Louis XVI, king of France - DNA match

Interesting, Louis XVI, King of France and his wife Queen Consort, Marie Antionette are both cousins of mine - Louis 17th Cousin 1x removed and Marie Antionette 18th Cousin 1x removed. Terrible ending them - so young guillotined 9 months apart. Probably cousins but have not gone back through their lineages.

Most of the French nobility including Louis XIV to XVI were suspected to be black and I would go further to say they were haplos A through E

All proper male-line descendants of Louis XIV or his brother Philippe d'Orleans should be R-M269 (subclade R-Z381). The primary reason Louis XVI has his Y-DNA result tagged as "Uncertain" is that preliminary (and relatively primitive) tests on a gourd allegedly containing traces of his blood came up type G. However, the authenticity of the sample is in doubt (possible case of "pious fraud" by person or persons unknown).

However, his brother, Charles of Artois survived the French revolution and had male issue.

Charles X King of France & Co-Prince of Andorra & Count of Artois

Not for too many generations he didn't. His line kept daughtering out, and marrying into the Bourbon-Parma line (which was the one that had two scions tested,R-Z381). By itself that might not have been conclusive, but a *very* collateral descendant, of the Orleans-Braganza line, also agreed to testing - and matched the Bourbon-Parmas,

The most recent common ancestor for both lines was Louis XIII.

To be ultra-specific and avoid arguments, that's "most recent common MALE ancestor", the only one that counts in tracing Y-DNA.

Yes you're right of course I was being overly optimistic. I should have checked first before posting. But I do appreciate you setting the record straight. And I think the R1b-Z381 result is probably most accurate. The family is too big for me to spend time trying to trace living male descendants, although I don't doubt they're out there somewhere.

There are also, undoubtedly, undocumentable living male descendants, given that a lot of the Bourbons were notorious lechers. :-)

An "undocumentable" popped up among the claimants to "descent from Louis XVII" - he matched the Bourbon Y-DNA but not,the "lost Dauphin's" mtDNA, so best guess is that he's off the wrong side of some Bourbon's blanket. ;-)

Louis XVI, king of France is your 9th cousin four times removed.
Charles X King of France & Co-Prince of Andorra & Count of Artois is your 9th cousin four times removed.

Greetings to you all, I have been following this debate and find all of your opinions to be sincerely well-founded. Allow me to offer this point of view. Y-DNA recombines more so than mtDNA in regards to Haplogrouping which is the reason why the most recent DNA testing on the remains of the young Louis XVII and the remains of Marie Antoinette matched mtDNA yet there was no haplogroup match when they tested the Y-DNA of Louis XVI and Louis XVII. You must understand of course that both Versailles and Chateaux Saint Germain En Lay were boiling pots for sexual scandal and it was well-known around the palaces that both the king and queen took other lovers. Though because it was the queen who was pregnant the child would be raised as a prince or princess. However, if it was the king's mistress that was pregnant, it was the king's decision whether to recognise the child or not. I have taken two DNA tests and both show Louis XVI on my chromosomes. I know for a fact it is through a mistress or perhaps a might with a maid or another royal link because there is no reference to his queen. Remember, we know what we know through books, we were not there so we must listen to the DNA, though the argument could be made that the results have been doctored. What I would love to know is how so many royal ancestors got into my DNA and Charlamagne is not among them. How do you get from Louis XVI to Christopher Corvinus Hunyadi?

Y-DNA *does not recombine*. Neither does mtDNA. The ONLY kind of DNA that "recombines" is AUTOSOMAL DNA. (Y and mtDNA do mutate, but very slowly - mtDNA hardly at all in millennia.)

As far as I know there have been NO Y-DNA tests on Louis XVI subsequent to the "blood in the gourd" tests - which as I noted are questionable as to authenticity and therefore to reliability.

Also as far as I know, tests done on the "preserved heart of Louis XVII" were strictly mtDNA, not Y-DNA (nor autosomal, which wasn't A Thing at that time). Which means the tests could show who his *mother* was (results indicated Marie Antoinette) but not who his *father* was.

Of all the Bourbon kings, Louis XVI was among the *least* likely to indulge in infidelity - he had to have an operation before he could even consummate his *marriage*. On the other hand, his grandfather (Louis XV),great-great-grandfather (Louis XIV) and 4great-grandfather (Henri IV), not to mention various collateral male relatives, were all Tireless Tomcats.

IIf you are using your own name, Emily, I can *guarantee* that you received no Y-DNA whatsoever from Louis XVI or any other man - not even from your own father. WOMEN CANNOT RECEIVE Y-DNA, period end of sentence. (Y chromosome = MALE.)

You would not have received any mtDNA from him either, because while man *can* receive it, *they cannot pas it on*.

ANYBODY can receive (and pass on) AUTOSOMAL DNA from any and all ancestors, but *because it recombines with each child in each generation*, the likelihood of having significant identifiable DNA from any particular ancestor drops sharply with each generation - by the time you are 5-7 generations out, you'll be lucky to be able to sort anything out of the "background noise".

Unscrupulous DNA testing companies - and there are a fair few of them - will obfuscate these issues, and some will even deliberately misrepresent their test results to please their customers. Caveat emptor.

FTDNA remains the most reliable of the various testing companies, trailed by 23andme and Ancestry.com (approximately in that order). You *probably* won't go wrong with any of the top three.