King Charles III heralds a new(ish) Y-chromosome era: a genetic genealogy thread. 🧬🇬🇧🧵
With Charles' accession we will see a new Y-chromosome lineage on the British throne for the first time since 1901, when Edward VIII became king. His son, George V, and grandson George VI (Elizabeth's father) carried his Y-chromosome. But where did it come from?
Edward was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a powerful German duchy. Albert was Queen Victoria's first cousin, and the younger son of...
...Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. While both were reportedly promiscuous during their unhappy marriage, we will assume that Albert was Ernest's legitimate son.
Through the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha lineage, Albert (and George VI, Elizabeth's father) ultimately traces his unbroken male line back to Dietrich I , Count of Wettin in Saxony, who was born in the early 10th century. The House of Wettin is one of the oldest noble houses in Europe.
Charles, on the other hand, inherited his Y-chromosome from his father Prince Phillip. Philip was born on the island of Corfu in 1921, the youngest son...
...of Prince Albert of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenburg. Albert was the fourth son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (it bounces around a bit at this point) and the grandson of King Christian IX of Denmark. Prince Albert:
Christian IX's father was Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, and this is the lineage we can trace, ultimately to...
...Elimar I, Count of Oldenburg, a region of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. Elimar was born in ~1040 to Nayo of Friesland and his wife Rira of Oldenburg, and Nayo is Philip's earliest documented male ancestor.
Freisland is a coastal region of what is now the Netherlands, with a small part of southwestern Denmark and northwestern Germany at the time Nayo would have ruled.
From the genealogies alone it seems likely that both George VI and Prince Philip shared ~similar Y-chromosomes, and genetic genealogical work on various family members confirms that both clearly fall into the R1b lineage: surnamedna.com/?articles=y-dn…
R1b is the dominant lineage in much of western Europe, having been introduced in the Bronze Age by Indo-European speakers...
...that ultimately trace their ancestry back to the nomadic Yamnaya people of the southern Russian steppe ~5,000 years ago. 🐎🧬
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