Lots to discuss this week, primary among them: What is going on with the Spanish royals right now??!!?! I welcome your gossipy theories in full.

Around here, though: The Brits came out for Easter! And earlier today, Meghan and Harry popped out to attend the team trials for the Invictus Games.

Elsewhere:

The Sofia/Letizia drama even made the New York Times!

The NYT also did a HUGE Royal Wedding FAQ.

Prince Philip had his hip replaced this week and I’m sure the Queen is pleased he lived through the procedure. [People]

Vanity Fair is doing a series of Royal Wedding Flashbacks in the lead-up to Harry and Meghan’s wedding, and this week they bring you How 20-Year-Old Queen Victoria Forever Changed Wedding Fashion. Learning!

Speaking of Meghan, Jezebel has one of Meghan’s old Tostitos commercials. Meghan, I ALSO love chips!!

Per Refinery29, H&M has launched a new line of wedding gowns and one is vaguely Middletonian.

This was very interesting, at The Crown Chronicles, a look at the grand English house Luton Hoo.

At Town & Country, a very nice piece about Meghan’s mom, Doria Ragland.

Travel & Leisure reports that Kate was spotted grocery shopping this week and I sort of rolled my eyes when I saw the tweet about this but actually I enjoyed the article. She used self check-out!

Finally, we got an email from Fug National Carolyn which I think may be relevant to many of your interests. I am just going to paste what she wrote me below:

This concerns a matter of Real-Life Historical Sleuthing that I think may be relevant to the interests of many in the GFY community.  This would involve helping to solve an Ancient Mystery that is currently being investigated by a team of professional Historians: the true fate of Edward II, King of England, to be determined by finding a match for his mitochondrial DNA through a matrilineal descendant of his mother.  This is the same process that was undertaken to determine the identity of the Richard III skeleton found in the Leicester car park.

British author and historian Kathryn Warner runs a blog dedicated to the sexy life and times of Edward II, King of England from 1307 to 1327. This is the Edward II of Christopher Marlowe fame, and also Braveheart fame, although he was not in fact a fop who couldn’t satisfy Sophie Marceau, leaving her to be secretly impregnated by Mel Gibson. In reality, he was imposing, athletic, passionate, generous, hilarious, unconventional, apparently bisexual, and probably a great guy if he weren’t such a terrible king.  I found Kathryn’s blog when researching my ancestors, and have become addicted to the deep well of outrageous drama that was 14th century Britain (indeed, Game of Thrones is inspired by these people and events).

WHERE FUG NATION COULD COME IN:  There is some question as to whether the body which lies buried in Edward’s tomb in Gloucester Cathedral is, in fact his!  There has long been compelling, grounded evidence that Edward II may not have died when his wife and her lover (not Mel Gibson, another dude), who deposed him, said he did.  It seems possible that this failed monarch might have escaped his imprisonment and survived in Italy for some years afterward. Kathryn is part of a team of historians at The Auramala Project: Crowd-Researching the Mysterious Fate of Edward II, who are pooling their resources and reaching out to find a match for Edward’s mitochondrial DNA through a living matrilineal descendant of Edward’s mother, Eleanor of Castile, Queen of England.  Such a person, male or female, would be someone whose biological mother is descended in an exclusively female chain from one of Edward’s sisters.  While there are many known descendants of these women, none of us (I am one) are matrilineal.  On their website, the team has a list of English and Colonial English women down to the the 18th century, so, if interested, someone with an extensively recorded family tree could look to see if any of those names match their ancestors’. More specifically, there’s been a recent breakthrough in which an American genealogist has traced the female line down to four American sisters, maiden name Nunn, from San Joaquin County, California, who died there between 1980 and 1992.  There is no record of them having had children, and that is as far as the research has been able to get.  That lineage is also on the website. Could someone out there be related to the Nunns?  It would be damn cool to find out!

Meghan Markle surely had no idea that she is a 16th cousin to her fiancé! You never know what will turn up, and the search can be fun and addicitve. For people who may be new to genealogical research, here are some tips from the New York Times.

Isn’t that fascinating? Get at it! (I was like, WAIT, I AM RELATED TO EDWARD II but that’s a lie. I think my family pops in at Edward III via his wife. I don’t totally remember. But one of you might be!)

And on social media:

 

[Photos:  MC/MARINA PRESS/REX/Shutterstock, Rex/Shutterstock, NIVIERE/VILLARD/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock, Tim Rooke/REX/Shutterstock, MARK METCALFE/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock,  Aurora Rose/WWD/REX/Shutterstock, Francois Mori/AP/REX/Shutterstock]
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