Wow, I missed that, I just noticed "I-M170" everywhere. Thanks. Added Napoleon III to the maybes for now, waiting on a little bit of additional confirmation (and hopefully STRs to classify him better).
Lucotte et al.
published in October the extended Y-STR of Napoleon I based on descendant testing, and the descendants were E-M34, just like the emperor's beard hair tested a year before.
They only tested Jérôme Bonaparte's descendants, not Louis and Napoleon III's line. But if Napoleon III's descendants aren't E-M34 it can only mean that a non-paternity event happened somewhere. Since its has been claimed that
Louis Bonaparte was a homosexual, and his wife was non else than the promiscuous Hortense de Beauharnais (Joséphine's daughter), it wouldn't be too surprising that Napoleon III wasn't Louis's biological son.
Hortense is known to have had at least one other illegitimate son (
Charles de Morny, Duke of Morny), who bears an uncanny resemblance with Napoleon III, and could therefore both have been sired by the same man. This man, Hortense's lover and Charles de Morny's father, was Charles Joseph, comte de Flahaut. What's even more interesting is that he was himself the son of
Prince Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, possibly the greatest statesman of the French Revolution and the Bourbon Restoration, and the man most responsible for Napoleon I's downfall. Napoleon I famously told him that he was "a turd in a silk stocking". It would be an ironic twist of history if Napoleon III was really Tayllerand's grandson and not Napoleon I's !
Besides, if this is true and Napoleon III is I-M223, it would also be the haplogroup of the
House of Talleyrand-Périgord. This house is a cadet branch of the
Count of La Marche, whose oldest patrilineal ancestor is
Boso I (958–988), himself a probable descendant of the
House of Limoges, from whom are also descended the Viscounts of Turenne, the Viscounts of Rochechouart, and the Dukes of Mortemart, among others. The House of Limoges itself was founded as a cadet branch of the Counts of Toulouse-Rouergue, dating back to the 9th century. I-M223 would be a very possible haplogroup for an old Frankish noble family.