Weekly Wikipedia Find: Haemophilia in European royalty

Aristocratic inbreeding again, Justin? I know, I know. But its an awesome concept. Incest: an awesome concept? Yes. Yes! YES!!

The only problem with incest (yes the only problem) is that it tends to allow the propagation of undesirable traits such as a horrible underbite or excessive bleeding. Yes, today's focus of the royal intermarriage corner is haemophilia in European royalty.

Haemophilia, the inability of the body to control blood clotting, was passed among the houses of Europe by that nineteenth century queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland's Victorian era, Queen Victoria, who likely developed the condition through spontaneous gene mutation. From there, she passed this gene to her son Leopold, an inconsequential heir (fourth in line!) who would die from the excessive bleeding, and princesses Alice and Beatrice, consorts of Princes of Germany. And through their children, the disorder would reach the houses of Prussia, Russia, and Spain. Natural selection at its finest.

Of course, today it is sad to report that hemophilia is extinct in the Royal Houses of Europe, but there is still hope that it does in fact still reside, hidden, waiting, in the genes of a female descendant of Victoria.

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