Richard III of England - DNA Results

I'm betting on haplotype G - it's commoner in France, and Geoffrey of Anjou, the forefather of the Plantagenet line, was certainly French.

Telegraph.co.uk article spazzed the fact that the Tudors were NOT male-line descendants of John of Gaunt - their descent passes through Margaret Beaufort, who could not possibly have passed on any Y-DNA (for obvious reasons).

They also spazzed the fact that the current British royal line has several other female-line ancestors. Y-DNA doesn't prove a lot in *that* situation.

The BBC article makes the same mistakes and is even more sloppily written.

Henry VII, the first Tudor king, claimed the throne because of his Lancastrian descent. He married Elizabeth, the Yorkist heiress. If the NPE is on either side, the later kings still have the other side.

This seems to parallel, rather exactly, the Thomas Plummer of Anne Arundel situation. The founder was confirmed as Y-DNA haplotype G (very rare in England, "somewhat rare" in France), but several supposed male-line descendants tested haplotype R1b (very common everywhere in Western Europe), and in each case there were questionable paper-trail links.

A few of Thomas Plummer's male-line descendants were found to be haplotype G and a good match to his pattern, strongly suggesting that the hanky-panky was on the other lines.

Henry VII's Lancastrian descent was through his mother, Margaret Beaufort. Elizabeth of York could not have passed on any Y-DNA either (women can't, because they don't *have* any - duh!).

The claim on the Tudor side was even more dubious, consisting of an alleged secret second marriage between Owen Tudor and Catherine de Valois, who was Henry V's widow. No male-line Plantagenet ancestry *there*.

The point is, when you have a rare haplotype and a very common haplotype, it is almost always the common haplotype that does the overwriting.

I think the weak link is in the Somerset line.

http://www.wsj.com/video/dna-proves-car-park-remains-are-richard-ii...

Expect to hear a great deal of half-baked malarkey in the next few days and/or weeks, while the media struggle to get the story sorted out.

The "givens" at the moment are that yes, the car park skeleton is definitely Richard III, with a rare (French-flavored) Y-DNA haplotype and a well-documented mtDNA haplotype.

The questions are, where do the Y-DNA mismatches fall, and what do they mean? (As far as the ancestry of the present British royal family, they are of no significance whatsoever, due to several changes of dynasty and several passages through the female line.)

It certainly seems more logical that "the real" Plantagenets were G-P287.

I will go fisticuffs with those who suggest either Queen Phillipa or Katherine Swynford did a bait & switch. Those alliances were love stories.

There are two very different issues here. Careful not to confuse them.

There is the DNA issue. Which result represents the Planatagenet DNA? Was the break on the York side, the early Lancaster side, or the later Lancastrian (Somerset) side? There hasn't been a Plantagenet king since Richard III, so this part is purely historical.

Then there is the issue about inheritance of the throne, which is primarily just a media side show. All kings after Richard III inherit their claim from the Tudor union of Lancaster and York. If one of those had an NPE, there is still the other. And that means the idea of a break in the legitimacy of the line is just hype.

in the article it states The instance of female infidelity, or cuckolding, could have occurred anywhere in the numerous generations that separate Richard III from the 5th Duke of Beaufort (1744-1803), whose living descendants provided samples of male-line DNA to be compared against that of the Plantagenet king.
dna can not tell us where the npe is

Richard 111 of England is my 4th cousin 16 times removed are we are related through Alianore(The Elder)Holland Countess of March,Baroness Cherieton. My daughter has Scoliosis(Curvature of the spine) and so does my niece thks for the links very interesting.

In many ways this is very similar to a more famous French case, where researchers thought they had identified a handkerchief dipped in the blood of Louis XVI. They tested and found it was Haplo G.

Then, earlier this year, the full genome was sequenced and found not to match modern three modern members of the same dynasty, who were R1b. This study had the additional benefit of using the full sequence to extrapolate physical features. Those features didn't match Louis XVI.

The current thinking is the blood was falsely attributed to Louis XVI, although some people think it is more likely there was an NPE somewhere later on the line leading to the modern Bourbons.

I don't think I'd be making any bets just yet on Richard III.

The Haplogroup G groups are lighting up with info today. Brian Hamman, who is a co-admin with Anne Berge and me on the G-L497 project posted some a link to a map that shows the locations of 14 living men who match Richard III:

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/richard-iii-case-closed-after-52...

If someone wants to do more checking, Richard III is B8YDF at ysearch.org.

Haplogroup G is "rare" in Europe. About 1-3 per cent of the population. Higher in Tuscany, Switzerland and the Tirol, declining as you move further north. Current thinking is that it originated in or near the Caucasus and spread to Europe with the first farmers, then nearly exterminated by invaded R1bs.

Hugues du Perche, comte de Gatinais is Richard III of England's 12th great grandfather!
http://www.geni.com/path/Richard-III-of-England+is+related+to+Hugue...

I read somewhere that Richard III's great-grandfather, Edmund of York, did not include Richard III's grandfather, Richard of Conisburgh, Earl of Cambridge, in his will as there had been a rumor that Cambridge was not his son. Isabel, Edmund's wife, may have had an affair with John Holland, the Duke of Exeter, so perhaps Edward IV and Richard III weren't Plantagenets at all. That makes the Wars of the Roses interesting!

Or alternatively, Elizabeth Browne, who married the 2nd Earl of Worcester, Charles Somerset, was known to have been the mistress of Thomas Cromwell and perhaps even of Henry VIII. Imagine if these dukes of Beaufort were actually male-line Cromwells or Tudors!

We'll probably never know, but it's so interesting! Thank you for sharing!

I'm loving this thread. I like the DNA parts best since I'm not that up on British history!

Emily, those rumours seems to have been false, Rickard III
has been proven in the test to be 99.99% of the right parentage
down to Hugues du Perche, mentioned in the article posted by
Justin above, it´s the line after him that are in question if I have
understood it right?

Found duplication in the Plantagenet line due to people not checking for extant profiles. Was able to merge Edward I (he wasn't locked for some reason), but Edward II IS locked.

Master Profile: Edward II, king of England

Duplicate: Unknown Profile

It's a nightmare curating the popular royals and Charlemagne because of the large number of duplicates, often with errors. You could spend your entire life merging and fixing what was fine before the merge.

Private User that's the way I read it too. Unless of course there were earlier NPE's also ... An Anatolian farmer? :)

More locked duplicates:

Edward III
Master Profile: Edward III, king of England
Duplicate: Unknown Profile

John of Gaunt:
Master Profile: John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, 1st Earl of Richmond
Duplicate: Unknown Profile

There are lots of other associated duplicates.

It sure seems to me that locking profiles "to avoid incorrect merges, confusion and mess" - actually CREATES confusion and mess.

If they DON'T get merged, they can't be corrected - so there's that consideration also.

I can tell you that in the early American lines, I can talk anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours to merge in a duplicate tree. You have to be very careful and royal trees are probably more likely to have bad spouses, children etc., not to mention all the data field conflicts that have to be resolved. When people's trees are done sloppily or by new users, there can be infinite loops with the generations in the wrong place.

The majority of us no longer lock profiles since field locking was introduced but (1) there are leftover locked profiles from before and (2) in certain really heavily trafficked areas like royals, Charlemagne, and the Biblical tree they have to be locked I believe. And some people merge in duplicates and a few do not.

Sorry for spelling errors, need to stop typing so late.

There is that. On the other hand, the merging and resolving eventually has to be done anyway. (I've broken up a few timey-wimey loops....)

Regarding the Bourbon Y-DNA mismatch question, there has been some doubt as to the paternity of Louis XIV and his brother. Louis XIII was infamously un-uxorious (some say 102% gay in the shade), and it required a lot of wheeling and dealing from Cardinal Richelieu to produce those two sons.

Maven, wrote
"More locked duplicates:

Edward III
Master Profile: Edward III of England
Duplicate: Edward III King of England "

I can´t find any difference between them, they both shows up the same way when I click on them.