JK uncovers French roots on TV show
Author J.K. Rowling, who finished her seven-book Harry Potter series about adventures of a boy wizard in 2007, has discovered many single mothers amongst her French ancestors.
The 46-year-old multimillionaire, who was a single mother when she started writing the seven-book series in 1996, discovered the details about her French ancestors in the BBC genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are?, which is due to be broadcast this month.
The author, a mother of three children, found that her great-grandmother Lizzie, her great-great-grandmother Salomé, and her great-great-great-grandmother Christine all due to various circumstances had to raise their children alone.
Rowling, who married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in 1992, returned to the UK after the birth of her eldest daughter, Jessica, in July 1993. The writer struggled as a single parent living on benefit and found fame and fortune after writing the famous series. “What I’m very struck by is how many single mothers I’m descended from in this line of the family. There’s a definite parallel here. Twenty years ago, I was teaching and writing in my spare time and was very skint. And then not long after that, I became a single mum, so I feel the connection,” Rowling told BBC’s Radio Times. “There was a point where I really felt I had ‘penniless divorcee lone parent’ tattooed on my head.”
Rowling, whose mother Anne died of multiple sclerosis at the age of 45 in 1990, said she had decided to take part in the show because her mother’s long abiding interest in exploring her family’s French heritage. “A huge motivation in looking into my family history is my mother. It’s very much bound up in that loss,” she said.
“I went into the programme wanting the truth, no matter what it was, because I knew so little about my French ancestry. It is humbling to see yourself as a tiny part of a huge family tree, but it is also strangely reassuring,” Rowling said, admitting that she was upset by some of the revelations. “There were a lot of big surprises, some wonderful, and one rather upsetting,” she said.
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