10/10/2026
ROYAL DNA: THE BOURBON DYNASTY
The House of Bourbon has ruled over parts of Europe for centuries — but what can DNA tell us about its royal bloodline?
DNA analysis of remains attributed to King Louis XVI produced a surprising result: a proposed Y-DNA haplogroup of G2a.
But when researchers studied three living male members of the Bourbon family, they found that all three shared a different paternal lineage:
R1b1b2a1a1 (R-Z381)**
This belongs to the wider R1b lineage, one of the most common paternal lineages in Western Europe.
So, which DNA story is correct?
The conflicting results have raised fascinating questions about the identity of the historical remains — or whether an undocumented break in the paternal line occurred somewhere between the Bourbon ancestor and the living descendants.
Sometimes, DNA doesn't just answer historical mysteries — it creates new ones.