History By Numbers: Royally Confusing
Your Family History|Spring 2017

Andrew Chapman discovers he is descended from royalty! But so is everyone else…

Andrew Chapman
History By Numbers: Royally Confusing

A headline in Entertainment Weekly at the start of this year trumpeted that ‘Sherlock star Benedict Cumber batch is related to Sir ArthurConan Doyle’. It was timed, of course, to coincide with the fourth series of the mostly preposterous reimagining of Doyle’s great detective, and the research behind the headline was done by Ancestry.

More specifically, it was revealed that the actor and the author were 16th cousins twice removed, sharing a common ancestor in the illustrious figure of John of Gaunt, himself the son of King Edward III. ‘Imagine our surprise to discover that the connecting link between these two is British royalty,’ said one of the researchers.

Imagine, indeed. It makes for a great headline – which is perhaps why MyHeritage.com also got lots of lovely link juice when the Daily Mail broadcast its own research in 2015 that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are related, sharing a common ancestor in… John of Gaunt.

Esta historia es de la edición Spring 2017 de Your Family History.

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Esta historia es de la edición Spring 2017 de Your Family History.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.