The Royal Ancestry of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine
One of Olivia de Havilland 's last screen appearances as an actress was in the television film The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982), in which she played Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother. But did you know that Olivia and, consequently, her younger sister Joan Fontaine were actually distantly related to the Queen Mother, Prince Charles and even Princess Diana? More interestingly, did you know that Olivia and Joan — through their father's side of the family — were direct descendants of King Edward I and, therefore, of his 2nd great-grandfather, William the Conqueror, the first Norman king of England? In fact, their ancestry can be traced back to even before William the Conqueror. For instance, Richard II, Duke of Normandy, William's grandfather, was Joan and Olivia's 28th great-grandfather. In turn, Richard was the great-grandson of Rollo, an early Viking settler who became the first ruler of Normandy in 911. History and genealogy are of two of the subjects t...
