If Kate Middleton's romance with Prince William seems like a modern fairy tale, you're definitely on the right track. New information has just been released connecting Middleton to romance writer Jane Austen in what's shaping up to be a stellar family tree. According to Ancestry.com (via PEOPLE), Middleton and Austen ((b. 1775) are eleventh cousins, six times removed. The pair are connected through Henry Percy (b. 1392), who was the second Earl of Northumberland.
So basically Middleton and the 'Emma' writer are really, really, really distant relatives. But, as Brits know all too well, a bloodline is a bloodline.
"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," lead Ancestry.com historian Anastasia Harman said.
"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," Harman said.
And to bring everything full circle, the news of Middleton and Austen's family ties comes on the 200th anniversary of Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility.' Poetic, no?
However, the romantic writer isn't Middleton's only acclaimed relative. Back in February, TV host Ellen DeGeneres received news that she, too, is related to the new Duchess of Cambridge.
"You are distant cousins ... but cousins still the same," a letter from the New England Genealogical Society told DeGeneres, claiming the future royal and talk show host are 15th cousins, related by a man named Sir Thomas Fairfax and his wife, Agnes Gascoigne.
But, even though they're cousins, DeGeneres was unfortunately left off the wedding guest list.
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