Kate Middleton And Jane Austen Are Related
Australasian Geneology Website
Discovers Kate Middleton And Jane Austen Are
Related
June 29, 2011 – As the royal
newlyweds embark on their first official tour of North
America, arriving in the United States on July 8,
Ancestry.com.au, the world’s largest online family history
resource, today announced that the Catherine, Duchess of
Cambridge, and Jane Austen, one of the best known and most
popular novelists of all time, are related.
Catherine, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of
Cambridge, and Austen, best known for her novels focusing on
lower gentry or middle class women and their romantic
interactions with men of higher rank and wealth, are related
through their common ancestor Henry Percy, the 2nd Earl of
Northumberland. Percy, who lived in the first half of the
15th century, is Kate’s 16th great-grandfather and Jane
Austen’s 10th great-grandfather, making them 11th cousins,
six times removed.
Though her work touched on many
topics, from economics to equality, Jane Austen is largely
considered to be the pioneer of the romantic fiction genre.
Her novels are known for their biting social commentary and
romance between the classes and her heroines for their
spirit, intelligence and wit; they are readers and walkers;
they are loyal friends and sisters.
It has been
exactly 200 years since Jane Austen published her first
novel, Sense and Sensibility (1811). Written with
both comedy and emotional depth, Sense and Sensibility is
considered to be one of the greatest romantic dramas ever
written, demonstrating why Jane Austen remains one of our
most popular authors almost 200 years after her death. The
1995 film version of the novel earned Emma Thompson, who
authored the screenplay and stared in the film, an Academy
Award.
“Finding this connection between the
Duchess of Cambridge and Jane Austen is very exciting since,
in many ways, Catherine is the modern Jane Austen heroine: a
middle class girl marrying the future King of
England,” says Christine Clement, Family Historian for
Ancestry.com.au. “Jane Austen may have written about
happily-ever-after but it seems Catherine has found a
nonfiction hero to spend her life with – far past the
epilogue.”
Sisters and
Friends
Throughout
her life, Jane Austen’s best friend and strongest
supporter was her elder sister Cassandra. In fact, when
Cassandra was sent off to boarding school at age 10 in 1783,
eight-year-old Jane refused to be separated from her sister,
demanding to go also.
The close relationship between
the Austen sisters is easily comparable to the bond
Catherine shares with her younger sister Pippa, who served
as Catherine’s maid of honour at her recent wedding,
attended the same boarding school as her older sister and
then followed her to college in Scotland.
While all
her novels conclude with a happy marriage between the
heroine and her hero, neither Jane nor Cassandra ever
married. There is however every expectation that Pippa will
follow her sister’s example and marry her own prince
charming.
Fame
and Fortune
As the Royal
Couple’s visit will demonstrate, the celebrity and fame
surrounding Catherine has only increased since her wedding.
Born in 1775, Jane Austen is perhaps best known for
her works Pride and Prejudice and Sense and
Sensibility, two of six novels she wrote in addition to
lesser known short stories and unfinished works. Her writing
brought Austen little fame or fortune during her lifetime -
today a cult of “Jane-ites” has emerged around the
world. Numerous sequels to her works have been penned,
various film adaptations of her novels produced, and a new
generation of female readers, often speculating on their
romantic endeavours, asks themselves “What would Jane
do?”
Royal
Connections
Henry
Percy, the ancestor who connects Catherine and Jane, was
born in 1392 at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, England.
Percy was a 2nd great-grandson of King Edward III –
meaning that King Edward is also a distant great-grandfather
of Catherine Middleton.
Spending his youth in
Scotland, because his father and grandfather were killed
fighting against King Henry IV of England, in his early
twenties, Percy reconciled with King Henry V (after Henry
IV’s death) and was tasked with protecting the Scottish
border. He was killed in 1455 during the first battle of the
Wars of the Roses, at St. Albans, England. The Wars of the
Roses were a series of English civil wars fought over the
English throne.
ENDS