PROVO, Utah, June 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Royalty and
vampires may sound like characters from the Twilight Saga –
but they're actually what you find once you bite into Robert Pattinson's past. Ancestry.com, the
world's largest online family history resource, says Pattinson –
America's favorite vampire who stars as Edward Cullen in the hit Twilight Saga
movie series – is related to Vlad III Dracula, the basis for the
famous literary villain. The company says Pattinson and Vlad are
likely related through the British royal family.
Born in Transylvania, Vlad, also known as Vlad the Impaler, was
a three-time ruler of Wallachia (now a region of Romania) who ruled primarily from 1456 to
1462. Vlad's nickname "the Impaler" stems from his cruel and
inhumane punishments of enemies. He is commonly thought to be the
inspiration for Count Dracula in Bram
Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
"Tracing Pattinson's family back to Vlad was difficult research,
but the pieces that unraveled created the perfect accompaniment to
the Twilight Saga," said Anastasia Tyler, a genealogist at Ancestry.com.
"Without any myth or magic, we find royalty and vampires lurking in
Pattinson's life – making his story just as supernatural as the one
he's playing on screen."
Family history experts at Ancestry.com discovered that
Pattinson's and Dracula's family trees connect through none other
than the British royal line: Pattinson is distant cousins with
Prince William and Prince Harry on their father's side, likely
through the Pickering family who lived in Yorkshire, England, in the early 1500s. Vlad
the Impaler is a distant uncle of Prince
William and Prince Harry.
But Pattinson isn't the only Twilight personality with
real-life vampire connections. Ancestry.com found that Twilight
Saga author Stephenie Meyer is
also a distant cousin to the British princes – linking Meyer to
famed Dracula as well. Ancestry.com previously revealed other
"blood curdling" connections to Dracula through the royals
including former president George W.
Bush and U.S. Senator John
Kerry.
Other Famous Finds
The uncanny family connection that links Pattinson, the royal
family, and Dracula is one of many interesting skeletons that
Ancestry.com has dug up:
- Earlier this year, Ancestry.com discovered that America's Queen
of Pop, Madonna, is related to leading talk show host and
American Idol judge Ellen
DeGeneres. The two are 11th cousins.
- In November 2009, Ancestry.com
found that financier Warren Buffett
and President Obama are 7th cousins three times removed.
- Last summer, Ancestry.com revealed that Emma Watson, who plays Hermione in the Harry
Potter movie series, is related to a 16th-century woman accused
of witchcraft.
"One draw of family history is exploring family mysteries," said
Tyler. "Whether family lore says you're related to celebrities, the
president – even vampires – all it takes is a little digging to
find out."
Ancestry.com is a partner with NBC on the new, hit television
series "Who Do You Think You Are?" and provided important family
history research for the show, including tracing the roots of the
seven celebrities featured. The celebrities in Season 1 of "Who Do
You Think You Are?" included Sarah Jessica
Parker, Lisa Kudrow,
Brooke Shields, Susan Sarandon, Emmitt
Smith, Matthew Broderick and
Spike Lee.
For anyone interested in discovering royals, vampires and other
famous figures in their family tree, visit www.ancestry.com.
About Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM) is the world's largest online
family history resource, with more than one million paying
subscribers. More than 5 billion records have been added to the
site in the past 13 years. Ancestry users have created more than 17
million family trees containing over 1.7 billion profiles.
Ancestry.com has local Web sites directed at nine countries,
including its flagship Web site at http://www.ancestry.com.
SOURCE Ancestry.com