The result was a match. Combined with the physical evidence, the site location, the archaeological context, and the independent historical probability that the remains were Richard’s, the match provided grounds for a confident identification.
The Hauser case is structurally different in important ways. There is no skeletal material from Hauser available for analysis — only hair and blood samples from preserved artifacts. There is no comparison against a confirmed biological relative; the comparison is against descendants of the alleged mother in the theory being tested. And the result is a non-match — an exclusion rather than a confirmation.
An exclusion is epistemologically simpler than a confirmation in some ways. To confirm an identity from DNA, you need a match against a known relative, and you need to rule out all other possible sources of a match. To exclude a specific genetic connection, you need only demonstrate that the sequences are different — which the 2024 study did clearly. Haplogroup W and haplogroup H1bs are simply distinct branches of the mitochondrial phylogenetic tree. They are not close. The comparison is not ambiguous.
King’s observation that the two cases represent opposite outcomes — one proving a king was identified, one proving someone was not a prince — reflects a real asymmetry in what the evidence can do. The Richard III identification drew on multiple converging lines of evidence that together overcame the initial improbability of finding the king under a car park. The Hauser exclusion draws on a single genetic result that is unambiguous in what it says: this person was not on the maternal line that includes Stéphanie de Beauharnais.