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Ask your cousin to provide details of his/her 'sources'...........then check them yourself.

How much of the info came from 'wiki'?

Well, there is one thing that makes me more certain is that my cousin is Belgium. He seems to provide accurate dates and some text describing the source of information. Lineages go way way way back to royalty of Saxony, Frankish and et cetera, predominantly Dutch. So this is why I think that he is not making stuff up, as what idiot would anyway. But I want to use his as a guide and that is why I am asking for types of sources I can have alongside. The royalty lineages are also online (wikipedia etc).

Daniel, Don't dismiss the idea entirely just yet. It's far more common that you might think to be descended from a member of royalty.

The royal families were well documented, going back well over a thousand years. So once you've connected a clarified member of the family to the royal line, the rest is easy. It's the bit inbetween that's difficult.

Church records were kept for wealthy families of the parish, long before they were kept for everyone else. And a lot of local archive centres still have these.

Also, the wealthy often left Wills. You may be lucky enough to be able to find one that leaves money to someone in your clarified family.

Have you asked your distant cousin how they connected the families?

I would just love to get back to the 1700s with some certainty! I can get approximate birth years for the ones that appear on the 1841 census and a few of those I can take a little further back but nothing much prior to the mid 1700s. I would love to know how to get further back with sufficient "proof" to add more to my tree. Then again, I only put people on my tree that I can provide sources for the information.. I'd rather have a wee accurate tree than a list of unverified possible ancestors.

I think your cousin is indulging in flights of fancy

I am looking at a tree from a distant cousin of mine. The lineages go right back to royalty, so far, I have discovered it goes back to 300s AD. I ALWAYS like to clarify who I add to my tree so how do I do that with the lack of records in those times (ranging 300s-1400s?