The Potsdam laboratory, which independently confirmed the Innsbruck results, used whole genome sequencing of single-stranded mtDNA libraries — a different technical approach that is similarly sensitive to highly fragmented material.
The blind design of the Potsdam analysis — receiving the sample without knowing its identity — added procedural integrity. If two laboratories using different methods on potentially different samples (the Potsdam group received one lock, the Innsbruck group worked with three) produce the same haplogroup result, the probability that both results are artifacts of contamination or error is very low.
This is what the 2024 study achieved that the earlier analyses could not: not just a result, but a methodologically verified, independently replicated result that could explain the earlier conflict rather than simply adding to it.
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## Stéphanie de Beauharnais: The Person at the Center of the Theory
The figure whose existence creates the specific genetic claim at the center of the Baden prince theory deserves attention in her own right.
Stéphanie de Beauharnais was born in 1789, the daughter of a cousin of Napoleon Bonaparte’s first wife, Joséphine. She was adopted by Napoleon in 1806 — an adoption that was clearly political as well as personal, designed to cement alliances and place members of his extended family in positions of European dynastic importance. Napoleon’s adopted family carried his political agenda; Stéphanie’s adoption came with a prospect of marriage into European nobility.
In 1806, she married Charles, Hereditary Prince and future Grand Duke of Baden. The marriage was not of her choosing. She was seventeen. The arrangement was entirely Napoleonic. She adjusted to her role as Grand Duchess of Baden, but the relationship between her and her husband was reportedly difficult.