Mensch of the Week: A Royal Riddle

Canadians love their brushes with royalty, but imagine learning that you’re only 15 generations removed from being a royal yourself. It happened Monday to IT consultant Jeff Ibsen.

In 2004, Ibsen’s mother was contacted by England’s Richard III Society, which suspected the family might be the king’s direct descendants, and asked to test their DNA. (Ibsen’s brother, who lives in London, was the test subject.) After excavating Richard’s bones from a parking lot in Leicester, England, this week, archaeologists confirmed the family had a really cool factoid to tell people—and that Toronto can now brag of at least one citizen with direct British royal lineage.

Despite his ancestry, Ibsen is still a man of the people. He plans to celebrate by going to the pub, and might watch Blackadder to immerse himself in the time period.

And he’s okay with Richard’s (not necessarily deserved) reputation as a power-hungry despot, immortalized in Shakespeare’s Richard III. “Everyone loves a supervillain. He’s like the Riddler.”