He’s a clone, as in Post 28, not a time traveller.
That sounds like the last act of a desperate man.
I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to get that!
The queen, for instance…
Yes, through his sister Anne: a Canadian family called Ibsen. The Ibsen being tested is Richard’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-nephew. I may have the number of “greats” wrong, but another article said “seventeenth generation nephew.”
I really enjoyed that.
Yes, I think that would be very nice.
I did not think Elizabeth was descended from the Plantagenets. Doesn’t she descend from the Hanovarians? Do they descend from female Plantagenets?
Elizabeth of York married Henry Tudor (Henry VII). Incidentally, that means the current royal family has the same relationship to Richard III as the random Canadians. I wonder why they didn’t test the royals?
Don’t they hold a dress rehersal every year once one of them turns 80?
They record each rehersal in high-def, edit out the bad parts such as a horse taking a dump, then stitch together all the flawless parts.
It means, of course, that no one knows the real one isn’t being broadcast, because Harry is goosestepping again.
I assume they needed a direct descendent (of Richard’s mother) in the female line for mitochondrial DNA.
Since you only get mitochondrial DNA from your mother, they can only test people who are descended matrilineally (through women only) from one of Richard III’s matrilineal ancestors. Autosomal DNA isn’t helpful after so many generations. (IIRC, it’s something like five. Farther out than that, any similarity is more likely to be random chance than evidence of a common ancestor.)
How about the Y chromosome from a male-line descendant of a male-line ancestor of Richard’s?
Regarding all the speculation about a funeral dry run for Queen Elizabeth, isn’t this getting dangerously close to “compassing or imagining” such? I’d hate to hear of any Dopers having their bowels burnt before their eyes.
Well let me go ahead and state my belief that the woman of that family are bionic and I’m quite sure Lizzy will outlive us all.
No, because we’re talking about what happens after her death.
That won’t save you from being hanged, drawn and quartered. To talk about what happens after her death you have to presume or imagine that she’s dead.
Elizabeth of York was descended from the same female as Richard III?
Never mind, the genealogy of the British royal family over the most recent millennium or so will not get the dining room painted.
But does anyone remember why mitochondrial DNA is passed only through the female line?
Elizabeth of York was the daughter of Edward IV, so she was Richard’s niece but didn’t share his mitochondrial DNA.
Mitochondria are organelles found in the cell that are thought to have arisen from endosymbiosis - they were bacteria which were engulfed by primitive eukaryotic organisms. As such, they reproduce on their own in the cell and have their own DNA. During sexual reproduction, the sperm basically just contributes DNA in the form of chromosomes, but all the mitochondria come from the vastly larger egg.
(Just to clarify my earlier posts) None of the news articles I looked at mentioned mitochondrional DNA and the specific female-line requirement, which both makes a lot of sense and lets out Elizabeth of York’s descendants. In fact, I just checked: the article I linked to about the Ibsens was from a wire service, and what I read had edited out that (crucial!) paragraph about the mtDNA.
Update: it was confirmed that it was Richard III:
What they plan to do now is: