Queen Victoria & Hemophilia - Any Family Relation if I am a Hemophilia Carrier?

Question

Question: Queen Victoria & Hemophilia - Any Family Relation if I am a Hemophilia Carrier?

Details of Question: My Uncle was a Hemophiliac, as were other males (on my maternal grandmother's side). I am a carrier of the Hemophilia (Factor 8 missing) gene...

Point of Question: Does this mean somewhere or somehow I am related all the way back to Queen Victoria ? Is anyone with Hemophilia or a carrier of it, a relative or descendant of Queen Victoria ?

Thank you dearly in advance,

Mrs. B

Answer 1

Hemophilia is not a "royal" gene.  As with any genes, the "bad" ones appear frequently in a royal family because they do so much in-breeding.  In other words, they don't mix up their gene pool enough.  However, that has nothing to do with how they got the gene in the first place.  Many people can have hemophilia.  Hemophilia is a s*x-linked disease.  It is carried on the X-chromosome and is passed ONLY from a mother to child.  Never from the father.  Girls are carriers because they have XX chromosomes, which means that if the X from the mother has it, the X from the father will not and will cancel it out.  This is why girls do not get the disease but are carriers.  For boys, they are XY.  If the X they get from their mother has this gene, then they will have the disease because there is no other X gene from the father to cancel it out.  For a woman who is a carrier, there are 4 possibilities for the outcome of the children.  They are:

1. A girl who is not a carrier

2. A girl who is a carrier

3. A boy without hemophilia

4. A boy with hemophilia

There is a National Hemophilia Foundation.  This alone should indicate that the problem is more wide-spread than just royals.  There would not be such an organization if there were so few people with it that it was not financially feasible to have a national foundation for it.

Answer 2

No!

The Royal Family didn't invent it!  It has been around forever!

Answer 3

of course not. hemophilia did not originate from queen victoria surely. it's not a royal disease. surely, queen victoria have it from his parents.

Answer 4

While it was very common in the royal families of Europe due to inbreeding, other family lines carried the gene, too.  They're just the famous one that is talked about.

Additionally, some percentage (around 30%) of cases of hemophilia are the result of a gene mutation that starts in that one individual.  This means that anyone in your family line could have "started" the disease rolling, and even if you are related to Queen Victoria, have a different copy of the hemophilia gene.

Notably, Queen Victoria probably DID originate the copy that was passed around the royal families.  Her family had no history of the condition.  This wasn't the first "hemophilia" that ever existed, but her specific bad gene was new.

Answer 5

Just because you're a carrier, it doesn't mean you're related to royalty. One of the Tsar's sons had haemophilia too, but that doesn't make you their descendent. It's a medical condition, and it's like saying everyone with the potential for parkinsons is related.

Answer 6

Here is a story about another famous Roal with Hemophilia, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia .  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsarevich_A...

If it wasn't for his hemophilia Imperial Russia may not have ended when it did.