For Michael Ibsen specifically, the haplogroup J assignment was already known from the earlier sample provided to John Ashdown-Hill. The 2012 DNA analysis confirmed not just the haplogroup but the complete sequence, providing a finer-grained comparison than the earlier work had enabled.
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## Anne of York: The Genealogical Keystone
The entire mitochondrial DNA case rested on a single historical individual: Anne of York, born August 10, 1439, the fifth child and second surviving daughter of Richard, Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. As Richard III’s sister, Anne would have shared with him the mitochondrial DNA inherited from their mother. If the identification of the Leicester skeleton as Richard III were correct, and if the genealogical chain from Anne to Michael Ibsen and Wendy Duldig were documented correctly, the mitochondrial sequences should match.
Anne of York married Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, in 1445 — she was about six years old at the time, in an arranged child marriage that was the normal practice for daughters of English nobility in the fifteenth century. The marriage was unhappy; Holland was a Lancastrian, putting him on the opposite side of the Wars of the Roses from Anne’s Yorkist family. The marriage ended in annulment after Edward IV’s accession, and Anne subsequently married Thomas St. Leger.
It was through Anne’s daughter by St. Leger — Anne St. Leger, born around 1476 — that the genealogical line ran forward. Anne St. Leger married George Manners, and the chain of female descent continued through subsequent generations: further Manners women, then women bearing other surnames as the maternal line passed through marriages, migrations, and the ordinary accidents of genealogical history over five centuries.