To use all functions of this page, please activate cookies in your browser.
my.bionity.com
With an accout for my.bionity.com you can always see everything at a glance – and you can configure your own website and individual newsletter.
- My watch list
- My saved searches
- My saved topics
- My newsletter
Haemophilia in European royaltyHaemophilia figured prominently in the history of European royalty. Queen Victoria passed the mutation to her son Leopold and, through several of her daughters, to various royals across the continent, including the royal families of Spain, Germany and Russia. For this reason it was once popularly called "the royal disease". Victoria appears to have been a de novo mutation, as her mother, Victoria, was not known to have a family history of the disease. Queen Victoria's father, Edward, was not a haemophiliac. The probability of her mother having had a lover who suffered from haemophilia is minuscule, due to the low life expectancy of 19th century haemophiliacs and the lack of any haemophiliacs in European royalty before Victoria. Descendants of Victoria's maternal half-sister, Feodora, are not known to have suffered from the disease.
Queen Victoria's daughter Victoria apparently escaped the haemophilia gene as it did not appear in any of her descendants. Victoria's fifth child, Helena may or may not have been a carrier; two healthy sons survived to adulthood but two other sons died in infancy and her two daughters did not have issue. Victoria's sixth child, Louise, died without issue. Her sons King Edward VII, Alfred, and Arthur were not haemophiliacs. Three of Victoria's children were unlucky. The disease passed on to her daughters Alice and Beatrice and her son Leopold. Additional recommended knowledge
Princess AliceAlice, Victoria's third child, passed it on to at least three of her children:
Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine (later Victoria, Marchioness of Milford Haven), Alice's oldest child and maternal grandmother to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, apparently did not inherit the mutation. If she did, she does not appear to have passed it on to her descendants. Princess Elizabeth of Hesse and by Rhine (later Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia), may or may not have been a carrier. She was childless when killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine, Alice's seventh and last child, may or may not have been a carrier. She died of diphtheria at the age of four. Prince LeopoldLeopold, Victoria's eighth child, was a haemophiliac. Died from bleeding after a fall. He lived to the age of 30, long enough to pass the gene on to his only daughter:
Alice of Albany's youngest son Prince Maurice of Teck, died in infancy, so it is not known if he was a sufferer. Her daughter Lady May Abel Smith, Leopold's granddaughter, apparently was not a carrier, as the disease has not appeared in her descendants. Princess BeatricePrincess Beatrice (later Princess Henry of Battenberg), Victoria's ninth and last child, passed it on to at least two, if not three, of her children:
TodayAs of today, haemophilia appears to be extinct in the royal houses of Europe. The last male descendant of Victoria to suffer from the disease was Infante Gonzalo (born 1914). Many sons have been born to European royalty since and none are known to have had haemophilia. However, since the haemophilia gene remains hidden in females with only one bad gene, and female descendants of Victoria exist in several royal houses today, there remains a small chance that the disease could appear again. References and external links
|
|
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Haemophilia_in_European_royalty". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia. |