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The Problem with Hereditary Aristocracy...
Dec. 4th, 2014 10:43 amI did do a small "heh" at reading this article on Richard III's bones.
Oops...? ;)
And another Oops! later in the article:
The bones of the king under the car park have delivered further shocks, 527 years after his death and more than two years after his remains were discovered in Leicester: Richard III was a blue-eyed blond, and the present Queen may not be descended from John of Gaunt and Edward III, the lineage on which the Tudor claim to the throne originated.
Five anonymous living donors, all members of the extended family of the present Duke of Beaufort, who claim descent from both the Plantagenets and Tudors through the children of John of Gaunt, gave DNA samples which should have matched Y chromosomes extracted from Richard’s bones. But none did.
Since Richard’s identity was proved by his mitochondrial DNA, handed down in an unbroken chain through the female line from his sister to two living relatives, the conclusion is stark: there is a break in the claimed line of Beaufort descent, what the scientists described as “a false paternity event”, which may also affect the ancestry of their distant cousins, the Windsors.
Oops...? ;)
the Tudors did back up their claim to the throne through descent from John of Gaunt, son of Edward III and father of Henry IV – and ancestor of the Tudor dynasty through his legitimised Beaufort children after he married his mistress Katherine Swynford.{...}There are, however, at least two breaks in the line. The most significant would be if John of Gaunt were not the son of Edward III – which enemies suggested in his lifetime – which would affect the ancestry of the Tudors, Stuarts and Windsors
And another Oops! later in the article:
The five supposed cousins who gave their DNA are not descended from Edward III, or they would share Richard’s Y chromosomes, but one of the five is also not descended from the man who should be their more recent common ancestor, the 18th-century Henry Somerset, fifth Duke of Beaufort. “We actually went to his home and sat him down,” Schürer said. “It’s not the sort of news you want to deliver by email.”
