HBP - who was the royal?

[saraquel_omphale]

No: HPFGUIDX 130359

Hello again everyone, long time no post (although I admit to being a 
lurker rather than a poster!)

One thing has always puzzled me about the Half Blood Prince.  As far 
as know, I can't find any reference to royalty in the WW.  If there 
was no royalty, then the HBP must be royal from his muggle side. I 
ask myself who and when?  If the marriage between witch/wizard 
happened in the distant past, then the current character would only 
hold the title of Prince, if he was actually part of a current royal 
family.  Hmmm - there is no denying that some of the Brits could 
have fathered an illegitimate child along the way, but then they 
definitely wouldn't be given the title prince!  I don't think that 
JKR will go down that road....  

So we might have a character who is part of ancient history and now 
dead and the description given on JKRs website was of a portrait.

Or, it is someone with links to a recent royal family that no longer 
exists - say the Russian one (they were murdered before the first 
world war), or one of the Eastern European families (although I know 
virtually nothing about them, so apologies if I've got that totally 
wrong.)  If it was one of those families, then Victor Krum might be 
a possibility, but personally I don't think so.

Or we might have a situation where one of the characters in the book 
had a relationship with a royal and they had a son.  It seemed to me 
that the description of the HBP (if that was the HBP and not the new 
DDA teacher) was of an older man, so that rules out most of the 
characters except the older teachers - DD, McGonagall, Moody (god 
help us!) etc.  Again, I'm not really persuaded.

If the description was not the HBP, then my bet would be on Sirius 
having an affair, but that would mean that his son was around 
Harry's age, and that Sirius didn't know of his existance.  

All these suggestions seem unsatisfactory to me, and but for the 
fact that I'm convinced that the half blood prince is Caradoc 
Dearborn, who I think still lives, I would be tempted to think the 
HBP is dead and gone, and that's why he has the title of Prince.  

OK anyone else, got any ideas about how our new character can have a 
claim to the title of Prince?

Saraquel