Inbred people and royalty?

Question

So I heard in the royal family there is inbreeding. Cousin marrying cousins and all that such.

That is absoluting insane to me... anyone else feel a bit digusted by this?

Answer 1

Not unlike muslims then.

Answer 2

Most royalty is inbred.  What do you expect from people who got their status from robber baron ancestors?

Answer 3

that's why most of them have a below average IQ

Answer 4

Royalty married among themselves because they required partners of comparable birth rank. After a while, they became more and more related to each other and also fell along barriers of religion. Catholic dynasties tended to intermarry much more often, the main ones being Habsburg/Habsburg-Lorraine (Holy Roman Empire, Austria, formerly Spain), Bourbon (France, Spain, Parma, Two Sicilies/Naples and Sicily, etc), Wittelsbach (Bavaria and the Palatinate) and Braganza (Portugal and Brazil).

I am not disgusted by it in the least. It was important in those times to make political unions between monarchies by sending princesses back and forth.

Peter T, it's NOT incest. Incest is sexual contact between relatives too close to marry. It is legal to marry a cousin in the UK so it is not incest.

Answer 5

It used to happen, but It is a bit of a myth that 'they are all a bunch of inbred...'  although that idea does have some appeal to anti-royals.  

Inbreeding went on at all levels of society. More so amongst the ordinary people, which is why  'village idiots' were once such common characters everywhere in the UK. But, only one mad King - George III ?

The Queen and Prince Philip are third cousins, though distant enough to be of no genetic consequence. Lady Di was something like a seventh cousin to Prince Charles, but half the population probably are.

Spain and Austria produced some very inbred royals, with considerable deformities, but, even their inbreeding was nothing like the brother - sister unions of the Ancient Egyptian  royal families.

Answer 6

i agree anywhere else and it's called incest and against the law, but as we all know in the uk, our royals are above the law and have been since the days of old when there henchmen were stealing land from overseas which they called conquering and named it the British empire, most of which they have given back,' most ' but not the large estates they took in scotland which is where they retreat to woo their relations.

Answer 7

Marrying a first, second, or even a third cousin sounds scandalous, but it was fairly common practice during the nineteenth century.  Charles Darwin, Edgar Allen Poe, and Albert Einstein, for instance, all married first cousins.  Perhaps the only difference between Royalty marrying relatives and the rest of us marrying relatives is that the marriage of royal cousins is easily traceable and known to all.  

I've uncovered several first cousin marriages in my family tree in the 18th and early 19th centuries that occurred between first and second generation Scottish or Scots-Irish immigrants to the United States.  I was shocked, but at the time the marriages probably made good sense to those involved.

Answer 8

it`s always been that way

Answer 9

yeh that's why they're ugly! lol

Answer 10

strange people your royalty

Answer 11

And this is news to you???

They're famous for it - every European monarchy is interbred and inbred and always was.

Answer 12

I know, it's really disgusting.... The Queen and her husband, Prince Phillip are like distant cousins but they're married...

Answer 13

Yep, it's a bit weird,

you just have to look at Prince Phillip.

Answer 14

A lot of royalty especially in days gone by (and the aristocracy generally) called even the most distant relation 'cousin' so its not necessarily that they were marrying first cousins. But any small community (of which there were plenty before the onset of easy travel and leaving home) would have practised interbreeding.

Answer 15

Such things have changed.  You haven´t seen first cousins marrying each other since the 19th century, when the study of genetics had its birth, and it became clear that that was one reason why Royal families often died out.

That's what happened to the Spanish Habsburgs.  Too much inbreeding.  In fact, it´s a miracle that the French Bourbon family outlived them by nearly a hundred years, only to be murdered.  They should have died out about the same time, by logic.

The reason for this, was that Royalty was only thought to be good enough for royalty.  No simple ordinary person should  be good enough to marry a future king.  (Cinderella fairy tales notwithstanding), so, within a few generations, when there were only so many kingdoms around, the available pool of spouses narrowed down to first cousins.

If you look at the French and Spanish families, they married first cousins for about three generations.  Amazing that Louis XIV lived as long as he did, and had as many healthy children as he did.

If you notice, though, the entire current generation of royals of child-bearing age have married OUTSIDE of royalty.  William and Harry are evidence that it doesn´t take long to remedy that issue.

Answer 16

In other countries it is called incest, in the UK it is called Royalty.

Answer 17

incest is illegal. The sort of inbreeding that has happened in the past 200 years has been of distant cousins. because Queen Victoria had many chidlren who married in to the then many Royal houses of Europe, genrations on, many wer distantly related.

If in doubt and very interested, look up the royal family trees.