The future king of England descends from men who took up arms against the monarchy his family has held for centuries. That is the central claim of American Crown, a new book by author Stephanie Green that traces Prince William's bloodline through his mother, Princess Diana, to American patriots of the Revolutionary War, including the legendary spy Nathan Hale.
Green laid out her findings in an interview with Fox News Digital, describing a lineage that runs from the Connecticut militia to Buckingham Palace. The irony is hard to miss: the man who will one day wear the British crown carries the blood of colonists who risked everything to throw that crown off.
Kensington Palace, for its part, offered nothing. A spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital the palace "does not comment on books."
The story begins in 1635, when the first Strong ancestor crossed the Atlantic from England to New England. By 1740, a descendant named Benajah Strong was born in Coventry, Connecticut, a town Green described as "a hotbed of anti-monarchist sentiment." Benajah enlisted as a private in the Connecticut militia and played a role in what is known as the Lexington Alarm, spreading word that the British were on the march.
Green told Fox News Digital that Benajah's grave remains in Coventry to this day.
"Benajah was from Coventry, Connecticut, which places him not only in the heart of the American Revolution but at its very beginning. Benajah's role during the American Revolution was to spread the word that the British were on the march. He was part of what we call 'The Lexington Alarm.'"
The Washington Post, cited in the article, identified Benajah Strong as Prince William's sixth-great-grandfather. That alone would make for a striking footnote. But the family connections go deeper.
Nathan Hale, the Yale-educated schoolteacher turned spy, widely regarded as one of America's most famous martyrs, was the son of Benajah Strong's sister. That makes Hale a blood relative of Prince William through Diana's line.
Hale studied at Yale, taught school in Connecticut, and joined the militia when the Revolution broke out. He later joined Knowlton's Rangers, described as widely considered the first organized U.S. military intelligence unit. In 1776, Hale traveled to British-occupied Long Island posing as an unemployed Dutch schoolteacher. British forces captured him in Queens. Some historians believe his fatal mistake was carrying his Yale diploma.
He was hanged at age twenty-one, roughly two months after the Declaration of Independence. His remains have never been found. Green noted that people in Coventry still maintain memorials in his honor and hope his remains will someday be returned to his hometown.
The idea that the British crown's next wearer shares a bloodline with a man the British hanged as a spy is the kind of historical twist no novelist would dare invent. Prince William's recent activities have kept him in the public eye for lighter reasons, but Green's research adds a layer of history few royal watchers have considered.
Green's book also traces a link between Diana's aristocratic Spencer family and the family of George Washington. Sulgrave Manor, Washington's ancestral home in England, sits near Althorp, the Spencer family estate. Green devoted an entire chapter to the connection.
"The Spencers and the Washingtons were quite friendly. The Spencer girls worked at the Washington home, and the Washington children were friends with the Spencer children. The families were very close."
The Washington family eventually emigrated to America, as many English families did. Sulgrave Manor still stands and is open to visitors. The proximity of the two estates, and the documented friendship between the families, suggests that the threads binding British royalty to American independence were woven long before anyone fired a musket at Lexington.
For American conservatives who revere the founding generation, the detail carries a certain charge. The men and women who built this country's institutions did not spring from nowhere. They came from the same English soil as the aristocrats they would later defy.
Perhaps the most colorful figure in Green's research is Fannie Work, an American heiress born around 1857 whom Green identified as Prince William's great-great-great-grandmother. Fannie came of age during the Gilded Age, moved in elite circles, and knew Alice Roosevelt. She lived between New York, Newport, Rhode Island, and Paris.
What set Fannie apart was her defiance of social convention. She had two divorces at a time when, as Green put it, "people rarely even said the word 'divorce' in polite society." She eventually bought an apartment on New York City's Fifth Avenue and died there in 1947 at age ninety.
Green drew a direct comparison between Fannie and Diana. Princess Kate's own public profile has drawn attention in recent months, but Green's focus was on the woman who preceded them all in the family line.
"They were both beautiful. They were both glamorous. They both courted scandal. They seemed to have everything going for them. People were fascinated by them, yet they were rebels at heart."
Green said the parallel between the two women, separated by more than a century, struck her the more she studied Fannie's life. Both women lived under intense public scrutiny. Both refused to stay in roles that confined them.
Green also made a claim about Princess Diana's final years that adds poignancy to the American ancestry story. She told Fox News Digital that Diana had been spending considerable time in America toward the end of her life and was planning to move there permanently.
Green said she interviewed Diana's priest, who told her Diana "loved America and planned to settle here." Other unnamed sources corroborated the account. Diana was reportedly looking into buying a home in the Beverly Hills or Malibu area.
"How ironic and wonderful that she might have returned to the land of her ancestors."
That claim, that Diana intended to relocate to the United States, rests on Green's interview with the unnamed priest and unspecified additional sources. It has not been confirmed by the palace or by any independent record cited in the reporting. But if true, it adds a layer to the story that extends well beyond genealogical curiosity. Prince Harry's own complicated relationship with the royal family has played out in public for years, but Diana's alleged desire to leave Britain for America has received far less attention.
Green was asked what William's Revolutionary War forebears might make of their descendant ascending to the very throne they opposed. Her answer was generous.
"I think William's ancestors would be delighted not only that he will be king, but that he is a good man. He's a devoted family man. He has a wonderful wife and wonderful children. I think they would admire the fact that he has many American qualities."
She described William as independent, occasionally stubborn, and possessing "a rebellious streak", traits she attributed to his American bloodline. Green acknowledged the amusement the ancestors might feel at the situation but concluded they "would be very proud that one of their own has become such a good and beloved man."
Whether or not William himself knows about these connections remains an open question. Green told Fox News Digital she wasn't sure he was aware of the American bloodline at all. The prince and princess have kept busy with public engagements, and genealogical deep dives may not rank high on the royal calendar.
Green's credentials as a genealogist or historian are not specified in the reporting, and the book's publisher and release date were not named. The genealogical claims, particularly the identification of Benajah Strong as William's sixth-great-grandfather, draw in part on Washington Post reporting, but independent verification of every link in the chain is not provided in the available material.
Still, the broad strokes are striking. The Strong family's arrival in New England in 1635, Benajah's militia service, Nathan Hale's execution, the Spencer-Washington friendship, Fannie Work's Gilded Age defiance, and Diana's own reported pull toward America, taken together, they paint a picture of a royal family more entangled with American history than most people on either side of the Atlantic realize.
For Americans marking another Independence Day, the story is a reminder worth savoring. The men who built this republic were not abstractions. They were flesh and blood, and their bloodlines did not stop at the water's edge. Some of those lines led, improbably, back to the very institution the founders rejected, and forward to a man who will one day embody it.
The colonists who fought for self-governance could not have imagined their descendant wearing the crown. Then again, they had a habit of doing things nobody thought possible.
