Prince William may have little to no Indian ancestry

Credit: Robert PayneThe British media is blowing up today about Prince William's Indian ancestry. Here's a representative headline: Hunt is on in Gujarat for a distant cousin who shares Prince William’s Indian blood. The science here is straightforward. Apparently some British researchers found third cousins of Lady Diana Spencer. These individuals, like Diana, are descended from a woman named Eliza Kewark. This woman, William's great, great, great, great, great grandmother was an ethnic Armenian who was resident in India. She was also the housekeeper of William's ancestor Theodore Forbes, a Scottish merchant. At some point he sent his children by this woman to be educated in England, and there William's ancestress married into native British lineages. Since Diana's cousins share the same unbroken matriline as she does they by definition share an mtDNA lineage. As it happens these individuals carry haplgroup R30b, a very rare lineage found only in South ...