Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are distantly related (Picture: Tim Rooke/REX/Shutterstock)

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have announced that they are engaged and we couldn’t be more happy for them.

But despite growing up on different sides of the Atlantic, they are actually related.

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It is a very distant relation – Ralph Bowes who was born in 1480 in Streatlam, County Durham, where he served as the High Sheriff.

He was both Prince Harry’s and Meghan’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather.


The ancestry goes back along the Queen Mother’s lineage on Prince Harry’s side. Meanwhile Meghan’s father, Emmy-winning cinematographer Thomas Markle, can trace his line all the way back to an Englishman called Ralph Bowes.



Ralph was a High Sheriff of County Durham whose family seat was Streatlam Castle and lived from 1480-1518.

His estates, through a succession of males heirs, eventually passed down to Sir George Bowes, an MP related to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

Harry and Meghan can trace their lineage back hundreds of years (Picture: Mail Online)

Elizabeth would later become the Queen Mother when her daughter became Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.

The Queen became Harry’s grandmother when he was born 1984.

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Meghan can trace her lineage back hundreds of years to when her ancestors first first arrived in America.

Sheriff Ralph Bowe’s granddaughter married John Hussey of Dorking, Surrey.

Their grandson, Christopher Hussey, moved to America in 1632 and helped to found Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Mail Online reported that it was this line of the family that would eventually produce Meghan.

Her German ancestors also have their own coat of arms, thanks to grandfather Gordon, husband of Doris, who was related to Abraham Merckel (1630-1698) of Alsace, France.

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