# Royal Inbreeding **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 30, 2007, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742 "2007-07-30T22:25:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/21 "2007-07-31T18:31:46Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Socks] How was everybody related? [/QUOTE] Through [Johann Georg II, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau](http://worldroots.com/brigitte/gifs/europeheirs1.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/22 "2007-07-31T18:50:58Z")
[QUOTE=wendigo1974] **Szlater** Queen Victoria’s passing on haemophillia to her descendents and their married decendents children is not in-breeding. It just shows that the “Royal Disease” came from a common source. You state your self it is an “inherited defect”, not an inbred defect. So the same family wanted to rule Europe and the mommy gave them all haemophillia. That is not in-breeding. [/QUOTE] But it does illustrate _why_ royals became inbred. Until very recently, it was considered of paramount importance for most European royals (with the exception of Russia, where tsars could marry non-royal nobles) that they marry only other royals. If all European royals are fairly closely related, that means there’s going to be royal inbreeding. Royals who marry someone who is not considered appropriate can lose quite a bit. When [the UK’s Princess Margaret wanted to marry Peter Townsend in 1954](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Margaret%2C_Countess_of_Snowdon#Romance_with_Peter_Townsend), she was told that, if she did that, she would lose her allowance from the Civil List and her role as princess. For many royals, that would have meant losing your entire income and the only job you’ve ever had or learned how to do. It’s not too surprising that most of them bowed to that sort of pressure and married other royals. > [@Hari Seldon](#): > > As far as I can see, the main effect on the royal family from in-breeding is dim-wittedness. I will refrain from giving examples. I wonder how much of that is really dim-wittedness, and how much is being forced by circumstances to do things that they have little aptitude for or interest in. It’s rather a bigger deal when the heir to a throne decides that being a monarch isn’t for him than it is when a politician’s child decides he or she isn’t cut out for politics, after all. There’s quite a bit of pressure on the next-in-line to the throne to accept the throne, even if they feel they would be better qualified to do something else. Disclaimer: I have never met any royals or seen anything (other than the same books and tabloids everyone else has seen) that would be indicative of their intelligence. > [@matt\_mcl](#): > > Here’s his family tree. He might have been a redneck- his family tree did not fork 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/23 "2007-07-31T19:01:11Z")
Hemophilia is the least of our worries – I just learned from the trailer for the movie _Skinwalkers_ that “there is a gene. . . that separates Man . . . from Beast”. _Just one gene!_ Now I’m really scared to have kids. ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/24 "2007-07-31T19:13:54Z")
[QUOTE=wendigo1974] slope-headed chinless wonders [/QUOTE] You talking to me? ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/25 "2007-07-31T19:26:20Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] I had presumed that, with as many possibile mutations as there are, it would be overwhelmingly improbable for the same mutation to occur independantly in two different individuals. Is this incorrect? One does occasionally see two different mutations on the same gene, which might have similar effects or interact in interesting ways, but they’re still distinguishable. [/QUOTE] I wasn’t necessarily contesting your assertion, just curious what lead you to it. More than anything else, I guess it was the fact that you seemed to state it as applying to all recessive genes, when I would imagine quite a lot of recessive genes aren’t due to what we would consider mutations in this sense. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/26 "2007-07-31T20:17:53Z")
I only mentioned recessives specifically because you need two copies for them to manifest. A person with a dominant trait might have only gotten it from one parent. Re-reading, though, the way I expressed that was a bit unclear. As for that Carlos II fellow, isn’t your number of ancestors supposed to _increase_ as you go back more generations? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Socks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a8b319/32.png) [@Captain\_Socks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Socks)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/27 "2007-07-31T20:28:10Z")
Anything besides haemophilia? And, also, what were the political aspects of inbreeding? ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/28 "2007-07-31T20:59:58Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Socks] Anything besides haemophilia? [/quote] Did you read my post above? At any rate, besides the Habsburg jaw, there was also the threat of hereditary insanity that resulted from having Juana the Mad of Castile as several of your great-great-grandmothers. > [@](#): > > And, also, what were the political aspects of inbreeding? As others have said, since it was de rigueur for royals to marry other royals, and since these were political alliances done to benefit the royal house and keep the assorted thrones within the family, there was an extremely small pool of potential spouses. Referring to the Habsburg’s proclivities, there was even a motto, _Alii bella gerunt; tu felix Austria nube_ (“others fight wars, while you, happy Austria, marry”). Once such things became less of a concern with the advent of constitutional monarchy, heirs apparent became more free to marry non-royal nobles, then commoners, so these sorts of problems have diminished. Modern understanding of hereditary disease has also obviously helped. However, we still have leftovers of the old system, such as the fact that Prince Philip, consort of Elizabeth II, is in line for the British throne in his own right, and the fact that Felipe, the crown prince of Spain, is descended from Queen Victoria on both sides (his father’s father’s mother’s mother’s mother, his mother’s father’s mother’s mother’s mother, his mother’s mother’ s mother’s father’s mother’s mother, and probably more besides). ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/29 "2007-07-31T21:06:57Z")
It could be worse; as is well known, the royal house of Egypt had an uncomfortable habit of marrying their own siblings. Cleopatra VII (the famous one), for example, was married to her brother Ptolemy XIII, although she never had children with him; Cleopatra herself was the children of siblings, Ptolemy XII Auletes and Cleopatra V. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Socks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a8b319/32.png) [@Captain\_Socks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Socks)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/30 "2007-07-31T21:08:35Z")
Wasn’t it also divided among religious lines? I can imagine the Russian Romanovs being quite inbred because there weren’t really any other Orthodox royal families. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/31 "2007-07-31T21:15:26Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Socks] Wasn’t it also divided among religious lines? I can imagine the Russian Romanovs being quite inbred because there weren’t really any other Orthodox royal families. [/QUOTE] They tried to remedy this, but too little, too late: Alexander III, second to last czar of Russia, married a Danish princess who converted to Orthodoxy in order to marry him. Of course, we all know what happened to their kid Nicholas in 1917… ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/32 "2007-07-31T22:06:30Z")
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp] They tried to remedy this, but too little, too late: Alexander III, second to last czar of Russia, married a Danish princess who converted to Orthodoxy in order to marry him. Of course, we all know what happened to their kid Nicholas in 1917… [/QUOTE] Actually, Russian emperors typically sought their tsarinas among the royal houses of the German-speaking lands, a tradition that goes all the way back to Catherine II the Great (who was wife of Peter III before becoming empress herself); she was born Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst in Stettin, Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland) in 1729, and preceded an unbroken line of Germanic tsarinas all the way down to the Revolution. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/33 "2007-07-31T22:20:03Z")
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp] They tried to remedy this, but too little, too late: Alexander III, second to last czar of Russia, married a Danish princess who converted to Orthodoxy in order to marry him. Of course, we all know what happened to their kid Nicholas in 1917… [/QUOTE] And Nicholas married Alix, the grand-daughter of none other than Q. Victoria herself (daughter of her daughter Alice). Which is how their son, Alexis, got hemophilia. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/34 "2007-07-31T22:29:49Z")
[QUOTE=Anne Neville] …Royals who marry someone who is not considered appropriate can lose quite a bit. When [the UK’s Princess Margaret wanted to marry Peter Townsend in 1954](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Margaret%2C_Countess_of_Snowdon#Romance_with_Peter_Townsend), she was told that, if she did that, she would lose her allowance from the Civil List and her role as princess… [/QUOTE] Townsend’s status as a commoner wasn’t the issue. The Church of England had a big problem with him being _divorced_ (although he was the innocent party) and his ex-wife was still alive. They would not have been able to marry in the CoE and at the time it was believed that it was illegal for royals to marry outside the church under English law. Margaret later married a commoner, Anthony Armstrong-Jones, who was created an earl. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/35 "2007-07-31T22:35:42Z")
Oh, and one other thing. It’s thought that the Victoria is an example of spontaneous mutation, as her family had no history of hemophilia prior. So, unless she is the illegitimate daughter of some hemophiliac man (and wouldn’t that be eyebrow raising), then there must have been a spontaneous mutation in her case-- probably originating in her father’s sperm since she passed the faulty allele on to several children. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/36 "2007-07-31T23:25:27Z")
[QUOTE=alphaboi867] Townsend’s status as a commoner wasn’t the issue. The Church of England had a big problem with him being _divorced_ (although he was the innocent party) and his ex-wife was still alive. [/QUOTE] I know. But it is an example of the kind of pressure that could be brought to bear on a royal who wanted to make an “inappropriate” marriage. IIRC, George IV was threatened with losing his share of the Civil List money if he didn’t find a proper royal bride. And it’s ironic that the Church of England frowns on divorce, given how it got started… > [@Captain Socks](#): > > Anything besides haemophilia? I mentioned the Hapsburg jaw (the super-chinned monsters who couldn’t chew or close their mouths) and the mental problems that some later Hapsburgs had. The Hapsburg jaw was certainly due to inbreeding. The mental problems are a little harder to pin down to a specific cause, of course, but inbreeding probably didn’t help there. > [@matt\_mcl](#): > > Actually, Russian emperors typically sought their tsarinas among the royal houses of the German-speaking lands, a tradition that goes all the way back to Catherine II the Great Before that, they allowed tsars to marry non-royal members of the Russian nobility. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2007, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/37 "2007-07-31T23:27:17Z")
One mitigating factor has probably been the occasional well-timed bastard. For example, Isabel II of Spain married her first cousin, Francisco de Asís de Bourbon; but being as how he was as queer as a three-peseta bill, it’s likely that her son Alfonso XII, and consequently the entire Spanish royal house to date, was in fact the issue of her Catalan captain of the guard, Enric Puig i Moltó. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Socks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a8b319/32.png) [@Captain\_Socks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Socks)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2007, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/38 "2007-08-01T11:16:41Z")
What family was the most inbred? ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2007, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/39 "2007-08-01T13:36:40Z")
[QUOTE=matt\_mcl] Francisco de Asís de Bourbon; but being as how he was as queer as a three-peseta bill [/QUOTE] 😃 😛😃 It’s impossible for me to read this without vocalizing it with the lisped Castilian _s_. Fran_th_i_th_co de A_th_i_th_…three pe_th_eta bill… ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2007, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742/40 "2007-08-01T13:38:18Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Socks] What family was the most inbred? [/QUOTE] The oft-mentioned Habsburgs, probably. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royal-inbreeding/413742.md?page=3)