Top 16 Royals Who Suffered From Hereditary Mutations

consanguinity the act of marrying a biological relative has been a mainstay of royal families for about as long as there have been dynasties on paper the idea makes perfect sense marry a relative keep the bloodline utterly pure by producing children from consanguineous marriages and if a dispute should arise within the family have the conflicting parties get married what could possibly go wrong a lot actually as we now know with the modern science of genetics and the hindsight of so many royal disasters inbreeding leads to diseases and deformities some of which were so severe that entire dynasties were brought to their knees in fact some historians have even suggested that the inbreeding of European Royals was a leading factor of World War one thank goodness it pretty much ended then considering the children in royal families tended to have much higher mortality rates than the general population it can pretty well be concluded that being royalty wasn't always all that it was cracked up to be this list will give you some pretty good reasons to be thankful that you aren't a king or queen number one king charles ii of spain could barely speak or eat for hundreds of years the hapsburgs were one of the most powerful families in all of Europe the line began in the 13th century and ruled Austria fane and the Holy Roman Empire which was neither holy nor Roman more an empire until the 1900s marie-antoinette the last queen of France was herself from the Habsburg line however the royal line suffered acutely from massive inbreeding in fact inbreeding may have been what led to the downfall of the dynasty in fact one of the Hapsburgs Joanna of Castile appears in the family tree no fewer than 14 times the family was particularly known for what is identified as the Habsburg jaw an oversized javelin and large tongue that made activities such as eating and speaking difficult the last Habsburg King of Spain was charles ii and he was so severely inbred that his inbred quotient was higher than if his parents had been siblings he had such a severely oversized john that he was barely able to eat or speak he was also known to drool a lot additionally he was unable to walk until he was eight years old and even then could only walk with great difficulty not exactly a ladies man despite being married twice the king was unable to procreate quite possibly an effect of his severe inbreeding he died in 1700 at the age of 39 leaving behind no heir to the throne and thereby effectively ending Habsburg rule in Spain number 2 Joanna of Castile slept beside her husband's corpse before Charles the second there was Joanna of Castile the older sister of Catherine of Aragon she was from the house of trash Tamara which have been engaging in cousin marriages for centuries her parents King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were second cousins the family's long tradition of inbreeding may have been at least partially the reason why Katherine couldn't bear any children Jonas set the stage for her posterity to have their own challenges as she married in the habsburg line as a child she was known to be intelligent inquisitive and somewhat moody at age 16 she entered into an arranged marriage with the son of the Holy Roman Emperor who was neither holy nor Roman or an emperor Philip the handsome himself a product of inbreeding he was known for being a philanderer but Joanna was completely smitten with him when she ascended to the throne due to the unpredicted deaths of her older siblings she had a full mental breakdown exacerbated by Philips behavior towards her when she found one of his mistresses she stabbed her in the face still she remained madly in love with her husband when he died unexpectedly she held onto his corpse and slept beside it every night history remembers her as Juana la loca Joanna the crazy number three Ferdinand I of Austria liked to roll around in the trash can a descendent of Joanna of Castile Ferdinand the first of Austria was born in 1793 to double first cousins Emperor Franz the second and Marie Therese Ferdinand was born with hydrocephaly another condition that was common to the Hapsburgs hydrocephaly or water on the brain causes pressure on the sensitive tissue and leads to brain damage he also had the infamous Habsburg jaw and epilepsy despite Ferdinand's feebleness the King insisted on him being the heir to the throne to continue the royal bloodline and principles of the monarchies succession during his lifetime he served as king of Hungary Austria Bohemia Lombardi and Venetia because of his disabilities he did not directly control matters of the state these were under the mastery of counselors and Regents during his reign one of his favorite activities was to sit down on the open end of a wastepaper basket and roll around on the floor surprisingly he held the throne for a full 18 years advocating to his nephew Francis Joseph 1848 and died at the age of 82 following his tenure No habsburg was crowned king of bohemia number four queen victoria may have spread haemophilia throughout european royalty much of european royalty in the 19th and 20th centuries could be traced to Queen Victoria in some way or another her daughter Princess Alice was the mother of Zarina Alexandra Romanov the last arena of Russia grandmother of the last Viceroy of India and great-grandmother of the duke of edinburgh victoria's genes went all over europe her besotted lover prince albert was actually her first cousin meaning that all of her children were inbred she also had the blood clotting disorder haemophilia which she passed on to her children before it went all throughout European royalty she did not suffer significantly from the disease but one of her children and five of her grandchildren died from complications caused by it number five Alexi Romanovs haemophilia may have destroyed the empire alexei romanov the grandson of Queen Victoria inherited what came to be known as the royal disease for how it was inherited by a disproportionately large number of European Royals haemophilia his frequent bouts of bleeding were so life-threatening than his mother Zarina Alexandra sought help from the mythical Rasputin's Rasputin's went on to gain an unwieldy amount of influence over the royal court in his efforts to save Alexi from the most severe effects of the disease Alexandra and her husband Tsar Nicholas were sure that his treatments were healing their son however aristocrats and others close to the royal family weren't quite so sure Rasputin's character was tainted with alcoholism and sexual promiscuity as well as dabbling in the occult while he may or may not have been guilty of those things to the Russian people as well as the aristocracy he symbolized everything that was wrong with the royal family disorder and discontent grew and in 1917 the Russian Revolution began the jury is still out on whether or not Alexie's illness could be considered a causative factor in the Russian Revolution the fall of the Romanovs and the execution of the royal family however it certainly didn't help number six Princess Victoria milita's royal headaches never ended princess Victoria Melita granddaughter of Queen Victoria was spared the worst effects of inbreeding that spread throughout Europe haemophilia however she got plenty of legal and familial headaches due to her lineage and all of its interconnectedness throughout the continent England's greatest monarch Queen Victoria wanted her grandson the Grand Duke of HESA to marry her granddaughter Princess Victoria the cousins once married fought constantly Victoria was known for being especially volatile during their arguments the grand duke was known for infidelity and on more than one occasion was caught by Victoria in bed with others their daughter Elizabeth of HESA died when she was only eight years old they also had a son who was stillborn following the death of Queen Victoria the unhappy couple was free to divorce the princess went on to marry the love of her life who also happened to be her cousin Borel Vladimirovich due to Queen Victoria's descendants marrying into royal households all over Europe pearl was a cousin to both tsar nicholas ii and his wife Zarina Alexandra however because he and Victoria got married without the permission of the Tsar they were banished from Russia and were only allowed to return when a series of deaths in the royal family put Carell in line for the throne number 7 King George's blooby caused the American Revolution Queen Victoria was the last monarch from the House of Hanover a family famous for its inbreeding and subsequent genetic abnormalities King George the 3rd of England known to history as the one who lost the American Revolution also belonged to this house and may have suffered from a condition known as porphyria porphyria is a Jeanette condition that causes bounce of madness and also causes the one suffering to have purplish bluish urine however recent scientific analyzers have cast doubt on the porphyria hypothesis and merely claimed that the king had a mental illness possibly bipolar disorder which could have been caused by the inbreeding within the House of Hanover during his manic states his writing was markedly different sentences could be over 400 words long he was even known to talk and talk and talk until foam came from his mouth in fact he is known to history as the Mad King his treatments involve the use of straitjackets and ice baths it's understandable how someone in his state of mind would have lost a war as momentous as the American Revolution he also suffered from skin conditions possibly caused by inbreeding which were treated with medicine made from gentian gentian is known to turn urine purplish blue thereby leading to the theory that the King suffered from porphyria number eight Maria the mad queen of Portugal had royal temper tantrums Maria the first of Portugal known as both Maria the pious and Maria the mad was born into a long line of inbreeding she went on to marry her uncle and their son prince uija was also her cousin Maria was known to be deeply religious all throughout her childhood sometimes to the point of what might be considered manic she was known to howl and shriek animalistic noises throughout the estate when her confessor died in 1791 she would have raging temper tantrums in which she would scream and wail because of her assured damnation dr. Frances Willis who was also treating England's and sane King George the 3rd was brought to Portugal to attend to the Queen he diagnosed her as insane and imposed upon her horrifying treatments including ice baths blistering in which blisters were intentionally created and administering laxatives surprisingly none of those treatments worked the Queen was eventually unable to attend to her royal duties and had to a Regents serve in her place Prince Yu ah who also suffered from the genetic challenges created by inbreeding was considered incompetent for the job of region in 1799 when France invaded Portugal the royal family fled to Brazil where the Queen died in 1816 number 9 Austria's Empress Elisabeth was depressed and anorexic Empress Elisabeth of Austria's parents may have been cousins and have also had in / uncle relationships as well due to inbreeding and she went on to marry her cousin Franz Josef she was from the house of Wittelsbach a clan notorious for its members inbreeding and their troubled behaviors Elisabeth was known for her beauty and today is often compared to Princess Diana however as is common among children who are products of inbreeding she had a mental illness leading to depression and anorexia throughout her reign beginning with her marriage to the 23 year old Emperor she was known for her timid shy and melancholic disposition plagued by nervousness and depression she rarely ate and may have been anorexic not only did she rarely eat but she exercised obsessively usually for several hours every day her mother-in-law Archduchess Sophie thought these characteristics were charming and befitting of royalty she spoke of her daughter-in-laws beauty and the joy that she brought to her people Elizabeth's son must have suffered from some form of mental illness as well as he committed suicide following his death the Empress wandered about the globe looking for solace until an Italian anarchist murdered her in 1898 number 10 Empress Elizabeth's cousin King Ludwig ii was deposed for his madness king ludwig ii also of the house of wittelsbach was known for being completely out of touch with reality a century after Marie Antoinette of France herself a Habsburg who may have been spared some of the worst effects of inbreeding was known for her excesses and expensive tastes king ludwig ii of bavaria built grand opulent palaces as a means of escaping reality he was known for being mentally unstable and completely out of touch with the physical world around him when ludwig was a child his mother noted his penchant for dressing up and having a vivid imagination when he ascended to the throne at the age of 18 he had no political experience but still possessed the vision of a little boy to keep himself within the dream world that he had created he became a personal patron of the composer Richard Wagner in his world of grand palaces and artistic expression he and all of the comforts of a king but carried out none of the responsibilities meanwhile the government of Bavaria was struggling to run the state while controlling the Kings wastefulness when he was deposed and then murdered in 1886 his brother Otto ascended to the throne however a regent ruled in his place as otto was found to be even more deluded than ludwig number 11 King Tut had a cleft palate and elongated skull consanguinity didn't begin in Europe it could be seen as far back as ancient Egypt when the goddess Isis married her brother Osiris in order to maintain a pure bloodline many pharaohs followed in this tradition including the parents of the legendary King Tutankhamun while he is often viewed in pop culture as a boy king one who would need an incredible amount of self-assuredness and physical strength he was probably a frail sickly child scans of his mummy show that he had a cleft palate clubfoot and elongated skull along with persistent malaria rather than speeding down Egyptian roads in a chariot he probably had to walk with a cane the first ever DNA study that was conducted on an Egyptian mummy was done on King Tut and it revealed that he was in fact a product of a high level of incest in fact his mother was probably not Nefertiti as was previously assumed but rather a sister of King Akhenaten because of the compromised immunity brought about by inbreeding the boy pharaoh was probably not murdered but died due to his body's inability to cope with the necrosis in his foot coupled with persistent malaria and other infections despite his feebleness King Tut made the same mistake as his father and married his sister their children did not survive number 12 Cleopatra was not stunningly beautiful she was probably obese history remembers Cleopatra as not only a robust female ruler but also an enchanting seductress who allegedly had herself smuggled to Julius Caesar by wrapping herself inside a rug however the Cleopatra pop culture bears little to no resemblance to the actual queen of Egypt in fact today's audience might not even recognize her Cleopatra was a Ptolemy and as was the custom of that dynasty her parents were brother and sister in fact Kings were required to marry their sisters in order to acquire their power Cleo herself was married to her ten-year-old brother when she was only 18 years old and eventually married the other one as well in keeping with her genetic line she bore marks of inbreeding one of which was probably obesity archaeologists have found that many Egyptian Royals were overweight owing at least in part to a diet heavy and beer and bread however incest may also have played a role Cleopatra herself had a hook nose a round face and fat hanging under her chin Roman propaganda probably showed her as being the indomitable Beauty that we think of today but she wasn't the Elizabeth Taylor who played her in the 1963 movie number thirteen Princess Nighy Nina's people turned against her for incest Protestant missionaries educated princess na hey Nina ah Hawaii in the early 1800s she was also romantically involved with her brother King Kamehameha the third since childhood and was all too eager to marry him much to the chagrin of the missionaries tradition ran against the power of the ministers as the royal family was accustomed to intermarriage to keep the bloodline pure when the siblings were married in 1825 she was expelled from the church nya Nina was sincerely repentant as she greatly respected the missionaries however her repentance was not accepted by the church and she was soon found to be pregnant with her brother's child with her people now converted they shunned her and she lived in isolation until the child's birth the baby died within just a few hours probably because of genetic problems stemming from generations of inbreeding and the disgraced princess lived the rest of her life in shock and grief she was finally accepted back into the church shortly before her death number 14 king rama v had many wives but only showed one in public King Chulalongkorn also known as Rama V was immortalized in the fictionalized story of Anna and the King as he was one of the children educated by the British educator Anna Leonowens the Chakri dynasty of which Rama V was a member routinely engaged in marriages among cousins and other relatives Kings usually had harems leading to dozens of children many of the half siblings that grew up in these harems married each other unlike many Royals who suffered from the worse aspects of inbreeding like the Habsburg jaw and insanity king rama v is credited with the modernization of siam now known as thailand and for keeping it from becoming colonized by the British he built public hospitals and a railway and also abolished slavery with his harem of 153 wives concubines and consorts he fathered 77 children many of them were sent to Europe for formal education however because of the disgrace which he knew would be looked upon him by Western leaders he only showed one of his wives queen say Oh Baba in public a shame he knew would be due not so much to the polygamy but rather to the incest as many of his wives were biologically related to him however he claimed that his preference for being shown with only one wife was due to custom number 15 Nero's insanity may have been from inbreeding much modern scholarship has focused on trying to understand the darker underbelly of Roman culture such as why there was so much lead poisoning and how it contributed to the fall of the greatest empire in history one particular aspect of Roman history that is interesting to some historians is how incest and inbreeding may have generated insanity among the Emperor's moreover perhaps no Emperor is more famous for madness than Nero the man who fiddled while Rome burned and was accused of having sex with his own mother the roman royals often intermarried for the same reasons as later european royal families to keep wealth and prestige within the family reduce contention over who should be heir to the throne Nero was the son of a niece and her uncle Agra Pina and Claudius who may have had an inbred pedigree going back generations Agra Pina agreed to marry him to strengthen her sons claim to the throne something that ultimately proved to be a somewhat dangerous thing for the citizens of Rome not only had lead poisoning severely depleted his mental faculties but his inbreeding may have assured that he didn't have many faculties to begin with number 16 kalilas blood thirst was likely fuelled by inbreeding Nero may be the most infamous of all Roman emperors but he was not the only one to have a family tree that grew straight up Caligula also known as Gaius Caesar who has been accused by many of engaging in incestuous relations with his sisters something that he may or may not have done descended from a pedigree of biological relatives marrying each other to keep money power and the bloodline intact his reign was defined by both lust and lunacy his father Germanicus was beloved by the Roman people and believing Caligula would possess the same characteristics they were more than happy to coronate him as the new emperor however after an illness six months into his reign he proved that he was not the same person as his father Caligula forced parents to watch the tortures and executions of their children claiming to be a god he had a bridge built between the Temple of Zeus and his own palace so that he could more easily convene with the deity he was assassinated by his unhappy public when after a sports event Guardsmen stabbed him thirty times

Channel: Deep History

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Keywords: Top 16, Royals, Hereditary Mutations

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Length: 24min 13sec (1453 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020