Genealogy of HRH The Duchess of Sussex
 

Here are a few articles discussing Meghan's ancestry.

Meghan Markle is from Yorkshire, documentary reveals as it traces family back to British roots

Meghan Markle's ancestor was beheaded by King Henry VIII

Thank you for the link.

As I have seen while searching the web, some of the genealogists doubt this Hussey connection stating that this certain John Hussey, Meghan's ancestor, might not be descendant of Lord Hussey.

"This genealogy assumes that it is the same John who married Marie Wood, but there is no concrete evidence that he is the same man."

I wonder will anyone investigate this connection better and further when Maghan becomes Princess.

A claim that Meghan is a distant relative of William Shakespeare (through his sister presumably) and of Winston Churchill. The chart provided for the Churchill connection looks rather primitive!

Meghan Markle has English roots, genealogists claim | Daily Mail Online

More information on Meghan's ancestry, from the genealogists at the New England Historic Genealogical Society:

Royal Roots Run Deep for Meghan Markle
https://www.americanancestors.org/meghan-markle

The Wentworth connection
https://vita-brevis.org/2017/11/wentworth-connection/

A family affair
https://vita-brevis.org/2017/12/family-affair/

A missing Merrill
https://vita-brevis.org/2017/12/missing-merrill/

The Hastings connection
https://vita-brevis.org/2017/12/hastings-connection/

An unsavory connection
https://vita-brevis.org/2017/12/an-unsavory-connection/

Not at all. It includes a chart of how she is said to be linked to Shakespeare. The claim is not that she is descended from him, but a common ancestor. That through his mother, they are fifth cousins (13 times removed). That his mother Mary's great-great grandmother's sister was Meghan's ancestor.

This is the woman Meghan is said to be descended from.

https://www.geni.com/people/Lady-Ann...00003649889920

It's amazing how, once the genealogists get involved, they can find links for anyone to royalty and famous people.

It wasn't so surprising with Diana, but there was also Kate and now Meghan!
Guess it's true of everyone? ;)

Well, well, well...We are all children of Adam and Eve.:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

and to fast pace ahead through time from Adam and Eve, .... (drumroll please) .... we're all probably descended from Charlemagne due to a little something called pedigree collapse. (Thanks Gawin for the link).

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwic...lemagne-riddle

That's interesting. But it is only thought through about the sheer numbers. What about social status? If we go down from Charlesmagne, there were his three sons, all of them kings. The chance that one of their offspring became a peasant is there, clearly, but most of these descendants surely were nobility. So while I believe that a lot of people (me included) are actually descended from Charlesmagne, a lot might not be because they are from generations of peasant stock. But with people on this social level, there is not much documentation that can lead back to the times of Charlesmagne.


So while it is a good propability that people who can trace their ancestry back to 800 have at least some noble roots who could be followed up to Charlesmagne, a lot of people can't. These could or could not be descendants of Charlesmagne, we will never know.



One of my great-grandmothers was from a French comital family with a well-documented family tree and one line leads up to Charlesmagne, another to William the Conqueror (the family was from Normandy & Champagne). There are other lines as well.



But all these lines come from one ancestor of mine who actually was noble and we know about. My other ancestors are not as spectacular, at least as far as we could find out.



So, no, I don't believe all people have Royal ancestors somewhere in their family tree because Royal blood is something that sticks and keeps your family in the aristocracy for a long time. So it should be known till today.



As for the statistics: those people who today are of noble blood probably have so many lines leading up to Charlesmagne that they make up for those who don't have them.

..you might have forgotten about all the bastards they sired...

You're right but in the early centuries, Royal bastards were either legitimized or got a good education so they could become knights and make their ways up on their own while the girls were married quite well.
And if they were not recognized, they wouldn't allow for their bloodline to be traced till today.


Or see it vice versa: Surely Queen Margrethe of Denmark or Queen Elizabeth are descended from Charlesmagne. But how big is the chance they are descended from a little miller in the Loire valley? According to the Charlemagne-theory they should be....

What is known of Meghan's non Anglo roots?
Africa is a huge continent. Does Meghan know her homeland before America?
Are there good historical records of African migration?

There are records concerning where from the slaves were abducted and shipped to the Americas. There's also sporadic records of the ethnic origins of certain slaves but in general it was a conscious policy not to allow a to high concentration of the same ethnicities in one area because it would give them a strength by numbers. A few families do still have some traditions of their origins and as seen on "Who do you think you are" some of those traditions do stretch back to Africa but that must be the exception to the rule.
In the cases where African-Americans have maintained an African culture, like for instance the Gullahs of Georgia and South Carolina, it's more a Creole culture than a genuine African culture.

There is a huge chance of this. I don’t know much about Margrethe’s ancestry, but Queen Elizabeth II’s mother was the daughter of an Earl, and you don’t have to go back very far at all there for her ancestors to become less and less noble - some of them were kings, some of them were not.

It’s the same with the descendants of Charlemagne. Sure in the first generation they would have all married well, but the further away you get, the younger sons are going to marry less and less well. First generation, a younger son might marry a daughter of a foreign prince and be given lands, but his younger son surely isn’t going to make as good of a marriage and receive much, and his younger son is going to receive less, and so on.

Queen Margrethe is of Bernadotte ancestry and met several of the great-grandchildren of the dynasty's founder during her childhood one who was born during the lifetime of the founder's wife.
Before him they were of the lower bourgeoisie.

You're right about that. I have ancestors that went from nobles received at Court to peasants and soldiers in 4 generations.

Another thing that really factors in to descent from the 800s is that although not all of them remained "royal" or "noble" and slid further down the totem pole into obscurity is a pandemic occurrence of the Black Death that swept through Europe and the British Isles. The Black Death was a real status seeker. It stands to reason that those that were "royal" or "noble" had the ways and the means to eat healthier, have better sanitation and also have the ability to isolate themselves away from the general masses and by doing such, managed to survive and procreate.

"It reached Europe in the late 1340s, killing an estimated 25 million people. The Black Death lingered on for centuries, particularly in cities. Outbreaks included the Great Plague of London (1665-66), in which one in five residents died."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/s...es/the-plague/

Perhaps this is a good reason to believe that descendants today would most likely have the "royal" and "noble" ancestors. They were the ones able to weather out and survive this black period of history.

But that's the point. Just because you can't trace your ancestry to Charlemagne doesn't prove you're not his descendant. It simply means the records you need to prove it aren't available. If Charlemagne's great-great-grandson had a brief fling with a servant girl, resulting in a daughter, that daughter could have millions of descendants living today who have no idea they are Charlemagne's descendants. But that doesn't mean they aren't his descendants.

The chance is very big. As other posters have pointed out, Queen Margrethe descends from the Bernadottes, originally a middle-class French family. Through her mother Queen Elizabeth II is a descendant of many middle-class families, including an 18th century English innkeeper and an 18th century French actress. King George I's mother-in-law, Eleonore Desmier d'Olbreuse, was a French aristocrat, not royal, and some of her ancestors probably weren't even aristocratic. She is the ancestor of almost all of the European royal families, including Queens Elizabeth and Margrethe.

Yes, and just as you will find nobles among a King's descendants, you will find commoners among a noble's.

The issue really has nothing to do with proving descent from Charlemagne. It's the fact the the numbers alone show that anyone of European descent probably is, whether you can prove it or not. As you keep multiplying your ancestors by two, by the time you get to Charlemagne's time you reach roughly 4,294,967,296 ancestors. But there were probably only about 220 million people on Earth at that time. So it stands to reason that everyone descends from Charlemagne, whether they can prove it or not.

Charlemagne’s DNA and Our Universal Royalty – Phenomena

There is also genetic evidence:

https://gcbias.org/european-genealogy-faq/

Intermarriage between Charlemagne's descendants can't account for hundreds of millions of missing ancestors. In fact, this intermarriage wasn't even that common in the first couple of centuries after his death. For example, if you look at this chart of Charlemagne's descendants down to the 12th generation you'll see there aren't a lot of overlapping lines:

Descendancy for Charlemagne, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire 800-814 : Genealogics

And you will also find the illegitimate children of Henry I of England. Because of downward mobility, their descendants would have slowly moved from the nobility, to the gentry, to small land-owners, to merchants and tradesmen, etc., to common people, especially (as another poster pointed out) descendants of younger sons who had to make their own living while while their oldest brother inherited everything.

For example, when the 5th Baron Stafford died in 1637 his distant cousin Roger claimed the title. Roger was the son of a younger son of the 1st Baron. His grandmother Ursula Pole was the daughter of Margaret Countess of Salisbury, who was the daughter of George Duke of Clarence and the niece of Kings Edward IV and Richard III.

But because he was the son of a younger son Roger had fallen on hard times and it is believed he had even worked as a servant. Because of his poverty his claim to the title was denied. It was not seemly that a poor servant should rub shoulders with the peers of the realm. So within 150 years his line went from royalty, to nobility, to a poor servant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_...Baron_Stafford

Once again, that doesn't mean the other ancestors aren't descendants of Charlemagne. It only means you don't have proof, one way or the other. For example, perhaps they descend from a line that fell on hard times centuries ago, say in 1200. Because they were no longer upper class they were no longer documented in the available records.

No, many people know very little about their ancestors, especially those who lived hundreds of years ago. When genealogists began tracing Meghan Markle's ancestry, for example, they discovered she is a descendant of Edward III of England, who of course has multiple lines from Charlemagne.

See also the article about Danny Dyer, who learned about his own line of descent from Edward III on the TV show "Who Do You Think You Are?":

https://royaldescent.blogspot.com/20...ny-dyer-b.html

Even in the U.S., where we don't have a hereditary nobility, 34 of our 45 U.S. presidents have proven lines of descent from Charlemagne, including Barack Obama, our first black/biracial president.

That's backwards. The issue isn't with the number of descendants, it's the number of ancestors. There were so few people on Earth in Charlemagne's time that he had to be the ancestor of everyone on Earth today, at least those of us with European ancestry. You can't explain away hundreds of millions of missing ancestors that easily.

Thanks, JR76,
I had hoped that the records would have been more extensive, for the sakes of the families of slaves who would wish to know their homeland.
Perhaps Meghan comes from a family where records were remembered and recorded.
Have you heard whether Meghan has a Creole culture in her background?

She may have visited a part of Africa whence her family originated, which would be cool. The genealogy of Meghan's African family would be interesting. I find details of how people created homes and survived in cultures other than my own enthralling.

QMQE's ancestors wasn't "less and less noble". First Lyon married king Robert II's daughter. And you can find a lot od dukes, earls, barons, etc.