Wish you were of royal stock? The truth is you already are

BEING related to royalty is no big deal, a BBC presenter has said, because “literally every person in Europe is directly descended from Charlemagne”.

Adam Rutherford, a geneticist who presents the Radio 4 programme Inside Science, said his calculations reveal that almost every Briton is related to the 14th century king Edward III.

He told an audience at the Chalke Farm History Festival that his team had worked out that the chance that someone born in the 1970s was not related to Edward III was vanishingly small.

He said: “I was sitting there, thinking ‘I think I can. I think I can compute this.’ I worked with some of my colleagues at UCL, and the question became what is the probability that anyone is directly descended from Edward III?” He added: “Looking around this room, every single one of you is a direct descendant of Edward III. Everyone from this room is directly descended between 21 and 24 generations from Edward III.”

For celebrities, discovering they have royal blood has become something of a rite of passage, with Sir Matthew Pinsent, the Olympic rower, and the Eastenders actor Danny Dyer both among those who have found out on the television programme Who Do You Think You Are? that they had royal ancestors.

Rutherford said the programme capitalised on finding famous relations for its subjects, but was misleading viewers into thinking this was rare.

He said: “Literally every person in Europe is directly descended from Charlemagne. Literally, not metaphorically. You have a direct lineage which leads to Charlemagne.”