I Discovered I’m Related to a 16th Century French King on MyHeritage

It all started with my father. Driven by a curiosity about our roots, he began researching the origins of both his family and my mother’s. Not being very comfortable with computers, he did things the old-fashioned way — sending letters to the town halls of the places where our ancestors had lived. Slowly, he began piecing together the puzzle of our family history.

Thierry Lami

One day, he handed me the folder with all his findings and asked me to continue the work he had begun. I have to admit, I wasn’t quite sure where to start. Then, I came across an ad for MyHeritage online. I opened a free account out of curiosity, and after discovering the platform’s interface, I decided to go all in and subscribe to the full version.

A royal surprise in the family tree

With my subscription active, I began exploring our ancestry one branch at a time. Most of the lines I followed ended somewhere in the 1600s or 1700s. I was especially impressed with how easy it was to build the family tree and make corrections whenever I spotted a mistake — features that quickly proved invaluable.

While following a branch from my maternal grandfather’s side, through a Smart Match™ with another tree, I stumbled upon something entirely unexpected: a woman named Marie Georgia Anne Bourbon. The surname caught my attention. Intrigued, I traced her father, a man named Jean Bourbon. Going back one more generation, I discovered Jean Louis de Bourbon, Chevalier de Charny — the illegitimate son of the Duke of Orléans. And that duke was none other than Gaston Jean Baptiste, born in 1608, the son of Henri IV and Marie de Medici.

Equestrian statue of King Henri IV in Paris. Also known as Good King Henry, he was King of Navarre (as Henry III) from 1572 and King of France from 1589 to 1610

An extraordinary history lesson

As someone who has always been passionate about history, I was stunned by the discovery. I couldn’t help but dig further. I traced our lineage through several royal families — Bourbon, Valois — and followed the lines back through William the Conqueror to the Kings of Norway, and even further back through the Merovingians to Clovis and into the depths of Roman antiquity. It was an extraordinary history lesson — one I shared with the whole family.

Of course, this discovery hasn’t changed our lives in any tangible way. But it has deepened our understanding of where we come from. Delving into our family’s past helped us better grasp the journeys of those who came before us, across the centuries.

The royal road to discovery, powered by MyHeritage

I find the MyHeritage platform to be of exceptional quality, and I recommend it to anyone interested in exploring their genealogy. That said, it’s important to understand that the site is a tool — a powerful one — but the research itself still requires dedication. The satisfaction of gradually reconstructing our family’s story is immense, and every new discovery is a source of wonder and emotion.

Thanks to MyHeritage, I was able to carry forward the work my father had begun and give my family a priceless gift: the knowledge of our origins.

Many thanks to Thierry for sharing his incredible story with us. If you have also made an incredible discovery with MyHeritage, we’d love to hear about it! Please send it to us via this form or email it to us at stories@myheritage.com.