Actress Brooke Shields has a pretty impressive pedigree - hanging from her family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, conquistador Hernando Cortes, five popes, a whole mess of early New England settlers, William the Conqueror, and King Harold, who was vanquished by William at the Battle of Hastings.
What is special about Brooke's ancestry? Well, nothing - at least genealogically. You probably have somewhat similar ancestry.
Associated Press writer Matt Crenson has written an article that points out that nearly everyone has royal ancestry. Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another.
"Millions of people have provable descents from medieval monarchs," said Mark Humphrys, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of computer science at Dublin City University in Ireland. "The number of people with unprovable descents must be massive."
You can read the full story at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060701/ap_on_sc/every_man_a_king
