Is John Broughton royalty?
The 70-year-old Maori health specialist, University of Otago professor and playwright has revealed there could be royal blood in his veins, albeit bastard royal blood.
It was while the well-known royalist and descendant of distinguished 19th-century Kai Tahu MP Tame Parata, was speaking recently to the Otago Daily Times about Maori and the monarchy that he made the disclosure for the first time publicly.
The Pakeha side of his mother's family is descended from John and Elizabeth Lovell, who gave their name to Lovell's Flat, south of Milton. They emigrated to New Zealand twice, settling here for good, in Dunedin, in 1864.
Elizabeth was raised in England, not by her parents, but by an Eleanor and Jonathan Jenkin-Jones, who said she was their niece.
Prof Broughton says one of his grandfather's cousins, who lived with the Lovells, said Elizabeth would never talk about herself, who she was or where she came from.
``But the family legend is that she was an illegitimate child of a member of the British Royal Family,'' Prof Broughton says.
There is no proof of that, he adds.
But there are some intriguing, if unverifiable, clues.
The Jenkins-Jones were an upper-class British family. Their portraits, which hang in Prof Broughton's home, were reputedly painted by the royal court artist, but not signed.
Also, for 160 years, the story of Elizabeth's regal but illegitimate lineage was passed down through at least three branches of the extended Lovell family.
And then there are the pictures.
In Prof Broughton's hallway hangs a large painted portrait of Elizabeth Lovell as a young woman. On the opposite wall is a smaller portrait of Queen Victoria at about the same age.
To all appearances, the two women are identical twins.
Photographs of each as older women are also remarkably similar.
``It's a bit staggering really,'' Prof Broughton says.
Was his great-great-grandmother the illegitimate sister of Queen Victoria?
Could Prof Broughton be related to Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Prince William and the young prince and princess, George and Charlotte?
Another intriguing fact: while still in England, Elizabeth Lovell's children went to dancing classes with Victoria's children.
And Royals taking lovers resulting in out-of-wedlock offspring was not uncommon.
For example, Prof Broughton has a copy of a letter written by the future King Edward VIII during the 1920 tour of New Zealand, in which he complains about the tedium of colonial dances. It is written to his mistress.
And, coincidentally, living in Port Chalmers around the same period was a remittance man, Prof Broughton says.
So called because he was paid a remittance to leave England and never come back, the man was apparently the spitting image of his alleged father, King Edward VII.
A DNA test would probably be the only sure way of knowing whether Prof Broughton is of British royal blood.
It is not something he is likely to do, he says.
He will, however, celebrate Queen's Birthday Weekend as he always does.
With a toast. To Queen ... and kin?
