|PHILLIP THE FOURTH(IV) (1605 - 1665)
● On October 7 1649, the king of Spain, on Phillip the fourth took a lady's hand in marriage. Her name was Maria Anna, later to become Marianna of Austria. What might sound perhaps unusual or unethical to our modern viewers is the fact that there was a large age gap in this relationship with the king being 44 years of age and his new wife being a mere girl at age 14. What might perhaps be more surprising is the fact that the bond was between uncle and niece. How would that go down in 2021? Well, given the year this has been so far, it would be the least insane thing to happen. Yet this pairing belong to a royal family named at the Habsburg dynasty, well known for not letting the apple fall far from the family tree, they inbred and they did it with such enthusiasm that it might be the reason for their empire coming crumbling down. Habsburg inbreeding was so remarkable in fact that you could say creating monsters of children. Mariana and Phillip son was living proof, a man that was arguably the most deformed inbred person in the circles of European royalty. Today, you're going to hear some of the worst inbreeding stories in history. And you're also going to hear some crazy stories about in breeders of recent times, you'll learn who did it, why they did it and why it wasn't such a good idea. But let's stay with Phillip and Mariana for now, because we're sure you want to know how that ended. What you have to understand is that the Habsburg family tree looks more like a stump, the same names pop up again and again. And that's because they kept things within the family when it came to procreate. The purpose of the inbreeding was mostly a matter of keeping the heritage in their own hands. What they didn't know back then was just how bad it was. You only have to look at the parents of Phillip and Mariana, both families had a handful of children few survived into adulthood. As for Phillip's and Mary's kids, only two out of five would make it to adulthood. One of them named Charles had become one of the most famous kings ever known. And that wasn't because of his bravery or Britishness, but because he was a near monstrosity of a child, a person so malformed that he got that nicknamed The bewitched.
Because Charles was the product of uncle and niece. He not only became their son, but he also became their great nephew and first cousin. The strange thing is, and something we'll get around to explaining is that Charles's sister Margaret didn't suffer all the same plight as he did. She had a long list of living child births and miscarriages, and she died at just 21 from ill health, but compared to Charles, she lived a fairly healthy life, for Charles was doomed from the start. The kid was born with such an elongated jaw that he couldn't speak until age four. Even when he was up and running in the talking department, he still found it difficult to speak all because of his oversized jaw. What's become known as the Habsburg john Charles wasn't the only Habsburg to be afflicted with him. During his first few years, he had about every childhood disease possible, including smallpox, chickenpox, measles, and rubella and each of these back then could have killed him. He spent much of childhood in a sickly state, so much so that Mariana barely let him out of her sight. Nonetheless, the child became a man and a man that walked badly and drooled a lot, and a man that was said to live in a constant state of debilitating depression. His mood might not have been lifted by the fact that people chatted behind his back, saying he was so ugly he was hard to look at. He didn't have children himself. Although it wasn't for trying. Some historians speculate that he wasn't able to procreate due to his being inbred. And as you'll soon find out, that's not unusual in the world of relative relationships. He grew up but suffered so much from illness that people were surprised he made it to 30. In fact, one historian wrote that he was short, lame, epileptic, senile and completely bald before 35 always on the verge of death, but repeatedly baffling Christian dumb by continuing to live in the year 1700 he became ill again, and just before his 39th birthday, he dropped down dead. The autopsy report read that on examination, his corpse did not contain a single drop of blood. His heart was the size of a peppercorn, his lungs corroded his intestines rotten, and gangrenous and he had a single testicle black as coal and His head was full of water. It was a miracle he lived as long as he did.
CHULALONGKORN (1853 – 1910)
● Royal inbreeding happened all over Europe, and it happened all over the world. In fact, in Asia, it occurred in Japan, Korea, China, and it happened quite spectacularly in Thailand. We say that because in the 19th, and late 20th century, a king there named to LA Longhorn got it on with so many people. It's mind blowing. It wasn't that unusual given that his popat 82 children with various women, and that father had 32 wives and concubines meaning a lesser kind of partner, not a spouse. But the son Chulalongkorn would be that if you count his wives plus his other named partners, Chulalongkorn was involved with a total of 116 people.
That's where perhaps it gets even stranger is his 4 wives were all his half sisters. You heard that right. He got hitched and had children with his father's own girls. And with those Sister Wives as well as with his concerts and concubines, he would have 77 of his own kids. The difference between a concert and a conch by the way is that a concert is more like a minor wife, not just a park. How was his children, Well, there was princess Debnariretana. She was ill all her life and died aged 8. Her brother prince Tribejrutama Dhamrong, died at 6. Then there was Prince Isriyalongkorn and died at 2. In fact, if you look at his children who actually survived childbirth, many of them died while they were still kids. If you look further at his long list of children, what you see is a pattern that children he had with his sisters, for the most part died very young, and the children he had with his cousins also died young for the most part. It seems that the children that had the best chance of a long life were those he had with his concubines.
CHARLES DARWIN (1809 - 1882)
● Most of you were sure to have heard of the British scientist Charles Darwin, when he wasn't reading about evolution. He was with his beloved wife, Emma Darwin. Prior to the marriage, Charles had no scruples about getting involved with his cousin. What concerned him more was the loss of his free time that the marriage would cost him and also the fact that he'd have less cash to buy books. Nonetheless, they tied the knot and went on to have 10 kids. The problem was, some of those kids would not live very long, his second child and he died just age 10. After contracting the disease, scarlet fever, his son Charles died in infancy, and another girl died only after two weeks, something that plagued Darwin was not only that he lost some kids early on in their life, but the fact that many of his children that grew up suffered from all kinds of life threatening and strange illnesses. It was as if they had been born weak, or in his own words, when he spoke of his kids, they're not very robust. Three of those that didn't live a long time didn't have any children of their own. And it's now speculated that the fact that they were the result of inbreeding could have led to their inability to procreate. Darwin once said, in a moment of sadness, we are a wretched family and not to be exterminated. At one point he wrote that one of his boys had injured kidneys and very swollen glands in his neck, while another boy, he said was consumed by hysterical sobbing and semi convulsive movements, what was happening to his children he wondered, and then he began to think that it was somehow his fault for the decision he had to marry his cousin. You see, he noticed that crossbred plants were genetically healthier than self fertilized plants, so maybe marrying cousins, he pondered wasn't such a great idea. At the time, the scientific community could only speculate that the constant Linnaeus marriage, meaning a marriage between people who are closely related could result in things like deafness or blindness. But what if it could result in children being very sickly or even dying young Darwin actually asked the government to try and collect data on this, but it didn't happen in his lifetime. What he didn't know is that bacterial infections are linked to inbreeding. And that's how two of his children died. You should know this to Darwin's maternal grandparents were also related. And as you'll soon see, that very likely mattered.
These days, a handful of countries banned marriage of first cousins. So we should now ask, Is there such a big risk if you marry your first cousin? That answer depends on who you're talking to. And that's because while first cousins only share as much as 12.5% of their genes, some experts think there's only a very small risk that the first cousin offspring will be born sickly. Okay, but what about those people who procreate with their half sibling, or those that go the whole hog and have a child with their full sibling? Well, we share about 25% of our genes with a half sibling and about 50% with a full sibling with an uncle and a niece or an author and a nephew 25% of the genes are shared, what could go wrong, especially if babies are born to a biological brother and sister? Well, it sometimes does happen and we call this sibling incest like in this tragic story.
PATRICK STüBING (1977 - )
● A German man was named Patrick Stübing, was adapted at a young age after his drunken father tried to stab him with a knife. When he was 23 years old, he discovered his biological family, including his biological sister, Susan. In 2001, their mother died and while there was sadness, the two siblings really hit it off, so much so that they began sleeping together. To cut a long story short, they had four children named Eric, Sara, Nancy and Sophia. As for Patrick, he was arrested and sent to prison since incest is illegal in Germany, we should say that the legality of incest differs from country to country, and is usually not illegal if the relationship is between two consenting adults. Moving on, Susan said she was in love with Patrick and she said after his arrest that she hoped the law would change. "I just want to live with my family and be left alone by the authorities and by the courts" She said, that's all fine and well, but this is not a show about the ethics of incest. What we want to know are how those children getting along. Well, when Patrick was asked about his children's welfare, he admitted that the kids were struggling, one had epilepsy and learning difficulties. Another also had learning difficulties, one had to have a heart transplant in infancy because of a heart defect, and one of them is fine. That one Sophia is the only child that still lives with their parents, or she did so when she was last talked about in the media, the others all had to go into care.
So that's a lesson for all you people thinking about getting into a relationship with your brother or sister. The risk is high that the children you have could be disabled or prone to having a disease the risk of having a disabled or very ill child with your cousin is thought to only be about two or 3% higher than it would if you had children with someone not related to you at all. But as you've seen today, if this inbreeding goes on for generations, it can lead to many ills.
Okay, so now you want to know why this happens. Let's get scientific. You see, you're the product of your mom and pop, you have two copies of each gene. Well, most of them, and one copy comes from your father and one from your mother. But what if one copy of the gene is faulty, it usually doesn't matter because you'll have the working copy from the other parent. If both copies are bad, though, because you're too closely related. It's what's called faulty recessive genes, then that child can be born with an autosomal recessive condition. These are rare since it's unlikely that parents carry the same faulty gene. If they do whether they're related or not. It doesn't always mean the child will be born with the disease. It just means there's a chance he will. That's why some siblings that are born inbred are very sickly and die young. And while others are perfectly healthy, It's a bit of a lottery. But the good news is that a doctor interviewed on the matter said it's vanishingly unlikely that unrelated lovers will carry the same faulty genes it can happen but it doesn't happen very much. So that's the problem with inbreeding cousin to cousin and you should be okay but the odds start climbing when you get to Aunt nephew and especially brother and sister or even brother and half sister if your family like Darwin's or worse, the Hapsburgs have been doing the cousin to cousin uncle, The nice thing for generations, there could well be prevalence of the same disease or condition. If generations of a certain culture of people have been drinking at quite a small gene pool, then you can get various diseases and conditions turning up more frequently than in other cultures.
Take for instance the preponderance of Haemophilia in European royalty, or babies being born with an extra finger or toe in an isolated Amish community. A good example if not horrific, and very unusual was inbreeding at a remote farming community in Australia that had gone on for a long time. The authorities found these people just a few years ago, and many of the children really formed because they inherited the same faulty genes. Some were deaf others were blind, and most could hardly speak intelligible. Your understand the cops that found it, we can't tell you the name of the valley where they lived or the real family name. Because the media didn't release the information. We can say that the community started in the 70s with two New Zealand immigrants that the press called Tim and June when the cops arrived in 2012. There were 40 of them all originating from that first couple. This was a really severe case of inbreeding. And what it resulted in was those children certainly lived in no Eden. So our advice is don't try and replicate the story of Adam and Eve. You might get blind, deaf and dumb kids.