Charles II

So I'd promised a new blog entry to a few people, and as I don't remember where I left off in describing the first few months, and I am lagging on figuring out the last two weeks, I decided to instead editorialize. So, Gentle Readers, here we go!

While my friend and I were in Vienna (long story short- my vacation!), we decided to appease our insatiable thirst for knowledge, we decided to go to a museum, specifically, the Kunst Historiches Museum, a.k.a, the Art History Museum. My friend is an Art History Major, so this was just two steps shy of Heaven. For me, it was just cool. I've had my stint in Art History, but to me, a painting is a painting- if it's pretty, I like it, if it has a cool story, I like it. Do I care if it has a certain style or was made the maestro's workshop instead of by him? No. I'm very easy to please in the art way.

We spent 5 hours in the museum, drinking in the sights, marveling over the masterpieces, and avoiding creepers (more on this in a later post). All in all, a regular day's work for a tourist, and a regular day's work for us (the creeper. I'm not being conceited- somehow we attract them!!). At the side of every painting is a little description about the painting, the artist, the subject, etc. etc. After we had breezed through the Egyptian mummy exhibit (yes, they had a mummified cat!!), and the German/Flemmish art section, we made our way to the Italian school.

Here we found some Diego Velazquez portraits, made of the Royal Habsburgs. This was totally cool, because I had seen some of these paintings in a classroom, but as everyone knows, real life is completely better (re: The Sistine Chapel and the Birth of Venus. Her hair sparkles. Really!). We found one of Charles II. He is truly a tragic looking man. He has not only the Hapsburg jaw (yes, this is a real term because it was so pronounced), but a sickly looking expression.

So we move on to another painting, where it says the subject (a young royal) was married to her uncle. It said that this was common for the time. So it got me thinking. . . .

I thought "Let's make a family tree from Charles II of Spain!! That will be fun. And elucidating." I didn't have time to do it then, so I did it this week. I will post the wikipedia page below, so you can read it at your leisure, but what did I find out?

That Charles the II of Spain was horribly, horribly inbred. Seriously. According to his family tree, no one new was introduced after 1550. And he was born in 1661. 110 years? In his family tree is 7 generations, if you count 25 years as a generation. For everyone reading this, that would mean a huge chart filled with oodles and oodles of great-grandparents, and great-greats, and great-great-greats, and that's just direct ancestors. If you included cousins? Forget it! You'd need three posters just to fit them all. But dear old Charles?? His entire family can be condensed to just one page. . . .


Let's break this down. Three of his female antecedents married their uncles (including his mother. So his dad was also his great uncle? Ick.) His maternal grandparents ( Maria Anna of Spain and Ferdinand III) were first cousins. Maria Anna's parents (Margarita of Austria and Philip III of Spain) were first cousins once removed. [Hint: the term "first" before cousin refers to what ancestor you and the cousin have in common. First: grandparents, Second: great-grandparents, etc, etc. "remove" refers to the generation. For example, pick your favorite first cousin, and when they have kids, their kid will be your "first cousin once removed" and vice versa. Get it? This is fun, right?] Ferdinand III's parents were also first cousins, and *HIS* grandparents ( Renata & William V) were second cousins.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that all this interbreeding isn't good. Sure, first cousins can marry have no problems. For multiple generations? No way. Especially not when all your ancestors for 7 generations are only 28 people. The same 28 intermingled, intermarried, (28!) people.

Just to give everyone an idea, for the person who has no repeats, meaning no two relatives are related, for the same 7 generations, you'd have 254 antecedents. TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR. Isn't that ridiculous? By the time you got up to the 5th generation, you'd already have more great-great-great grandparents than Charles II had in HIS ENTIRE FAMILY TREE. You'd have 9 times the amount of ancestors Charles had. And it shows:

{copyright to Wikipedia}

"That Habsburg generation was more prone to still-births than were peasants in Spanish villages."^[2]

"There was also insanity in Charles's family; his great-great-great(-great-great, depending along which lineage one counts) grandmother, Joanna of Castile ("Joanna the Mad"), mother of the Spanish King Charles I (who was also Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) became insane early in life. Joanna was two of Charles' 16 great-great-great-grandmothers, six of his 32 great-great-great-great-grandmothers, and six of his 64 great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers."

***"Charles II's genome was actually more homozygous than that of an average child whose parents are siblings.^[2] **** [My note: W.O.W.] He was born physically and mentally disabled, and disfigured. Possibly through affliction with mandibular prognathism, he was unable to chew. His tongue was so large that his speech could barely be understood, and he frequently drooled. Not having learned to speak until the age of four nor to walk until eight,"

"Consequently, Charles II is known in Spanish history as El Hechizado ("The Hexed") from the popular belief – to which Charles himself subscribed – that his physical and mental disabilities were caused by "sorcery." The king went so far as to be exorcised." [No dude, you weren't hexed. Your family just married each other too much so you had severe genetic abnormalities. Sorry.]

And my personal favorite: "As the American historians Will and Ariel Durant put it, Charles II was "short, lame, epileptic, senile, and completely bald before 35, he was always on the verge of death, but repeatedly baffled Christendom by continuing to live."

After researching all this (and the ancestors before these, there is also some intermarrying going on in the High Middle Ages, but not to this extent), I have to concur with those historians. It's almost miraculous he was alive at all, besides that, to live until age 38. Charles WAS unlucky, for having been alive. Too bad he was the only legitimate male heir that his father (and great uncle?) produced. Thank God, though, that aside from Charles' other abnormalities, he was also unable to have children. (this is something for which we can all thank genetics.) This left him childless and heirless when he died, and so the War of Spanish Succession took hold and a Bourbon, Philip V, landed on the throne. The Bourbons still rule today. Probably because they had the good sense to marry outside of the cousins, uncles, and assorted family that gathered around the Christmas tree. Sheesh.

Because of Charles II's homozygous DNA and resulting low quality of life, some people blame the 'demise of the Hapsburgs' on the Hapsburg's intermarriages, er, incest. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/revealed-the-inbreeding-that-ruined-the-hapsburgs-1668857.html
Perhaps. Clearly, they messed up. Had they had our understanding of modern genetics, they would have realized that diversifying the gene pool is a beautiful thing. In their minds, no one is good enough but us- literally. But demise comes in many forms, and not all of them are genetic- plague, war, childbarren. These have also been the causes of " dynasty demises." I'm waiting for the article to come out that reads "Concussion caused the demise of the XXXXXX dynasty." Wow, that sounds like an article from People.

I think that the Hapsburgs eventually had no more heirs, so someone else took the throne. Just like when Elizabeth I of England died without an heir, the Tudors fell, and the Stuarts took their place. And when the Stuarts had no heirs, the Hanovers took over. But none of this happened due to interbreeding.

Suffice to say, at the risk of sounding crazily obsessed, I found this all so interesting that I decided to trace back all of Charles' antecedents, as far as is recorded. It's gonna be an adventure...