries and at one point relates a story about meeting a pair of slave twins whom he suspects of being his great-to-the-nth grandchildren.

* The medieval epic poem ''Parzival'' by Wolfram von Eschenbach lives this trope. The titular hero Parzival [[Long-Lost Relative|turns out to be closely or distantly related]] to just about every person he meets in the course of his adventures. This is generally interpreted as Wolfram telling his readers that all of mankind is one big family, even across national and religious divides - Parzival has an elder half-brother, Feirefis, who is a Muslim (although at the end of the story he becomes a Christian) and has black-and-white piebald skin, being the son of a white father and a black mother. For the time of the Crusades, when it was written, this was a quite unusual message of tolerance.