WHAT HAPPENED TO QUEEN ANNE’S CHILDREN? Stuart history documentary | Royal history | History Calling

hi all welcome or welcome back to my channel history calling today we're looking at queen anne stewart who you may know a little bit about from the movie the favorite i'll leave a link for that in the description box if you're interested ann is best remembered by many as the queen who was pregnant 17 times yet had no surviving children at the time of her death and in today's video i'm going to talk you through her experiences of trying and failing to produce an heir for the house of stuart and explain some of the theories as to why she had so much trouble in this area [Music] please remember to like this video leave a comment below and subscribe to my channel with the little notification bell switched on so that youtube lets you know every time i post new content you can also follow me over on instagram where my username is at historycalling anne was born on the 6th of february 1665 the daughter of james duke of york the future james ii of england and his first wife anne hyde duchess of york little anne was the second of the couple's two surviving children after her older sister mary who was born in 1662 and who would go on to marry their cousin william iii and ultimately become mary the second the duchess of york died in 1671 and mary and anne's father remarried to the 15 year old italian princess mary of medina in november 1673 and herself was married 10 years later on the 28th of july 1683 at the age of 18 to prince george of denmark and it's here that her tale of woe as regards her children begins over the next 17 years she would fall pregnant at least 17 times that we knew of which resulted in a minimum of 18 children as one and possibly even two of the pregnancies were of twins it was an almost unbroken list of tragedies however her first pregnancy ended with her miscarrying a girl on the 12th of may 1684. things then seemed to be looking up for a brief period as she gave birth to two healthy daughters in a row mary on the 1st of june 1685 and anne sophia on the 12th of may 1686 exactly two years after the first miscarriage tragically both little girls died of smallpox within a week of each other in february 1687. this was also within a fortnight of their mother miscarrying again this time of a boy on the 21st of january 1687. she fell pregnant once more very quickly however but had another stillborn son at seven months on the 22nd of october that same year six months later she lost another child on the 16th of april 1688. the 24th of july 1689 she gave birth to the child who would live the longest prince william duke of gloucester he was followed by two very short-lived siblings a sister mary was born on the 14th of october 1690 but lived only to ours incidentally i knew that anne had already had a daughter called mary but this practice of recycling children's names was very common at all levels of society during this period and well beyond while i know a lot of people today might not be very comfortable with that it was considered quite normal especially given child mortality rates at the time and the desire many felt to ensure that family names carried on from one generation into the next in this case the girl was again being named after her aunt who had also recently become queen and so it made even more sense to give her this name as a mark of respect the next child was a brother george born on the 17th of april 1692 but he survived only a few minutes he was the last living child anne would ever give birth to there followed his stillborn daughter on the 24th of march 1693 another miscarriage on the 21st of january 1694 a lost daughter on the 20th of february 1696 and a miscarriage possibly of twins that same year on the 20th of september there were two miscarriages in 1697 one on the 25th of march another on the 2nd of december the latter of which may have been of twins again on the 15th of september 1698 she was delivered of a stillborn son and on the 25th of january 1700 anne's final recorded pregnancy came to an end with another stillborn boy her only surviving child prince william who had a range of health problems including hydrocephalus meaning water on the brain then died on the 30th of july that same year possibly of smallpox or pneumonia though no definitive cause of death could be agreed upon as you can see it is an absolutely heartbreaking list of loss anne obviously had no problems in falling pregnant even hard on the heels of a miscarriage birth or stillbirth but if we remove her daughters mary and aunt sophia and her son william from the list all of whom died of causes unrelated to childbirth we're still left with 14 pregnancies which ended in tragedy how unusual was this though and what might have been the reason for it we can get an idea of the miscarriage and mortality rate for young children by looking at the experiences of some of anne's nearest female relations her mother anne hyde duchess of york gave birth eight times that we knew of before dying at the age of 34 but only two of her children mary and dan survived to adulthood the others all passed away before the age of four from a range of issues such as smallpox plague and convulsions the duchy's sister frances hyde who married thomas keatley fared even worse of the seven pregnancies she recorded in her family bible which resulted in two daughters and seven sons only one girl catherine survived her others which included two sets of twin boys suggesting twins around in the family all died before their sixth birthdays and four of them passed away as small babies mary of medina had 12 recorded pregnancies and yet only two of her children survived infancy six were stillborns or miscarriages the remaining four died as babies or small children queen anne's sister mary later mary ii had been married to william of orange at the age of 15 but had no children after suffering several miscarriages as a teenager she died of smallpox in 1694 at the age of 32. we can see then that anne's experience of multiple miscarriages and stillbirths and even the loss of her young daughters to smallpox wasn't in itself uncommon to either the time period in which she was living or even to her own family but the sheer number 14 field pregnancies that we know of is out of the ordinary so what was going on well first of all let me issue a quick disclaimer i'm not a medical doctor and even if i was we should remember that it's impossible to properly diagnose and or indeed anyone else at a distance of over 300 years what follows is therefore simply a series of guesses by historians and modern doctors based on the comments made by observers at the time about anne's health early and unsubstantiated theories held that she might have contracted syphilis or porphyria but her medical history doesn't support either conclusion nor is there any suggestion that her husband was syphilic either then there was the hypothesis that perhaps her lost pregnancies were the result of the rhesus d phenomenon in which the mother's blood type is rhesus negative the father is rhesus positive and their first child is also rhesus positive this then leads the mother to produce antibodies against rhesus positive children and will lead to multiple miscarriages after the first pregnancy this has also been posited as an explanation for the problems catherine of aragon and ambolyn suffered with henry viii but has ultimately been ruled out by most historians of queen anne stewart as it doesn't fit with her symptoms remember she had a miscarriage followed by two successful pregnancies in a row and a later successful pregnancy with prince william duke of gloucester a pattern which really doesn't fit with the rhesus d diagnosis a more believable though still unprovable theory put forward by one of anne's biographers and somerset i'll leave her book linked below argued that the queen suffered from quote an intrauterine growth retardation caused by an insufficiency of the placenta this in turn could have been the consequence of anne being affected by hughes syndrome also known as antiphospholipid syndrome or sticky blood as ann somerset goes on to explain this essentially meant that queen anne's blood was more prone to clotting and so couldn't pass through the tiny blood vessels of the placenta thus the constant miscarriages and stillbirths this theory is further supported by the fact that hughes syndrome can lead to arthritis and skin breakouts on the face both of which the queen would go on to suffer from whatever the problem was we might also wonder if it ran on one or both sides of her family given the tragedies her mother aunt sister and stepmother suffered however i think it's impossible to prove this one way or the other mary ii seems to have had reproductive issues as well but they were very different to anne's she was never pregnant again that we knew of after her teens and none of her pregnancies went to term or close to it in the way that anne's did as for the other women in the family despite some miscarriages and or infant death soon after birth they like anne all produced a number of children who were born alive and healthy and died later of causes unrelated to childbirth so there doesn't seem to have been a problem in the genes of either the stewards or the heights the loss of so many of their children was ultimately bad luck caused by the time period in which they lived and the lack of proper medical care indeed had more of aunt's children being born alive and lived even a few weeks we would likely say the same of her as i mentioned earlier after 1700 anne would never have another recorded pregnancy though her husband george didn't die until 1708. from what her doctors said and wrote this doesn't seem to have been because of the menopause she was only turning 35 in 1700 but may have been due to her increasingly poor health and or because she and prince george who was in poor health himself with asthma and obesity were no longer sleeping together especially after she became queen in early 1702 and was busy with affairs of state by her early 30s she too was seriously overweight and had to be carried to her coronation though once at the door she was able to walk into westminster abbey under her own steam she was also increasingly suffering from attacks of gout and arthritis which caused her enormous pain the effect of at least 17 pregnancies may have physically damaged her too and left her unable to conceive again perhaps this was a blessing though even if she had become pregnant again given her track record the chances that she would have had a healthy living child seem incredibly low and really hadn't she suffered enough the favorite shows her owning a group of white rabbits one for each of her lost children and while this isn't historically accurate it is true to say that she was emotionally devastated by the loss of her children to sum up then we'll never know for certain what her medical issues were but i hope we can all agree that no english queen ever injured as much in the quest for an heir as anne and she's deserving of our deepest sympathy for what she went through she died in 1714 aged 49 and was buried in westminster abbey with her husband and some of their children her death brought an end to the stewart's rule over britain and ireland and the throne then passed to her distant cousin the elector of hanover who became george the first i hope you found this video interesting if somber let me know in the comments below what you think might have caused queen anne's difficulties and i'll be back next week with a new video till then keep learning [Music] you

Channel: History Calling

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Keywords: What happened to Queen Anne’s children, why did Queen Anne miscarry, why did Queen Anne’s children die, Queen Anne of Great Britain, Queen Anne Stuart documentary, Queen Anne documentary, Queen Ann documentary, Ann Stuart, Prince George of Denmark, William Duke of Gloucester, Prince William Duke of Gloucester, Stuart royal family, British royal family documentary, Queen Anne’s children, royal miscarriages, stuart history documentary, royal history documentary, history calling

Id: qUc0wmJGTgg

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020