USA TODAY International Edition
Royals watchers may rejoice in a new redhead
Speculation grows about the possibility, though slim, that Meghan and Harry’s baby will be a “ginger” like dad.
Redheads of the world, are you ready? Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s expected royal baby might – might, it must be stressed – have the same red hair and blue eyes as his or her royal daddy, joining the tiny but proud community of “gingers” longing for another red-haired hero. Amid all the hip-hip-hoorays about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s pregnancy announced last Monday, there was another group of royal-watchers, especially in the United Kingdom, who were celebrating for a different reason. “All of us redheads in the U.K. are wildly excited about the possibility of a red-haired baby – fingers crossed!” says Jacky Colliss Harvey, the proudly redhaired author of the 2015 book “Red: A History of the Redhead.” Why so hopeful? Because Harry, the most famous “ginger prince” since at least Henry VIII, is wildly popular around the world, commanding every stage with his curly red hair and goodguy persona. Now there’s a chance there might be another little Harry or Harriet? Hip, hip, hooray, indeed. Yes, everyone is excited about the growing fourth generation of the Windsors and about how this baby, expected in the spring, will bring the total of Queen Elizabeth II’s gaggle of greatgrandchildren to eight.And they’re excited about this historic royal baby, a half-American child with African ancestry, seventh in line to the throne behind Harry, 34, and born to his American bride, Meghan Markle, 37. Will the baby grow up to be tall like Harry (6-foot-1) or of slightly above-average height like Meghan (5-foot-7)? Will he or she be slim like Meghan or lean, muscled and Army-trained fit like Harry? Big feet? Straight nose? High cheekbones? The possible combinations are endless, as with any child. But those are not the reasons the redheads, or “gingers” as slang parlance has it in the U.K., are over the moon. Harvey says redheads are on the rise – as a community, a distinct identity group, as a cultural force, and not just in the U.K. Another royal redhead star such as Harry will only add to their selfconfidence, despite their need to slather on SPF 50 outdoors. “We’re pretty excited about Harry and Meghan, full stop – we like her very, very much, we think she’s great, a wonderful breath of something completely new in the royal family,” Harvey says. Meanwhile, Harvey says, there’s a redhead moment happening as gingers become more visible and vocal. “There are huge redhead festivals in different parts of the world,” she says. “We see ourselves as promoting difference as being a good thing.” To be sure, Harvey and experts on genetics caution, there’s only a slim chance that ginger Harry and darkhaired Meghan will produce a redhead baby, probably less than 10 percent, according to John H. McDonald, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Delaware. In fact, says Brianne Kirkpatrick, a genetic counselor and ancestry expert for the National Society of Genetic Counselors, hair and eye colors are complex human traits involving the interaction of more than one gene. “We now know genetics is more complicated than we thought,” Kirkpatrick says. The bottom line for Harry and Meghan’s baby: It’s a genetic crapshoot, and anything could happen. “They could have a blond child, a child with red hair, brown hair or black – all the possibilities could happen,” Kirkpatrick says. Why does it matter? “People assign a lot of their identity to their DNA, and we also want to assign other people’s identity based on their DNA, even if it’s not important to them,” Kirkpatrick says. “To those who live in Britain, bloodlines mean a lot and define identity. But we (counselors) say DNA is complex – and it’s not destiny.” The oversimplified explanation of the genetics of human traits such as hair color or eye color is that red hair and blue eyes are rare compared to brown hair and brown eyes because the genes for brown dominate over red or blond and blue or green. If you have a red gene from dad and a brown gene from mum, you will likely have brown hair. Red hair is so rare that only 2 percent of the world population today has it. In the U.K, it’s 4 percent, but in Scotland and Ireland, it’s 12 to 15 percent of those populations. Harry comes from two families with multiple redheads: the Windsors, who descend from redhead Tudors (such as Henry VIII), and the Stuarts (Mary Queen of Scots) in the 16th century. His late mother’s family, the Spencers, also has many redheads. What about Meghan? We don’t know much about her ancestry other than that her father is white and her mother African-American. Harvey says it depends on where her ancestors on both sides of her family were from and whether they originated in communities with high rates of red hair. Being a redhead can carry downsides, including a higher rate of skin cancer and, in the U.K., a whiff of prejudice, Harvey says. For one thing, red hair is associated with Scotland and Ireland and their not-always-happy relationships with England, now or in the past. But in America, the descendants of Scots and Irish immigrants consider red hair a “proud cultural inheritance,” Harvey says. “Americans I meet are always quite astonished about the prejudice (against redheads) in the U.K.,” Harvey says. “It’s just how prejudice works – it gloms on to anything that seems a little bit different. More’s the pity.”