AMERICAN CROWN

Prince William’s past.

Journalist Green makes her book debut with a sprightly overview of Prince William’s family heritage. Through his mother Diana’s maternal ancestors, Green discovered, William is one-sixteenth American, an unprecedented diluting of British royal blood that, she argues, bodes well for the future relationship between Britain and the United States. The Spencers, it turns out, were friends with George Washington; some ancestors fought with the Americans in the Revolution. Nathan Hale, for one, was hanged by the British for being an American spy. William’s forebears were prominent in Gilded Age America, where Caroline Astor presided over wealthy socialites, including Frances Work, Diana’s great-grandmother. Defying her father’s order that she wed only an American, Fanny married into British aristocracy, taking as her husband James Boothby Burke Roche. Among their four children was Maurice Roche, who married Ruth Gill, a classical pianist from Scotland; she became Diana’s grandmother. Jim Burke Roche, unfortunately for Fanny, turned out to be a philanderer and gambler; after divorcing him, she took a Hungarian riding instructor as her second husband, a marriage that ended in much-publicized scandal. Another British American liaison was the marriage of the American Jennie Jerome to Randolph Spencer-Churchill, this time opposed by the British side. Less than nine months after the wedding, Jennie gave birth to Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill. Lord Randolph died in 1895, leaving the “glamorous widow” free to take lovers, some younger than her son, and remarry twice. Prince William’s closest American connection is, of course, Diana. Her mother was the third child of Maurice and Ruth, another Fanny, who married into the Spencer family. Green’s recounting of Diana’s life, the animosity between William and Harry, and the former Prince Andrew’s travails reveal that gossip and scandal have never been far from the family tree.

A lively family history.