Researcher finds poignant historical link between King Charles and Kate Middleton

The ancestors of King Charles and Princess Kate collaborated in fight against cancer

By The News Digital
|
January 02, 2026
Researcher finds poignant historical link between King Charles and Kate Middleton

An Australian researcher has found a historical link between the families of King Charles and his daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton.

Michael Reed, a lecturer at Ilim College in Victoria, discovered that Kate and King's ancestors collaborated a century ago in the fight against cancer.

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Notably, both King Charles and Princess Kate were diagnosed with cancer in 2024.

The expert reportedly recognized the name of Sir Charles Lupton from his previous research into Kate Middleton's paternal ancestry.

His findings disclosed that distant relatives of the monarch and Catherine played pivotal roles in establishing the British Empire Cancer Campaign's Yorkshire Council.

Neither the King nor the Princess is believed to be aware of this shared family history in cancer campaigning.

The King's great uncle, Viscount Henry Lascelles, who later became the sixth Earl of Harewood, served as the council's inaugural president.

Sir Charles Lupton, the Princess of Wales's great-great-great uncle, took on the role of first vice-president.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Reed said, "I felt it was very poignant that although the Princess and King Charles's ancestors were both aristocratic men, they chose to get their hands dirty doing really tough campaigning for a disease which, in 1925, perplexed most leading scientists who therefore had little interest in finding a solution,"

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