Queen's 'great, great, granddaughter' seeks DNA test and approval from Charles
A woman who reckons she might be the illegitimate great, great granddaughter of Queen Victoria says her ultimate aim is to get acknowledgement from King Charles.
Angela Webb-Milinkovich, from Minnesota, believes she and her sister have ancestry that traces back to Victoria's lengthy, passionate affair with her devoted servant John Brown.
Fresh research by historian Dr Fern Riddell indicates that whilst officially Angela's great grandmother Mary Ann was the sole child of John's brother Hugh and his wife Jessie, there's proof suggesting the infant might actually have been born from his secret romance with the monarch, during which they were clandestinely wed.
Angela, 47, is now preparing to undergo a DNA test as the definitive evidence of her Royal bloodline.
She insists she has no desire to profit from the tale, solely wanting to ensure her family's position in history receives the acknowledgement it merits, reports the Mirror.
"My main goal is to have the story acknowledged - I want their relationship to be recognised and for the royal family to stop saying it didn't happen," she explains.
"If I'm going to reach for the top, it would have to be from King Charles," she adds, when asked who she'd most like to hear from. "I mean, it's a great story and it has his family involved, too. So he would be interested in it."
Or Prince William perhaps?
"That'd be great. That's acceptable," she laughs. Angela was raised believing her family descended from royalty through baby Mary Ann.
She can't recall exactly when she learned this, only that there was a tale about "a big boat trip... and a baby given to the family."
Dr Riddell reached out to Angela during her four-year investigation for her new book Victoria's Secret, revealing she'd found that childless couple Jessie and Hugh had sailed to New Zealand in 1865, recording Mary Ann's birth there shortly afterwards - which could account for the maritime journey.
Speaking on Channel 4's accompanying documentary, Dr Riddell suggested that the widowed Victoria could have easily hidden a pregnancy during the 1860s, then had the infant - her tenth child - secretly transported to the opposite side of the globe to prevent scandal.
Records show that in 1874, Victoria funded the family's return voyage to Scotland, even providing them with a substantial residence on the Balmoral estate. Following John's death, she also relocated Hugh's family to Windsor to be closer to her.
Angela managed to grant Dr Riddell access to a wealth of new evidence from the Brown family archive, which contained items and documents that have been in their possession for decades. Some of this came from a safety deposit box that Angela and her sister, who wishes to remain anonymous, opened about five years ago following their father's death.
"We didn't know what we had, just that they were items from John Brown and Queen Victoria," she now admits. "It was always something in the back of our minds - we should probably get these looked at."
Despite longstanding family suspicions that they were related to Queen Victoria, Angela was still taken aback when Dr Fern reached out. "I believed my family was being truthful with it, but we could never prove it. Once she sent that message, I thought 'What the heck? Is there actually validity to this?'"
Angela, who is employed as a mental health care worker, expressed her desire for the love affair, which was concealed both during and after Victoria's lifetime, to be recognised as the truth. "It's something that I'm very proud of," she declared.
"I want the vindication essentially for John Brown and just for my lineage, because they were not able to talk about it. It was something that just became that secret that we couldn't really share, but we knew."
If Dr Riddell's account is accurate, and there's substantial evidence backing it up, Victoria and John shared a passionate romance spanning nearly two decades, right up until his passing in 1883.
Beyond exchanging mutual declarations of love on his deathbed - "I told him no one loved him more than I did and he answered 'nor you - than me'" - she had also created a cast of his hand, precisely as she'd done for Albert. When her own end came in 1901, she requested to be interred with a lock of hair and photograph of the man who'd stood beside her for twenty years following Albert's demise in 1861.
Letters that survived show her addressing him as "my beloved" and "darling one".
Yet, at the behest of her eldest son Bertie - poised to become Edward VII - the Palace began systematically wiping John from history. Victoria's diaries were transcribed and altered, with the originals being destroyed.
Bertie, who had frequently feuded with Brown, also commanded that the statues and private monuments Victoria had erected in his honour be demolished. Angela's grandfather passed away when she was in primary school, but she recalls him being distressed about the Browns' erasure from history.
"My understanding from my Mum was that he was just really upset and bitter about it," she shared. "He didn't like to talk about it. Now, having both my parents and my aunt gone, we don't have those resources any more. So the bulk of the story I have been learning from Fern, which is amazing, and I'm so grateful."
Angela remains hopeful that the Royals will eventually have to acknowledge the legitimacy of the claims made about her ancestors, as highlighted in a Channel 4 documentary aired on Thursday. "My gut says it's going to have to get acknowledged at some point," she suggests.
"Scandals are always very exciting so I'm sure there'll be a lot of questions for them to answer. If they don't say anything, that's their choice. But I'd like them to acknowledge the truth of this love, to recognise that it wasn't cool to cover up and destroy evidence of the relationship they shared. Let's be real, Bertie was a bit of a d**k to the Browns.
"That story deserves to be known, to have its own breath out there in the world. You don't get that kind of romance every day. It's what you'd hope for anybody, that you would find another chance at love. So I don't see why we should look down on that. It's like an opportunity presented itself and they embraced it, and I think that is beautiful."
Angela is hopeful of undergoing a DNA test to confirm her lineage, but has been cautioned that it might take a while due to the necessity for impeccable source material for testing across four generations. "I'll let the scientists do the science," she says with a smile.
"I'm a supporting character in this journey, and so I will follow wherever the story leads me. I'm totally open to it. So far it's been so exciting, so cool. I'm just really stoked."
The tattooed American, sporting a nose-ring, firmly denies that she's merely attempting to profit from the Royal family's wealth. "Money is the furthest thing from my goal in telling this family story. It has always been to get Queen Victoria and John Brown's story the truth it deserves."
She can't fathom any other reason why her family would possess valuable keepsakes from Victoria and John, including a brooch and a lock of hair. "Their relationship was authentic and genuine. They obviously had feelings for each other. It went well beyond a queen and man servant situation."
There was a fair amount of speculation at the time about the duo, portrayed by Dame Judi Dench and Billy Connolly in the 1997 film Mrs Brown. In 1865, after Victoria requested John's transfer to the Royal Household at Windsor, two of her daughters, Helena and Louise, openly referred to him as 'Mamma's lover'.
And the following year a Swiss newspaper published a story claiming Victoria, then aged 46, had privately married John and become pregnant.
Angela would be delighted regardless of whether Mary Ann proves to be John or Hugh's daughter.
"Either John Brown is my great, great uncle or he is my great, great grandpa. My family still played a key role in history with their friendship and closeness to Queen Victoria. I'm proud of their steadfastness in keeping the legacy of John Brown alive and their word to holding the secret close. It's still a beautiful romance that deserves its moment of recognition in history."
With her Scottish heritage through her mother's lineage, Angela adores visiting the UK at every opportunity and confesses she occasionally feels more British than American.
"I've always felt a little disconnected in the sense that I feel more at home over there. Scotland is my happy place. I would move there if I could, for sure."
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