According to Disney, princes are the most charming, handsome men in all the land. Historically, that's far from the truth. Royal families were typically pretty obsessed with power. No matter how much they had, they wanted more, and they wanted to keep it. One way to do that was by keeping it in the family; AKA, they slept with their cousins. Back then, incest wasn't so taboo. Marriages between uncles and nieces and other close relations happened frequently.


The Habsburg Jaw



For most people, cuts and bruises are no big deal. For those with hemophilia, a scraped knee can turn serious. Hemophilia is a rare blood disorder in which your body doesn't produce enough clotting factor. When someone with hemophilia starts to bleed, they don't stop. The disease is recessive, so it's very uncommon; both of your parents must carry the gene for you to develop symptoms. Unfortunately, it was easy for inbred royals to produce unfortunate gene combinations.





Limb malformations




Learning disabilities

Speaking of Charles II, he didn't say a word until he was four and didn't learn how to walk until he was eight. He was the child of Philip IV of Spain and Mariana of Austria, who were uncle and niece. His family's long history of inbreeding was so severe that he was more severely inbred than he would have been had his parents been siblings. While inbreeding doesn't automatically lower intelligence, it does make it more likely to inherit recessive genes linked to low IQ and cognitive disabilities, resulting in a royal family with just as many mental challenges as physical ones.

Mental Illness

George III was King of England at the time of the American Revolution, and many wonder if his mental illness had something to do with his failure as a ruler. Another member of Queen Victoria's highly inbred family, George III was known for his manic episodes and nickname of "The Mad King". Initially, historians believed that he had porphyria, a chronic liver disease that results in bouts of madness and causes bluish urine. Today, it's believed that George III actually suffered from bipolar disorder, causing his sudden manic episodes and rash decision making.

Other royals suffered from mental illness as well, including Queen Maria the Pious. She was so obsessively devout that when her church's confessor died, she screamed for hours about how she would be damned without him. She shared a doctor with King George III, who employed all kinds of strange and ineffective treatments, like ice baths and taking laxatives.

Joanna of Castile, also known as Joanna the Mad, also struggled with irrational behavior and uncontrollable moods. Like most women, she was furious when she discovered her husband's mistress. Unlike most people, she proceeded to stab her in the face. She remained obsessed with her husband after his infidelity, however. She loved him so much that she slept beside him even after he died. You read that right. She snuggled a corpse. M'kay then.

Monarchs have a reputation for reckless, harsh, and sometimes cruel behavior. Is it possible that many of their worst deeds were tied to inbred insanity? Totally. Does that make their tyrannical reign any less terrifying? Not even a little bit. While their stories are fascinating to read about, let's keep the inbreeding and dictatorships in the history books, okay? Okay.