Better address me as Your Highness...

Why so?

It says here so: (As reported in TOI, Mumbai Edition)


Everyone of us on earth has royal ancestors
Actress Brooke Shields has an impressive pedigree—hanging from her family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, William the Conquerer and King Harold. Shields also descends from five popes, a whole mess of early New England settlers, and the royal houses of every European country. She counts renaissance pundit Niccolo Machiavelli and conquistador Hernando Cortes as ancestors.
Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually 100% 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.’’ By the same token, for every king in a person’s family tree there are thousands and thousands of nobodies whose births, deaths and lives went completely unrecorded by history. We’ll never know about them, because until recently vital records were a rarity for all but the noble classes. It works the other way, too. Anybody who had kids more than a few hundred years ago is likely to have millions of descendants today, and quite a few famous ones.
Take King Edward III, who ruled England during the 14th century and had nine children who survived to adulthood. Among his documented descendants are presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, the Roosevelts), authors (Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson), scientists (Charles Darwin) and actors (Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields). Some experts estimate that 80% of England’s present population descends from Edward III. The longer ago somebody lived, the more descendants a person is likely to have today. Humphrys estimates that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, appears on the family tree of every person in the Western world.
Some people have tried to establish a documented line between Muhammad, who was born in the 6th century, and the medieval English monarchs, and thus to most if not all people of European descent. Nobody has succeeded yet, but one proposed lineage comes close. Though it runs through several strongly suspicious individuals, the line illustrates how lines of descent can wander down through the centuries, connecting famous figures of the past to most of the people living today. The proposed genealogy runs through Muhammad’s daughter Fatima. Her husband Ali, also a cousin of Muhammad, is considered by Shiite Muslims the legitimate heir to leadership of Islam. They had a son, al-Hasan, who died in 670. About three centuries later, his ninth great-grandson, Ismail, carried the line to Europe when he became Imam of Seville. Finally, 43 generations from Mohammed, you reach an Italian princess named Marina Torlonia. Her granddaughter is Brooke Shields.

FAMILY MATTERS
Even without a documented connection to a notable forebearer, experts say the odds are virtually 100% that every person on earth is descended from royal personage Experts say 80% of England’s population descends from King Edward III who ruled England during the 14th century. His documented descendants include George Washington, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Charles Darwin, Audrey Hepburn and Brooke Shields The longer ago somebody lived, the more descendants a person is likely to have today. Experts say Muhammad, the founder of Islam, appears on the family tree of every person in the Western world