Ahnenwerk
Family-tree maker · for fiction
The family-tree maker built for fiction, not for ancestry.
Ahnenwerk is event-based. You log what happened: births, marriages, deaths, a coronation. It derives the whole family tree, lines of succession and all. It also handles the relationships ordinary tools can't — fusions, reincarnation, body-swaps, non-human parents. Free, runs in your browser, no account.
Nothing to install. Nothing to sign up for.
The idea
You log events. The tree builds itself.
You never drag a line. A birth carries its parents, a marriage joins two people, a death closes a life — you record what happened, and Ahnenwerk derives the graph from it. Change an event and the whole tree re-derives, correct again. Genealogy as a history of events — record them and the diagram takes care of itself.
The dynastic payoff
Titles and lines of succession, on a timeline.
Track who held a crown and when — single rulers, co-monarchs, abdications, interregna, disputed claims. Regnal names show by default when you set them. Scrub the timeline to any year and watch the holders light up. Lines of succession are built in. You don't fake them with spare boxes.
And the cases nothing else handles
Relationships real genealogy tools refuse
Real-ancestry software assumes one mother, one father, one lifetime, and real people. Fiction doesn't. These are first-class in Ahnenwerk — the tree genuinely understands them.
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01
Fusion & defusion
Two or more characters merge into one. They end, they don't die — and defusion can split them back out.
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02
Reincarnation
A soul carried forward into a new life, drawn as a directional link across the generations.
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03
Possession
A possessor seizes a host's body and can later release it. The possessor can even be an entity.
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04
Body-swap
Two characters trade bodies, and the tree keeps track of who is now where.
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05
Entity & multi-parent births
A god, a relic, an AI, or several parents at once can sit in a lineage. No tool built for real ancestry will let you.
Free, local, and yours
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No account, no server
Everything lives in your own browser. Nothing is uploaded; there's nothing to sign up for and nothing to delete.
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Export-first
One click exports to JSON, Markdown, or PNG — keep your world, move it into your wiki, or share an image. You're never locked in.
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Privacy-clean
No tracking scripts, no cookies, no consent banner. Free and stays free.
See it on a real tree
Open one in the app and poke around — every case below is live, not a screenshot.
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Titles & succession
The British Crown
Titles, succession, and regnal names: who held the crown, when, and under what name.
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Entities & fusion
The Egyptian Gods
Entities and divine fusion — a pantheon that never obeyed biology.
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Adoptive succession
Julio-Claudian Rome
Adoption-driven succession — the messy real-world case that still trips up ordinary tools.
Your world has outgrown your memory.
Give it a tree that keeps up.
Ahnenwerk is free — actively built, feedback-driven, and designed so you're never locked in. Your canon lives in your browser; a single click exports the whole thing.
This started as a tool for my own setting. If it's useful for yours, that's the point. — Michael
Found a bug, want a feature, or just want to say something?
One form for all of it. Email is optional — fill it in only if you'd like a reply.