No need to look to supermarket tabloids for a dose of gossip about the royals.

How’s this for local royal trivia: New Mexico is loaded with people who can trace their lineage to European Emperor Charlemagne.

According to Henrietta Christmas, president of the New Mexico Genealogical Society, people in New Mexico who have the surname Vigil most likely have a common ancestor who is a descendant of Charlemagne.

That makes these New Mexicans descendants of the man who is credited with uniting most of Western and Central Europe under the Roman Catholic Church and who was himself declared the Holy Roman Emperor during the early Middle Ages by Pope Leo III.

The Genealogical Society announced the link last week.

While scouring the archives of Spain and Mexico to learn more about the Vigil family genealogy, researchers came across information indicating that one of those ancestors was a descendant of Charlemagne, said Jose Antonio Esquibel, one of the New Mexico genealogical researchers.

“The research, which began in the 1950s, was continued in

to the 1990s by several researchers, including myself, in order to extend the genealogy of the…