Katrina Darling, 22-year-old distant cousin of one Kate Middleton, is using her family connections to her advantage… to land a Playboy cover. Darling’s racy Playboy pictorial comes with the magazine’s September 2012 issue and includes a topless photo. On the cover, the brunette poses in strappy black lingerie. 

Darling, who was already working as a burlesque dancer with a routine ironically titled “God Save The Queen,” first learned of her royal connection just before the April 2011 royal wedding via a UK journalist. “It was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard,” she tells Playboy. “It’s not every day something like that happens.”

Darling’s issue will hit newsstands August 17. [Huffington Post]