What are characteristics of inbred royalty?

Question

Which members of royalty do we know for sure are inbred? Do they tend to get angry faster and stay angry longer?

Answer 1

Some Egyptian Pharaohs married their sisters and daughters. Normally the son of the old ruler and the ruler's oldest (half-)sister became the new ruler. Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII, married and named co-rulers of ancient Egypt following their father's death, were brother and sister. Not only this, but all rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty from Ptolemy II on engaged in inbreeding among brothers and sisters, so as to keep the Ptolemaic blood "pure".

The royal and noble families of Europe have close blood ties which are strengthened by royal intermarriage. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and luckily none of their nine children suffers from any forms of deformity, physical or mental disability, or behavioral disorder.

However, it has long been debated on whether inbreeding caused some of the problems among some of the family members of some royal lines, most notably centered around Charles II of Spain, who was mentally handicapped and could not properly chew food. As there was no genetic testing back then, it will remain unclear whether these defects were naturally occurring or were due to the inbreeding.

List of royal family intermarriage

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

Answer 2

Epilepsy is another one.

Answer 3

Shades of Harriet Beecher Stowe (who thoroughly disapproved of such practices in the 19th century):  Inbreeding  has manifested itself in the French, Spanish, and German royal families through

---reduced fertility

---high infant mortality

---increased genetic disorders

---fluctuating facial asymmetry, most noticeably in the Hapsburg lip, a feature that was so prominent in Carlos II of Spain that he couldn't chew his food.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip are 2nd cousins, once removed, as well as 3rd cousins (as linear descendants of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert).  Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, in turn, were first cousins.   But then, during the 19th century,  marrying cousins was not necessarily reserved for royalty:  Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and Edgar Allan Poe, for example, all married first cousins.  Perhaps I shouldn't even mention Lord Byron's romance with his half sister?  

As far as your question about anger management goes, controlling emotions probably has less to do with nature and more to do with nurture.  More to the point, for many centuries, the British Royals have felt a sense of entitlement, which is sometimes not tempered by noblesse oblige.

Answer 4

Hemophilia is NOT caused by inbreeding, it is generally passed  down the female line and males tend to suffer from it. Most cases of it involve no inbreeding whatsoever.

ALL European royals are inbred to a certain extent and all are related to each other. Of the currently reigning European royal families, the most recent common ancestor of all of them is Prince John William Friso, Prince of Orange and Nassau-Dietz. Many European sovereigns have much closer links and all of the European sovereigns who married other royals have known genealogical relationships to their spouses.

For instance, Elizabeth II and her husband Philip, Duke of Edinburgh are second cousins once removed though Christian IX of Denmark and third cousins through Queen Victoria. Therefore their children and grandchildren descend twice each from Queen Victoria and Christian IX.

In Spain, the children of the King and Queen are descended from Queen Victoria three times and from King Christian once, I believe.

Furthermore, Queen Victoria was related to Christian and his wife. All **royal** ruling families in Europe are descended from one or both of these monarchs, except for the Dutch Royal Family.

Every single hereditary monarch in Europe has cousin marriages, etc, in their ancestry. This seems to be more pronounced among the Catholic dynasties where there were fewer suitable marriage partners (the main ones being Austria, Bavaria, France, Spain, etc).

The effects of inbreeding, however, are varied. None of the current European royals seem to have any pronounced effects from inbreeding. Actually, none seem to show any more effects from inbreeding as compared to a person with relatively little inbreeding in their ancestry.

*Severely* inbred royalty of the past can be found within the Archhouse of Austria in the 17th and 18th centuries were members of the House of Habsburg frequently married amongst themselves and with members of the House of Bourbon. We have examples like Charles II of Spain (Charles the Bewitched), who was deformed and mentally retarded and who had numbers uncle-niece and double cousin unions in his near ancestry. A more recent example might be Ferdinand I, Emperor of Austria, who was also quite inbred.

Answer 5

I'm not sure about anger but physical characteristics are extenuated like a lack of a chin.

Answer 6

It depends on which family you are talking about.Certain genetic traits,such as hemophilia,are passed down to the next generation;this happened to some of Queen Victoria's children.

Answer 7

Pretty much the same as any inbreeding:  weak chins, eyes set too far or too close, I´m not sure, but I think big ears.

Really, Royalty isn't any different than the rest of us, except that in recent years, they have finally figured out that marrying second cousins constantly isn't a whole lot better than marrying their first cousins, and maybe, if they want to remain strong, and keep their thrones for a few more generations, they have to marry outside the family.