Not only is President Trump hosting King Charles III on a state visit to the United States but he is also related to his royal guest, according to an analysis commissioned by a British newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow, that\u2019s nice. I\u2019ve always wanted to live in Buckingham Palace!!!\u201d Mr. Trump wrote<\/a> on Truth Social on Tuesday, citing the research published by The Daily Mail<\/a>, a British tabloid. \u201cI\u2019ll talk to the King and Queen about this in a few minutes!!!\u201d<\/p>\n The president didn\u2019t say whether he talked with the royal couple about it during their visit, but he called the king \u201ca fantastic person\u201d and said it was a real honor to host them.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s claim to royal blood lies in a common ancestor, the third Earl of Lennox, who was a great-grandson of King James II of Scotland. That makes Mr. Trump \u2014 long an admirer of the British monarchy, and whose mother was Scottish \u2014 a 15th cousin of King Charles, according to the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n The Daily Mail said that Robert Barrett, a former research editor at the paper and a genealogist, had \u201cstudied multiple land records, church records and Scottish peerage documents to piece together\u201d Mr. Trump\u2019s lineal connection to the House of Windsor.<\/p>\n Surprising though it may sound, the suggestion is plausible. In fact, experts say, millions of Britons may be able to make similar claims to a royal bloodline.<\/p>\n Adam Rutherford, an author and geneticist, argued in his book<\/a> \u201cA Brief History of Everyone That Ever Lived\u201d that almost everyone with British heritage was related one way or another to royalty. \u201cThere is a virtually impossible chance that if you were born in the 1970s then you are not directly descended from Edward III,\u201d Mr. Rutherford wrote in a 2017 article<\/a>, citing detailed mathematical calculations that he had carried out with two colleagues at University College London.<\/p>\n Graham Holton, a genealogist at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, said he was skeptical that royal connections were truly so universal, and, though he described the Daily Mail\u2019s finding as possible, said he could not verify it.<\/p>\n But he acknowledged that \u201cmany of the present-day residents of the U.K. and the diaspora all over the world will be descended from medieval kings and queens.\u201d He added, \u201cYou could be talking about millions.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the centuries many royal descendants will have reproduced with those of lower social status, spreading their genes.<\/p>\n And if you go back more than 20 generations or so, based on the average reproduction rate, everyone will have millions of ancestors.<\/p>\n The actor Benedict Cumberbatch is said to be a second cousin<\/a>, 16 times removed of Richard III. The popular BBC genealogy show \u201cWho Do You Think You Are?\u201d discovered that a British comedian, Josh Widdicombe, was a descendant of Edward I, who died more than 700 years ago, as was a well-known rower, Matthew Pinsent.<\/p>\n The same show traced the roots of the actor Danny Dyer to Edward III, and found out that Alexander Armstrong, an actor and broadcaster, was descended from William the Conqueror.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump is far from the first president of royal descent.<\/p>\n In 1988, genealogists declared George H.W. Bush a 13th cousin of Queen Elizabeth II<\/a> and traced his family tree back to the 1400s. American presidents have been at least six times more likely to have royal blood than the people who elected them, it was reported at the time.<\/p>\n