How are Gafrey and Daeran cousins?

[provokastoras]

So to be cousins your parents from one side must be either brothers or sisters....
problem here is Gafrey is 100yo and Daeran is 19or 20 stg.., how on earth did his human father, not aasimar mother cause Gafrey is not aasimar so Daeran's mother cannot be Gafrey's sister... (not that it would make any sense even if we went that way but you are free to try...) is brother to the 50 to 60 years older than him Gafrey? Even if by some miracle we assume that the 20 yo mother of gafrey lived for another 80 years to give birth to Daeran's father how would she? Should Gafrey not be Daeran's Aunt or in the best case great Aunt? Unless Daeran's mother married Daeran's father when he was 80 or something? that would be a juicy story I guess?

[Rhea the Rogue]

Well, I always assumed they were cousins several times removed. That would make the age gap more plausible?

And Daeran being an aasimar isn't really an issue here. Celestial and fiendish heritages do not necessarily manifest in every generation of a family. Thus most or even all of Daeran's next of kin could have been human.

[provokastoras]

is actually an issue here... cause most women's reproductive age ends at 40... at least with an 80 yo father and a 20 yo mother for Daeran we get some short of possibility... unless Daeran's mother was 80 when she gave birth to him? Unless we suppose that everyone in Galfrey's family gets that potion she is getting, that rare unique potion that she spends a bunch of the kingdom's resources on.

Also, there is the problem that Daeran is 2nd in line for the throne showing 1st-degree relationship, if he was times removed he would be like 20 or 30 in the line?
was just watching their dialog at crusade start and it hit me... she is supposedly participating in the first crusade and talking about larian that was alive 100 years ago and then Daeran walks in saying something like your largesse astonishes me dear cousin -.-. It makes almost as much sense as volo showing up in Baldurs Gate 3 like 500 years after baldur's gate 1.

Looked for her geneology in the internet couldn't find anything :(.

[Balekai]

Good questions OP. I believe it has something to do with the following if it can be answered:

1. What Rhea said about cousins. It may still apply as the reason why Daeran could be 2nd in line is because of the War taking the lives of everyone else in between. This is a known problem throughout the Nobility of Mendev and they are dying out due to War attrition with the Demons. For example and semi-spoiler: What happened to Daeran's Mother and Guests wasn't an isolated incident and Demon scheming of that sort has been going on since the War began.

2. What Rhae said about outsider heritage. With the amount of Angels running around during the 1st Crusade blessing and umm... having relationships with mortals left, right and centre, there's a lot of room for lifespan longevity via Half Celestials being born or humans being blessed directly by them. I'm not sure if its ever stated what happened to Galfrey's mother or who/what she actually was since I haven't done my homework here.

3. Speaking of Blessings, the Mendev Royal Family seemed to be very close to the Aroden Church. Paladins are immune to many things like disease. So they're not dying to things like cancer or sickness. If the Mendev Royal Family had a lot of mid-tier or higher tier Paladins/Clerics in the family line, with the most powerful church behind them, then the family as a whole should have longer overall lifespans to begin with, due to super healthy reproduction of DNA etc. I would even go as far to say that you could expect many of them to live the longest natural lifespans possible with many ageless qualities. An 80 year old mother of Queen Galfrey could easily be biologically 40-60 with divine help.

The immortality potion was an extreme move by the Church since they didn't know if the War would last 100, 200, or 300+ years, but regardless shows you their power. If they can brew up immortality potions they can probably effect the general longevity/fertility of a Queen Mother.

There's evidence of this already as you see many of the well known characters hanging around for a pretty long time for various divine or arcane reasons.

[Conquista]

its a royal family tree, so incest is a thing and for simplicity everyone is everyones cousine

[provokastoras]

There is another problem I initially missed... Galfrey is queen... therefore both her parents are probably dead, by the time of the first crusade... also she is way over 110 since she was already queen during the first crusade, so she must have been already at least 15... during that time. Also she cannot have a brother... cause if she had a brother he would usually have a priority in the line to the crown...So Mendev would have a king? unless Mendev had a primogenitor regardless of gender succession law?
The plot thickens really I have no idea how it works.
And even if we suppose that everyone else in the line to the throne is dead again it would make more sense if she is his great Aunt or something.

Originally posted by Conquista:

its a royal family tree, so incest is a thing and for simplicity everyone is everyones cousine

thats probably what the writer thought -.-

[Max Kojote, M.SC]

From what I've managed to gather, she's the eldest daughter of the last prince of Mendev. Nothing about male succession (that's Taldor) and in the tabletop she abdicates and lists a female civilian to take her place.

That does imply younger siblings but I haven't found anything about their status. It may just be that it typically went to the eldest child rather than eldest son.

[Dryad]

So, some things to help with your confusion:

1. The elixir that made Galfrey live longer isn't an immortality potion, it's a youth potion. The potion returns the drinker to the peak of their youth, after which they age normally. It's also extremely expensive and only purchasable in a bidding war where you lose unsuccessful bids, even if you get nothing. And since it's paid for by the Church of Iomedae, which is wholly separate from Mendev, Galfrey and Mendev lost nothing by accepting it from the church.

2. Aasimar can be born from normal human parents, so it actually doesn't matter whether Galfrey's parents/siblings/aunts/uncles/nieces/nephews/cousins are human or aasimar, human and aasimar children can be born seemingly spontaneously. If you want the actual lore from the setting:

Originally posted by Pathfinder Setting:

Aasimar heritage can lie dormant for generations, only to appear suddenly in the child of two apparently human parents.

3. It's not impossible that all the people who could have inherited the throne before Daeran are already dead. They've been at war for 100 years, things happen and it's quite possible that Galfrey's siblings and their descendants no longer live.