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DNA Reveals Prince William Is Part Indian
Hunt is on in Gujarat for a distant cousin who shares Prince William’s Indian blood.
Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, has Indian ancestry through a long-term relationship from his mother’s side of the family! According to a BritainsDNA, a company that aims to produce the history of its people through genetic analysis. Through a woman named Eliza Kerwark, who was the Indian housekeeper of William’s fifth great grandfather, Theodore Forbes, there is a universal understanding (though without any evidence that they were married) that they had children together that were Princess Diana’s relatives.
Although Forbes died when he was 32 years old, he had already started a family with Kerwak: a girl named Katherine, a son named Alexander, and a third child who was also might have been a girl. Katherine married James Crombie and their daughter, Jane, was the great grand mother of Princess Diana’s mother, Frances Roche, the wife of Earl Spencer.
Prince William’s Indian roots have been widely discussed as “unassailable” and BritainsDNA, who carried out the tests, had an incredible rare form of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which can be only passed through female line. Although men can inherit this gene, they cannot pass it on and this phenomenon can only be found among people from the Indian subcontinent: 13 from India and one from Nepal.
The entire analysis took about four months and included genealogical research. The team had to take saliva examples and after which the lab work and statistical analysis was performed. This news has raised a lot of important and concerning questions. Has there been a breach of privacy? What about Kerwak, who was abandoned because of her race to raise her children alone? In his will, he has described Kewark as the “purported mother” after he supposedly deserted her and sent their daughter, Katherine, at the age of six to Britain.
There have been numerous letters between Kerwark and Forbes that have been uncovered. These letters paint the picture of an estranged family. Although the couple had three children, there is evidence that Kerwark made many attempts to communicate with Forbes to see her children but was unsuccessful.
Historians believe that Forbes may have taken this extreme action to protect his children. Racism ran through the nerves of this society and it is highly unlikely that they would have been accepted being of mixed race from both the communities. By having this lineage, they would have been denied “good marriages” and would have been associated with the lower classes causing detriment to the royal family’s reputation.
The secret that Eliza was half-Indian was never called into question and family folklore had changed her race to be an Armenian. This research was also taking place during Princess Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles in the early eighties. This news is indeed shocking because earlier it was believed that Eliza was Armenian but because her name is Kerwark, BritishDNA suggests, that her father may have been of Armenian descent.
Feature Image:Photographed by Suhaimi Abdullah/ wire image
Blog Image Source: AP (Princess Diana in front of the Taj Mahal in India)
Source: people.com, cnn.com, dailymail.co.uk
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