Forensic experts say Britain’s officially recorded royal ancestry doesn’t add up, based on DNA extracted from the bones of King Richard III.
In 2012, anthropologists found the remains of who they believed was King Richard III in a car park in Leicester.
Forensic experts extracted DNA from the 500-year-old bones to see if it matched with today’s royal descendants listed in official records.
Forensic mathematician David Balding combined the power of genetic evidence and statistics to prove it was him.
David Balding tells the story of King Richard III and exposes the royal lineage on the Crime Insiders podcast:
“His paternal grandfather, Edward III, had some official descendants, one of them living in Brisbane at the time. And so several of them agreed to be tested and they didn’t match.”
Balding said this anomaly in the male DNA line could mean an officially recorded father, somewhere over 20 generations, is not the real father.
“This is a kind of topic that’s always amused geneticists. How many people out there is their biological father not the same as the man who they think is their father?”
Further research shows there are at least two false paternities in the royal lineage.
“There must have been at least two of those misattributed paternity events. Because the five men who came forward who were supposed to be direct paternal line relatives of Richard III, they didn’t match each other either.”
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