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. We’ve discovered Pattinson – who stars as America’s favorite vampire Edward Cullen in the hit Twilight Saga movie series – is related to Vlad III Dracula, the basis for the famous literary villain. The research shows that 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.
Our family history experts 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. Twilight Saga author Stephenie Meyer is also a distant cousin to the British princes – linking Meyer to famed Dracula as well. Ancestry have also 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 has dug up:
- America’s Queen of Pop, Madonna, is related to leading talk show host and American Idol judge Ellen DeGeneres. The two are 11th cousins.
- Financier Warren Buffett and President Obama are 7th cousins three times removed.
- Emma Watson, who plays Hermione in the Harry Potter movie series, is related to a 16th-century woman accused of witchcraft.
For anyone interested in discovering royals, vampires and other famous figures in their family tree, visit www.ancestry.com.au