[MUSIC PLAYING] Charles II lived
from 1661 to 1700. He was the last of the Spanish
Habsburgs, a powerful dynasty that eventually
killed itself off through too much inbreeding. He could barely eat because
of his disfigured jaw. He suffered from
rickets, hallucinations, and an oversized head. He was impotent and infertile. Charles II of Spain, king of
one of the largest empires in the world, was
so inbred he was barely able to talk or walk. And it cost his kingdom. Today we're going to
take a look at how the health problems
of Charles II of Spain destroyed his dynasty and
plunged Europe into war. But before we get started, be
sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel and let us
know in the comments below what other royal stories you
would like to hear about. OK. So let's head back
to old Espagne. In the 16th and 17th
centuries, Spain was ruled by kings of
the House of Habsburg. At various times, the
monarchy held power over a vast empire that included
territory in the lowcountries Belgium and Luxembourg
as well as territories in what today would be Germany,
Italy, France, and even North Africa. Under the Habsburgs,
Spain would be the dominant military and
political power in Europe for 200 years and would
experience something of a golden age with respect
to literature and the arts, producing writers like Miguel
de Cervantes and painters like El Greco. Despite their great
success as rulers of Spain, generations of inbreeding
left the Habsburg gene pool in a less than optimal state. And Charles II likely
suffered for it. How bad was it? Well, a description of
Charles' family tree sounds more like a family stump. Two of Charles's
great-grandfathers married their own
nieces while another married his first cousin. Because his parents
were closely related, Charles was also his own
mother's first cousin and his father's great nephew. I'll let you mull on
that for a second. OK. His grandmother
was also his aunt. In fact, Charles'
entire family tree traced back to a single couple,
Philip and Joanna of Castile, who lived in the 16th century. The incestuous DNA meant
that Charles likely suffered from two genetic
disorders, both pretty serious. The first was combined
pituitary hormone deficiency caused by a mutation in the gene
necessary to produce hormones in the pituitary gland. It was responsible for Charles's
short stature, infertility, and impotence. It also may have caused
him to have weak muscles and a few digestive problems. The second disorder was
distal renal tubular acidosis. Caused by a gene
mutation, this condition makes it difficult for the
kidneys to get rid of acid through the urine. That would have led to
bloody urine, weak muscles, and a large head relative
to the size of the body. Given that he was the
king, painters of the era made every effort
to depict Charles II as a healthy, strong man,
hiding the truth of the ruler's physical conditions. Though you would never
know it from their work, Charles suffered from epileptic
seizures that grew increasingly worse as he got older. He was also constantly plagued
by diseases, including measles, rubella, a plethora of dental
and bronchial infections, frequent diarrhea, and vomiting. He also had the
famous Habsburg jar. This jutting jaw made it
nearly impossible for Charles to chew his own food. According to a British
envoy Alexander Stanhope, Charles II swallowed
all he ate whole. Because his lower jaw stood out
so much, his two rows of teeth couldn't meet. Despite the bad dental work,
Charles was apparently a catch. He married twice, first at the
age of 18 and then again at 29. However, he was unable to
have children either time. One of his wives even
complained that Charles was impotent, which
makes sense for someone with these conditions. By his 30s, Charles
reportedly looked like an old man, which probably
didn't help with his esteem that much. In 1698, French Ambassador
Marques d'Harcourt wrote to Louis XIV reporting that
Charles had swollen feet, legs, abdomen, face, and sometimes
even his tongue so that he cannot speak. And he was so weak that
he could not be out of bed for more than one or two hours. Charles struggled with so many
physical ailments he garnered the title of the bewitched. And the reputation extended
even after his death. The royal court even performed
a post-mortem examination, which was uncommon for most royals. Charles II, however,
was a rare exception. According to the autopsy,
the bewitched king had a very small
heart of the size of a grain of pepper,
the lungs corroded, the intestines putrefactive
and gangrenous, in the kidney
three large stones, a single testicle
as black as coal, and his head full of water. I'm not a doctor, but that
sounds like a bad report. These findings seem like they
may have been exaggerated. But at the very
minimum, it gives you a good sense of his reputation
among his contemporaries. When Charles was
born in 1661, it's likely his parents thought
he wouldn't live very long. Contemporary writings
describe the baby bigheaded and a weak breastfed baby. Don't babies all have big heads? Nonetheless, the baby survived. Charles didn't speak until
he turned four years old. And he was unable to walk
until the age of eight. In spite of all
the paintings that tried to show him
as a healthy baby, Charles was actually
weak and ailing from the moment he was born. According to Jacques Sanguin,
an envoy for King Louis XIV sent to confirm the baby's
sex amid rumors that he was not a male heir,
Charles seemed extremely weak. He reported the boy had a
herpes type rash on both cheeks, that his head was
covered with scabs, and that below his right ear
a type of suppurating duct or drainage had formed. This unhealthy child
inherited the Spanish throne at the age of four
when his father died. But even his own family doubted
that he could ever rule alone. And his mother became
the boy's regent. There's never really a
great time to be a peasant, but the 17th century was
particularly bad for those who fell into that category. Agricultural production dropped,
famine destroyed communities, and epidemics swept
across Europe. Good times. But the peasants
were still better off than the Spanish Habsburgs
in one very important way. They weren't killing themselves
from intentional inbreeding. Charles' father, King Philip
IV, was only 10 years old when his parents arranged his
first marriage to the daughter of the French king. Out of their eight children,
only two were boys. And both died before
inheriting the throne. After the death
of his first wife, Philip remarried his own
niece, Marianna of Austria. The couple had two
daughters and two more sons who died as children. Between 1527 and 1661, the
year Charles II was born, the Spanish royal families
produced 34 children. Nearly 30% of them died before
the age of one and a full half died before their
10th birthdays. Shockingly, one of the
wealthiest families in the world suffered
from worse mortality rates than the average Spanish
commoner whose infant mortality was around 20%. That's the cost of
keeping it in the family. Inbreeding was common
practice for Europe's royalty, although when they
did it it was referred to as royal intermarriage. Sounds classy and corporate. And for two centuries,
the Spanish Habsburgs married within their family to
maintain their royal heritage. In fact, the vast majority
of their marriages during the 16th
and 17th centuries were between blood relatives. The Habsburgs justified
their inbreeding by claiming the
practice strengthened lines of succession and helped
secure political alliances. During an era when royal blood
was considered substantially different from
common blood, rulers wanted to marry other rulers. The simple fact was
though sometimes there weren't many options outside
of one's own cousins. Ironically, the practice
of intermarriage, meant to ensure the
purity of the bloodline, ultimately brought a
host of genetic ailments and deformities that
destroyed the monarchy. That's some poor planning. Charles inherited
a massive empire that dated back to
the 16th century when his ancestor Charles V had
ruled over Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, and an
enormous amount of territory in the New World. His vast holdings were
described as the empire on which the sun
never sets, a title later appropriated by
the British empire. Wealth poured into Spain through
its major port city, Seville. Don Quixote author Miguel de
Cervantes describe the city at the time as just the
place to find adventure for on every street and
on every street corner there were more adventures
than in any other place. Spain's transatlantic fleet
appeared twice a year, carrying gold and silver
along with exotic luxury goods like cocoa, pineapples,
and chili peppers. But in the end,
it didn't matter. All of the Spanish
empire's wealth could prevent the end of
the Habsburg monarchy. In the 17th century,
Spain found itself facing a long steep decline. While millions of
pounds of silver flooded the country
between 1580 and 1630, the massive amounts
the Spanish empire brought into the European
market caused extreme inflation for the Spanish currency. The monarchy took on
enormous amounts of debt while funding a
multitude of war efforts in both Europe and the Americas. So things were
looking bad, but it was poor leadership
from the Habsburgs that ultimately made these
problems insurmountable. The king was simply incapable
of ruling his empire. And it would never
again reach the heights of the 16th century. For anybody paying attention,
it was pretty clear that Charles was not
going to live very long. And as it happened, he had
no children of his own. So in 1700, Charles issued
his last will and testament. In the document, Charles
chose Phillip, duke of Anjous as his successor. Phillip was the grandson
of Charles' sister, who had married Louis XIV of France. You would think this sort of
foresight and planning would assure a smooth
succession, but it didn't. Charles' death led
to years of war. Charles was the last of
the Spanish Habsburgs. And because of
Spain's rich empire, a number of other
European powers wanted to seize the throne. In fact, before
Charles was even dead, the English, Dutch,
and French were already debating how to
carve up his empire. The conflict, which
would be known as the War of the
Spanish Succession, dragged on from 1701 until 1713. This decade of war saw the
powerful French monarch Louis XIV fight against an alliance
of the English, Dutch, and the Holy Roman Empire to
put his grandson on the throne. Ultimately, the war killed
more than a million people and in the end put a French
Bourbon on the Spanish throne. So what do you think? Is this the most messed
up royal family tree? Let us know in the
comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos from our Weird History.
