English Translation
He is related to the royal family.
“Royal” isn’t a Spanish cognate with the English “royal”, and I just want to point that out in case anyone gets confused about that.
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Good catch! Since I can’t find the sentence in the search, I assume it’s in the “new” FFT, right?
I think it is. Either way, it’s worth noting that there is a “royal” in Spanish, but it’s a brand name for a powdered leaven used only in Cuba and Mexico (according to the RAE)!
Just for those who don’t know the word is real instead of royal. Está emparentado con la familia real.
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English Translation
He is related to the royal family.
Why is it “Está” instead of “Es”? Isn’t the latter for permanent situations while the prior is for temporary situations?
No, that’s not how those two verbs work. (No adult native speaker will say, Está mi profesora, except maybe to mock someone’s awful grammar, even though being someone’s teacher is often temporary rather than permanent.)
Estar comes from the Latin stāre (to stand), and standing —status— is a matter of how things relate to each other. Which is apparently why the verb was chosen here.
But ser comes from esse (to be), it’s related to the word essence. A thing’s being or identity is intrinsic to it.
I would have guessed es instead of está, too, since who a person’s family is often gets treated like an identity thing. This could be a matter of perspective, though (meaning both are valid), like with whether a married man es or está casado.