A while back, when the science of DNA research wasn't as advanced as it is now, some scientists thought they had found "the" Bourbon Y-DNA signature, based on traces of blood *said* to be from Louis XVI and captured in a gourd, and on tissue samples from a mummified head said to have been that of Henri IV (first of the Bourbons). They found it to be the "expected" haplotype G (as proclaimed by Merovinigianist theories), and they thought they had a good enough match (at, if I recall correctly, 12 markers, which was standard back then).
A few years later, with further advances in the science, some other researchers decided to run a check by triangulating Y-DNA from known (confirmed paper trail) descendants of the Bourbons, from Louis XIV "the Sun King", and his brother Philippe d'Orleans. Three persons participated, and their samples all matched each other way beyond any possible margin of error. BUT - they didn't match the head or the gourd, and weren't even in the same haplotype (R, not G).
Further analyses of the head and the gourd showed that the "match" wasn't anywhere near as good as originally thought, and the detailed gourd results indicated a genotype that didn't match what was known about Louis XVI. Then they went onto the question of "chain of possession" - and it turned out that the head went missing a time or two between when it was on Henri IV's shoulders and when it became a "relic". As for the gourd - it could not be verified to have been the receptacle of the blood of *that particular* victim at *that particular* time on *that particular* day, and the possibility of "pious fraud" was rather high.
So nowadays most DNA researchers conclude that the living descendants result is the "actual" Bourbon haplotype, and the head and the gourd were...anomalies that don't necessarily prove anything.
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