# GenealogyTree: ancestor approach

The typical approach in building a family tree is the ancestor approach: the direction is from the children to the parents. This approach is the most used because, in a genealogy research, the researcher start from the bottom (usually from himself).

To use this approach with the genealogytree package (see the official documentation here), the best solution seems to be the subgraph "parent":

parent: A parent family may contain other parent families. Trees with this construction grow into ancestor direction [...]

With this type of family I can easily create a tree like this:

The source code of the previous image is this:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{incgraph}

\usepackage[all]{genealogytree}

\begin{document}
\begin{inctext}

\begin{genealogypicture}[
template=database pole,
processing=database,
database format=full,
node size=3cm,
level size=3.2cm,
list separators hang,
place text={\newline}{},
box={fit basedim=9pt,
boxsep=2pt,
segmentation style={solid},
halign=left,
before upper=\parskip1pt,
\gtrDBsex}
]

parent{

g{name={A. Son}}
c{name={B. Son}}

parent{

g{name={1. Father}}
c{name={1. Uncle}}

parent {
g{name={1. Grandfather}}
}

parent {
g{name={1. Grandmother}}
}
}

parent{

g{name={2. Mother}}
c{name={2. Uncle}}

parent {
g{name={2. Grandfather}}
}

parent {
g{name={2. Grandmother}}
}
}
}

\end{genealogypicture}

\end{inctext}
\end{document}


But there is a problem. In the subgraph "parent" I can't nest the subgraphs "child" and "union". From the subgraph "parent" section of the official documentation:

So for example, referring to the previous image, I can't add another partner to Father, because to do this I need the subgraph "union". And I can't add a family (Aunt and Cousins) to the Uncle, because I need the subgraph "child".

And the subgraph "sandlock" doesn't solve the problem, because with this I can add, for example, a family to a Son, and nothing else.

Apparently the solution would be to use the subgraph "child" instead of subgraph "parent" as the main structure of the family tree. But the subgraph "child" doesn't use an ancestor approach!

child: A child family may contain other child families or union families. Trees with this construction grow into descendant direction [...]

Then, for me, this is not a solution, because I can start my family tree from the top (I not yet know my "original ancestors").

Is there any solution?

• The automated layout of genealogytree does not support arbitrary graph structures. The syntax allows to set up annotated mathematical tree structures as described by the documentation. Structures like descendents of the grandparents and so on have to be built by connecting several trees manually (see Tutorial 2.4). – Thomas F. Sturm Mar 6 '16 at 16:51
• maybe you want to have a look into the Solution of my Problem here – Felix S Aug 11 '18 at 13:41