Kate Middleton is related to Madonna's ex

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Kate Middleton is related to Madonna's ex-husband, film director Guy Ritchie, and actress Ellen DeGeneresKate is descended from a wide cross-section of British people, including coal miners, a washer-woman and laboring LondonersKate shares ancestry with George Washington and the late Diana, Princess of Wales Kate and Prince William are 14th cousins

To help find the answer, I sat down with D. Brenton Simons, the CEO of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (of which I am one of some 25,000 members) to unpick the research that experts at NEHGS have carried out since Prince William and Kate started to date years ago.

In the press release for the new book from the NEHGS entitled "The Ancestry of Catherine Middleton," the society asks if Kate is common, since so many people say she will be the first commoner to marry royalty in Britain. That of course is not true, as the book stresses: High Low Schoolfeest Jurken Anyone who is not royal is by definition common -- including the late Diana, Princess of Wales and even the late Queen Mother.

Go back far enough and Kate, like many of us, has illustrious ancestors and collateral relatives.

Kate is already blood-related to her future husband (14th cousins) since Korte Trouwjurk they both descend from King Edward I. She is also related to the late Diana, Princess of Wales -- and it might bruidsmeisjes jurken be news to her that she and film director Guy Ritchie (Madonna's former husband) are sixth cousins.

Unveiled: Ellen DeGeneres and Kate Middleton are cousins!

Many Americans are most interested by their connection to members of royalty. People in the United States who can take their own lines back to colonial America can find themselves with royal lines.