Some of you may have received a DNA kit for
the holidays from a company such as 23andme
or Ancestry.com. Well, since you’re likely
still waiting for the results, let me show
someone else’s results instead. What I’m
going to show you today is what the ancestry
results for Queen Elizabeth would look like
if she were to take a DNA test. Please note
though that these are not actual DNA results.
Rather, they are predictions based on what
we know about her family tree.
But there are two reasons why I suspect that
these hypothetical results would be extremely
close to actual DNA results. First, royal
family trees are the most well documented
family trees in the world and they go back
really, really far on almost every branch.
Second, the parentage of royal individuals
is actually much more likely to be trustworthy
than that of an average person, especially
for the last several hundred years. This is
because they lead pretty public lives and
when they have secret love affairs, which
they do, the people around them tend to know
all the who’s and when’s.
So, before we look at the results, let me
tell you why I decided to do this research.
There’s a common belief out there that the
Queen is actually German or at least mostly
German. Some people even think that her line
only goes back to George I and that she has
no connection to previous dynasties such as
the Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts. So
let me set the record straight. Queen Elizabeth
I is not only a direct descendant of the Plantagenets,
Tudors, and Stuarts, she’s also a direct
descendant of William the Conqueror and several
of the Anglo-Saxon kings that came before
him. The only reason that the name of the
royal house has changed over the centuries
is because sometimes the line passes through
a daughter and not a son. But in almost every
case, that daughter was determined to be the
most senior heir. If you’re interested to
see the exact line from Alfred the Great to
today’s Queen, you can check out the video
I’ve done on that subject. I’ll link to
it in the description.
Now, it is true that the current royal house,
the House of Windsor, is in fact a branch
of a German house called the House of Saxe-Coburg
and Gotha. In the UK, they simply changed
the name to something more British-y sounding.
That happened during World War 1, for some
pretty obvious reasons. So if you were to
trace the Queen’s line backwards, looking
only at the male-to-male line, you would indeed
find lots of German ancestors. However, when
it comes to DNA, we have to consider all the
branches of a person’s family, not just
one. And every generation we go back, the
number of branches doubles. So there are a
lot of ancestors to consider.
So the results you are about to see are based
on the full family tree of Queen Elizabeth,
going back about 10 generations. Anything
beyond that becomes statistically irrelevant.
So without further adieu, here are the results.
So, as you can see, the Queen does in fact
have quite a bit of German ancestry. That’s
shown in the blue and I’ve calculated it
to be about 43%. But her largest ancestry
block is in fact the British and Irish category,
shown in red. So about 47% of her DNA comes
from ancestors who were fully English, Scottish,
Welsh, or Irish.
Now, the third largest group might come as
a surprise to you. According to my research,
the Queen is about 6% Hungarian. This is because
one of her great-great grandmothers was a
Hungarian countess. It is through that connection
that she descends from the brother of Vlad
the Impaler of Romania, thought to be the
inspiration for Count Dracula. I did a video
on that topic too, which I’ll also link
to in the description. And finally, you can
see that she has a bit of French as well.
Now, most of the British and Irish ancestry
you see here comes from her mother, who was
also named Elizabeth, and most of the German
ancestry comes from her father, King George
VI. So prior to Queen Elizabeth, it was in
fact true that the British monarch was mostly
German, at least genetically. Of course, in
terms of culture, loyalty, and place of residence,
George VI was most certainly British, as was
his father and his father’s father and so
on.
Okay, what about the next generation though?
What would the DNA results look like for Prince
Charles, the next line for the throne? Well,
I crunched the numbers for him as well, so
let’s take a look.
You’ll notice a big change here and that
is because Prince Charles’s father, Prince
Philip, has a lot of German ancestry. Now
you might have been expecting to see some
Greek or Danish ancestry being that Prince
Philip was previously a member of the Greek
royal family, who in turn were descendants
of the Danish royal family. But the current
royal house in Denmark traces its roots back
to Oldenburg, in Germany, and it has primarily
intermarried with other German houses throughout
history, thus meaning that Prince Philip’s
Danish ancestry is really actually German
ancestry.
Alright, what if we were to go one more generation
forward, to the individual who is currently
second in line to the throne – Prince William,
the Duke of Cambridge.
Aha, here we see that the British & Irish
ancestry goes back up. This is of course,
is because of William’s mother, Princess
Diana, who had primarily British ancestry.
So when Prince William becomes king, the United
Kingdom will finally have a monarch that is
more than 50% British & Irish.
Now, I didn’t make a chart for William’s
son George but considering that William’s
wife Catherine is almost entirely of British
descent, this red section is going to get
even larger in the next generation after William.
So that was a look at the predicted DNA results
for the next several generations of the British
royal family. Let me know in the comments
what you think about all of this and whether
or not it matters to you what the ancestry
of a king or queen is.
Thanks for watching.
