14 DAY TRIAL // In a few years, Prince William will go down in history as the first British king proven to have an Indian ancestry. DNA tests have shown that there is a genetic link between the Duke of Cambridge and a part-Indian woman.
The woman is named Eliza Newark, and she is Prince William's great, great, great, great, great grandmother.
For those who don't want to go through all the conundrum of counting the “greats,” here's what it all boils down to: the connection between Prince William and Eliza Newark traces back to a measly eight generations.
Judging by her last name, Eliza Newark had Armenian blood running through her veins. Researchers estimate that she was born in the 1790s and that she lived in Surat, north of Bombay.
“I was wondering if it was possible she was Indian. What was an Armenian doing in Bombay? That's what got me interested,” Dr. Jim Wilson of the University of Edinburgh commented on his and his colleagues decision to further investigate this issue.
It turns out that Dr. Jim Wilson's suspicions were founded: Eliza was at least half Indian.
Sky News says that the woman used to work as a housekeeper for the Prince's great, great, great, great, great grandfather, a Scottish merchant by the name of Theodore Forbes.
The two had a daughter named Catherine, who passed on Eliza's mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).
“Theodore described her as his housekeeper. It appears they weren't married. Mixed blood is something we celebrate today but that was very much not the case in the past,” Dr. Jim Wilson from the University of Edinburgh said, as cited by Mirror.
By the looks of it, the Duke of Cambridge got his bits and pieces of Indian DNA from his mother, Princess Diana.
The researchers suspect that Prince Harry is also part Indian, but have not yet carried the tests needed in order for them to prove their theory.
All things considered, the Duke of Cambridge has high chances of passing on some Indian blood to his own children, specialists say.
The researchers discovered that Prince William is part Indian by testing saliva samples taken from two other of Eliza's living direct descendants, both of whom are related to Princess Diana's mother.
These descendants were found to be some 0.3% and 0.8%, respectively, South Asian.
As Dr. Jim Wilson put it, “This was independent evidence that there was Indian ancestry.”
“We've got two different kinds of genetic evidence that are independent from one another and they both corroborate the story. So it really seems that our future king has a little bit of Indian blood.”