President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he plans to speak to King Charles III about their possible family ties after the Daily Mail traced the president’s family tree to a shared line with the royal family.
King Charles and Queen Camilla are in Washington, D.C., on a state visit, and on Tuesday will meet with Trump and first lady Melania Trump for a bilateral meeting. The king will also deliver an address to Congress in the afternoon.
In addition to their planned engagements, Trump said he plans to speak with the monarch about their possible kinship.
“Wow, that’s nice,” Trump said in a Truth Social post that included the Daily Mail article. “I’ve always wanted to live in Buckingham Palace!!! I’ll talk to the King and Queen about this in a few minutes!!!”
While historical records are open to interpretation, the Daily Mail’s genealogical research traced Trump’s lineage back to a 16th-century Scottish nobleman, the Third Earl of Lennox, who is also related to King Charles, possibly making the two leaders 15th cousins.
The Earl of Lennox was the great-grandson of James II of Scotland, whose lineage includes the House of Windsor, King Charles’s namesake.
The English are known for their pristine familial record-keeping, but Trump’s ties to the royal family are more complicated.
The president’s late mother, Mary Anne McLeod, immigrated to the United States from Scotland in the 1930s. According to the Daily Mail’s findings, McLeod’s genealogy can be traced back through generations of Scottish clans, which at some points leads to the same noble ancestry.
The Third Earl of Lennox’s son, the Fourth Earl, went on to produce the husband of the now-infamous Mary, Queen of Scots, who was mother to James I of England, from which the House of Windsor eventually descended.
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The Third Earl had several children, one of whom, Lady Helen, the granddaughter of Lady Jane, went on to marry a chief in the Clan McKay. Lady Jane and the chief had a son, Donald McKay, whose lineage eventually led to his ninth great-grandchild, McLeod.
Though Trump is excited about the findings, the research is not a guarantee that they are related. Conducted by combing through land documents, church records, and peerage records, the research presented some historical gaps and overlaps.