Angela Webb believes she and her sister are the great, great granddaughters of Queen Victoria – and she’s getting a DNA test
Jeff Reines and Nicola Methven
11:28, 03 Aug 2025
A woman in America believes she might be the illegitimate great, great granddaughter of Queen Victoria and is seeking recognition from King Charles. Angela Webb – Milinkovich, who hails from Minnesota, suspects that she and her sister are descendants of a secret union between Queen Victoria and her devoted servant John Brown.
Historian Dr Fern Riddell’s new research indicates that Angela’s great grandmother Mary Ann, officially the daughter of John’s brother Hugh and his wife Jessie, may in fact be the offspring of Victoria and Brown’s clandestine marriage.
At 47, Angela is gearing up for a DNA test to conclusively prove her Royal lineage, asserting that her aim isn’t financial gain but rather to secure her family’s rightful place in history.
“My main goal is to have the story acknowledged – I want their relationship to be recognised and for the royal family to stop saying it didn’t happen,” she states, reports the Mirror.
“If I’m going to reach for the top, it would have to be from King Charles,” Angela mentions, expressing her desire for acknowledgment from the monarch himself. “I mean, it’s a great story and it has his family involved, too. So he would be interested in it.”
And what about Prince William? “That’d be great. That’s acceptable,” she chuckles.
Angela was brought up with the belief that her family lineage traced back to a Royal connection, originating from baby Mary Ann. She can’t recall exactly when she first heard about it, only that there was a tale involving “a big boat trip… and a baby given to the family.”
During her extensive four-year research for the new book ‘Victoria’s Secret’, Dr Riddell reached out to Angela and revealed that Jessie and Hugh, who were without children, had moved to New Zealand in 1865, registering Mary Ann’s birth shortly thereafter – potentially clarifying the story of the boat journey.
In a Channel 4 documentary accompanying the book, Dr Riddell suggested that Victoria, being a widow at the time, could have hidden a pregnancy during the 1860s. She then might have had the child – her tenth – secretly taken to New Zealand to avoid any disgrace.
Records show that in 1874, Victoria arranged for the three of them to return to Scotland, even providing them with a spacious residence on the Balmoral estate. Following John’s death, she also relocated Hugh’s family closer to her at Windsor.
Angela provided Dr Riddell with a wealth of new evidence from the Brown family archive, which includes items and documents that have been in their possession for decades. Some of the materials come from a safety deposit box that Angela and her sister, who prefers to stay out of the spotlight, opened about five years ago after their father passed away.
“We didn’t know what we had, just that they were items from John Brown and Queen Victoria,” she reflects. “It was always something in the back of our minds – we should probably get these looked at.”
Queen Victoria with John Brown(Image: Bettmann Archive)
Despite long-standing family suspicions of a connection to Queen Victoria, Angela was taken aback when Dr Fern reached out. “I believed my family was being truthful with it, but we could never prove it. Once she sent that message, I thought ‘What the heck? Is there actually validity to this?'”.
Angela, a mental health care worker by profession, aims for the love affair between John Brown and Queen Victoria, which was concealed during and after the monarch’s life, to be recognised as fact. “It’s something that I’m very proud of,” she declares.
“I want the vindication essentially for John Brown and just for my lineage, because they were not able to talk about it. It was something that just became that secret that we couldn’t really share, but we knew.”
Angela Webb and Dr Fern Riddell
If Dr Riddell’s account is accurate, and there’s substantial evidence to back it up, Victoria and John shared a romantic bond for nearly 20 years until his passing in 1883.
In addition to exchanging heartfelt declarations of love as he lay on his deathbed – “I told him no one loved him more than I did and he answered ‘nor you – than me'” – she also took a cast of his hand, just as she had with Albert. When she passed away in 1901, her wishes included being laid to rest with a lock of John’s hair and his photograph, tokens of the man who had been her companion for two decades following Albert’s demise in 1861.
Letters that have survived show her referring to him as “my beloved” and “darling one”.
Nevertheless, under the instruction of her eldest son Bertie, soon to be King Edward VII, the Palace began to expunge John from historical records. Victoria’s diaries were transcribed and censored, with the original copies destroyed.
Bertie, who frequently butted heads with Brown, also commanded that the statues and personal memorials Victoria had commissioned for him be dismantled.
Angela recalls her grandfather’s dismay over how the Browns were seemingly erased from history, sharing that he was deeply affected by it. “My understanding from my Mum was that he was just really upset and bitter about it,” she said.
“He didn’t like to talk about it. Now, having both my parents and my aunt gone, we don’t have those resources any more. So the bulk of the story I have been learning from Fern, which is amazing, and I’m so grateful.”
Queen Victoria and John Brown(Image: Getty Images)
She remains hopeful that the Royal family will one day acknowledge the claims about her ancestors, as highlighted in a recent Channel 4 documentary. “My gut says it’s going to have to get acknowledged at some point,” Angela suggests.
“Scandals are always very exciting so I’m sure there’ll be a lot of questions for them to answer. If they don’t say anything, that’s their choice. But I’d like them to acknowledge the truth of this love, to recognise that it wasn’t cool to cover up and destroy evidence of the relationship they shared. Let’s be real, Bertie was a bit of a d**k to the Browns.”
Angela believes the story of the Browns deserves recognition and should be celebrated. “That story deserves to be known, to have its own breath out there in the world. You don’t get that kind of romance every day. It’s what you’d hope for anybody, that you would find another chance at love. So I don’t see why we should look down on that. It’s like an opportunity presented itself and they embraced it, and I think that is beautiful.”
Queen Victoria(Image: Popperfoto/Getty Images)
Angela is keen to have a DNA test to confirm her ancestry, but has been advised that it might take a while due to the need for perfect source material to bridge the four-generation gap. “I’ll let the scientists do the science,” she remarks with optimism.
“I’m a supporting character in this journey, and so I will follow wherever the story leads me. I’m totally open to it. So far it’s been so exciting, so cool. I’m just really stoked.”
The tattooed American, who sports a nose-ring, is adamant that her interest in Royal connections isn’t financially motivated. “Money is the furthest thing from my goal in telling this family story. It has always been to get Queen Victoria and John Brown’s story the truth it deserves.”
She struggles to find any other explanation for why her family would possess valuable keepsakes from Victoria and John, such as a brooch and a lock of hair. “Their relationship was authentic and genuine. They obviously had feelings for each other. It went well beyond a queen and man servant situation.”
John Brown(Image: Getty Images)
At the time, there was much speculation about the nature of their relationship, depicted by Dame Judi Dench and Billy Connolly in the 1997 film Mrs Brown. In 1865, when Victoria arranged for John’s move to the Royal Household at Windsor, two of her daughters, Helena and Louise, openly called him ‘Mamma’s lover’.
The next year, a Swiss newspaper ran an article alleging that Victoria, then 46, had secretly married John and was expecting a child.
Angela would be content regardless of whether Mary Ann is the daughter of John or Hugh. “Either John Brown is my great, great uncle or he is my great, great grandpa. My family still played a key role in history with their friendship and closeness to Queen Victoria. I’m proud of their steadfastness in keeping the legacy of John Brown alive and their word to holding the secret close. It’s still a beautiful romance that deserves its moment of recognition in history.”
Ang, Fern and Rob Rinder
With her Scottish heritage from her mother’s side, Angela relishes her time in the UK and sometimes feels more British than American. “I’ve always felt a little disconnected in the sense that I feel more at home over there. Scotland is my happy place. I would move there if I could, for sure.”