Family stories are sometimes salacious. Apparently, my husband’s great grandmother is a Hungarian royal bastard. Her mother, my husband’s 3x great grandmother worked for the royal family of Hungary. Supposedly as the hired help (cook or housekeeper) she was required to bed the King. When she became pregnant, passage to America was bought. Our family spoke of this fact often, but never pursued it in any way. I haven’t even researched names or dates yet. Would a DNA test of my husband or our children reveal the truth? I don’t know if there is anyone with royal Hungarian DNA to test against. It’s not that we’d want any type of royal status, but it would be fun and interesting to solve the mystery, and prove our family’s history once and for all.
The King of Hungary 1848 to 1916 (which is the entire timeframe where a 'passage to America' would be relevant) was Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria.
While he did have a few mistresses and several unconfirmed illegitimate children, the mistresses were high-ranking women with access to the court and any children seem to have been taken care of (educated, given careers or a good dowry and married off to lower nobility or rich industrialists).
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