Any English history buffs?

I just found an old article from March about Richard III’s remains and how they’d found, through the DNA, a break in the line of succession of the royals. In other words, Richard III is not related to any living male descendants. However, they say present descendants ARE related to the female line that is established.

So they’re trying to find out if Richard III himself was unrelated to the actual royal line, or if the break occurred close after him. This might mean either his mother was unfaithful to her husband — or an infidelity occurred later, among Richard’s heirs.

I misunderstood the whole thing at first and I laughed and said, “They know who was unfaithful and had a child! It had to have been Ann Boleyn — for one.” Which if true would mean the present Queen of England is not legitimate — something my mother claimed the BBC had been hiding for a long time. For a long time, she said, they edited Henry VIII-related TV productions to carefully obscure and leave unresolved whether Ann Boleyn was guilty of adultery or not. Books and dramas of recent vintage, however, sometimes depict her as having been with her brother, because she was desperate to have a son. Not completely unreasonable, since her life depended on providing an heir. (Actually, whether the present Queen is legitimate must be known by DNA now, anyway. I wonder if we’d ever even hear about it if she isn’t.)

But reading over the article again, I guess I had it completely wrong. It’s not the entire line that is thrown into question; it’s just a male heritage line. I’ll have to look up Richard III to see his immediate family, I don’t remember any of that.

Not that I think royalty over there means anything more than a very, very expensive tradition and tourist lure. But I do like reading about famous family lines in history.