Archie and Lilibet’s flowing red hair wins them an army of new fans… but it’s not just their British ancestors they take after as Harry jokes about his ‘ginger gene’

Royal fans have gone wild for Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet’s vibrant auburn hair after Meghan released a selection of new snaps of her children over the weekend. 

Meghan, 43, posted an adorable image of Archie, 5, and Lilibet, 3, picking roses in the garden of their Montecito mansion on Sunday, with the caption: ‘Sunday kind of love….with my little loves.’ 

The adorable images showed Archie’s dark copper hair, which is almost the exact shade as his father Prince Harry’s, displaying how prominent the red hair gene is in the Sussex family.

Lilibet’s flowing red hair was also on display as she picked flowers with Meghan, with Harry previously noting that the young Princess has been ‘blessed with her mother’s thick hair’.

Many assume that Archie and Lilibet have inherited their glossy auburn locks solely from their father, however, Meghan also has the ‘ginger gene’ running through her family. 

Prince Harry’s uncle Charles Spencer and aunts Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes all have red hair, and the Duke previously spoke about passing down his family’s ginger DNA on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. 

He said: ‘The Spencer gene is very, very strong. I actually really, genuinely thought at the beginning of my relationship [with Meghan] that should this go the distance and we have kids that there’s no way the ginger gene will stand up to my wife’s genes, but I was wrong.’

But royal fans believe the reason why both children have such unique and prominent copper tresses is because Meghan’s family also has the gene on her paternal side. 

Doria Ragland and Thomas Markle married in 1979 and had Meghan two years later before eventually divorcing in 1987.

However, before they tied the knot, Thomas had a son with his first wife Roslyn Markle in 1966 before they divorced in 1975, called Thomas Markle Jr. 

Old pictures previously emerged of him holding Meghan on his lap when he was around 15 years old and she was a baby. 

A distinctive feature is his vibrant copper hair which is a darker shade of ginger and strikingly similar to Archie’s tresses. 

Thomas Jr seemingly had lighter red hair in his youth, as an image with his sister Samantha Markle and grandfather Gordon Markle shows him sporting long fiery hair and a full fringe.

Meghan’s ‘reclusive’ uncle, Fred Markle, also possesses the gene. 

An image of the Duchess aged ten published in the Daily Star shows her sitting on her grandmother Doris Markle’s knee with her father Thomas and uncle Fred standing behind them. 

Fred, who is thought to be around 49 in the picture, is seen beaming alongside his family with flame-red tresses and facial hair. 

He is now 83 years old and is the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church which boasts a single tumbledown chapel in Sanford, Florida.

Fred, who goes by the title Bishop Dismas, is the sole clergyman and lives and works out of the secluded woodland property 30 miles north of Orlando, rarely leaving the grounds and eschewing mobile phones, emails or the internet.

He declined to speak to DailyMail.com but close friend Barry Sterner, 76, said in 2017: ‘He is aware of her relationship with the Prince. I don’t think he approves or disapproves – whatever makes her happy.’

Bishop Dismas is related to Suits beauty Meghan, 35, via his brother, Thomas Wayne Markle, 72, who is her father.

‘He is basically a real friendly guy but he doesn’t go for new ideas. He lives like a hermit,’ added Sterner.

‘He’s got a cellphone but he can’t figure out how to switch it on. As for emails and computers, that’s all Greek to him.’

The ‘ginger gene’ which is officially called the MC1R gene is recessive which means a person needs two copies of it for it to be noticeable.

Prince Harry inherited his two sets of genes from both Diana and Charles’ side, as his grandfather Prince Philip also had ginger hair in his youth. 

Getty royal photographer Chris Jackson shared an image of a 1957 cover of Paris Match magazine on Instagram, asking followers to guess who it was.

Many joked that it looked so much like the Prince Harry, they wondered whether time travel was possible, before Chris revealed it was indeed an image of the late Duke of Edinburgh, sporting the same ginger beard as his grandson. 

Both parents must be carrying the gene, which means that parents can often find that they can suddenly have auburn-haired children after decades of not having one in the family.

Dr Jim Wilson, chief scientist at BritainsDNA previously told the Daily Mail in 2013: ‘Through a simple saliva test to determine deep ancestry, we can also identify whether an individual is a carrier of any of the three common red-head variants in the gene MC1R.

‘This means that families can carry a variant for generations, and when one carrier has children with another carrier, a red-headed baby can appear seemingly out of nowhere.’

Figures from this time estimate that about four in ten people carry the red-head gene variant without having red hair themselves – accounting for many surprise births of babies who are red-headed.

About 40 per cent of men and women in Ireland carry a red head variant, but only 10 per cent have red hair.