All in the Family

She has more English royal blood in her veins than does Prince Charles, her 16th cousin once removed. All of it flowing from illegitimate unions. Four of her ancestors were mistresses to English Kings. Three dallied with Charles II (1630-85), a compulsive philanderer whose amorous activities produced more than a quarter of the 26 dukedoms in Great Britain and Ireland. The fourth royal paramour, Arabella, daughter of the first Sir Winston Churchill, was a favorite of James II (1633-1701) and bore him a daughter. In short, while Diana's blood may run blue, even purple, scarlet women and black sheep have added to its color.

In the 18th century extramarital frolicking with the royals remained a family tradition. Of note were two daughters of the first Earl Spencer. Georgiana, the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire but better known as the Duchess of Dimples, achieved unwedded bliss with a Prince of Wales, the eventual George IV. Her comely sister Henrietta boasted in her diary: "In my 51st year I am courted, follow'd, flatter'd and made love to, en toutes les formes, by four men." Not all the Spencers were so sportive. George, brother of the third Earl Spencer, converted to Roman Catholicism and, as Father Ignatius of the Passionist Order, had a reputation as a saint. The order is now preparing a proposal to consider him for beatification, a step in Catholic canonization.

Others of Diana's kinsmen made their mark in worldly affairs, many as great statesmen. George Washington is an eighth cousin seven times removed, and through the wife of an eccentric American great-great-grandfather, Diana is related to Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Calvin Coolidge, Millard Fillmore, Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sir Winston Churchill (middle name: Spencer) is a cousin, as is former Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Scholarly limbs include Historian Henry Adams, Philosopher Bertrand Russell and Lexicographer Noah Webster. Theatrical boughs: Humphrey Bogart and Lillian Gish.

Diana traces American ancestry through Great-Great-Grandfather Frank Work, a dry goods clerk from Chillicothe, Ohio, who became a millionaire in Manhattan as stockbroker with the Vanderbilts. It was his wife Ellen Wood and her mother who, according to Boston Genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts, "provide all the interesting relatives": U.S. Presidents, scholars and two Revolutionary War patriots. But Frank Work's spirited daughter Fanny (for Frances) provided the link to European nobility, marrying James Boothby Burke Roche, the cash-short third Baron Fermoy, despite her father's conviction that "international marriage should be a hanging offense." When Fanny's marriage failed, her father decreed that if she and her three children were to inherit his fortune, they must promise never to return to Europe to live or marry Europeans. Fortunately for Prince Charles, Edmund Maurice Burke Roche, the elder of Fanny's twin sons, defied his grandfather and returned to Britain to claim the Fermoy title. His marriage, to Scotswoman Ruth Sylvia Gill, produced Frances Ruth Burke Roche. And her marriage to Edward John Spencer, which ended in divorce in 1969, produced Lady Diana Spencer, the United Kingdom's one-eighth American future queen.

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