Marriages between relatives ultimately led to the degeneration of one of the most powerful European dynasties - the Habsburgs, which up to 1806 considered themselves the successors of the ancient Roman emperors and proudly called their state the Holy Roman Empire. The early death of Spanish King Charles II the Obsessed led to the War of the Spanish Succession.
A closely related crossing of organisms is called either inzukht (more often used for plants), or inbreeding (for animals). These terms also refer to incest between siblings or parents and children, which is taboo in many but not all cultures. It is known, for example, that a similar custom was practiced by the Egyptian pharaohs. Even the famous Cleopatra, despite her Macedonian origin (her ancestor was one of the military leaders of Alexander the Great - Ptolemy), being the queen of Egypt, married her little brother. Note that this marriage was exclusively political and Cleopatra did not go to bed with her brother.
Scientists cannot yet explain the biological background of inzukhta, or inbreeding. Many representatives of flora and fauna are crossed and fertilized by close relatives, acquiring the genes that are most optimal for further development in the next generation. The situation is different with the human race. Hemophilia (blood clotting), still referred to as "royal disease", is caused by inbreeding. It was she who suffered the heir of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II Romanov - Tsarevich Alexei. Although in this case it cannot be assumed that it was inbreeding that led to the genetic defect that causes hemophilia, it is only correct to assert that closely related crosses made this defect circulate among monarchs for a long time, since there was simply nowhere to take a "healthy gene" monarch married to a person,not belonging to the royal family, was deprived of the right to inherit the throne).
A team of scientists led by Spanish geneticist Gonzalo Alvarez, a professor at the University of Santiago de Compostello, found out what factors contributed to the imminent collapse of the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty. In each generation, the Habsburgs of Madrid and Vienna have cemented their alliance with family marriages. A genetic catastrophe occurred when, as a result of the marriage of Philip IV with Maria Anna of Austria, the daughter of Ferdinand III and the sister of Leopold I (that is, from his own uncle and niece), the only son and heir Charles II was born.
The Habsburgs, according to most historians, were from Alsace, the border region between the Germanic and Romanesque worlds. The question of the origin of this dynasty is rather confusing: partly due to the lack of documents, partly deliberately, to solve the political problems of its time. According to the earliest version, which arose at the end of the 13th - beginning of the 14th century, the Habsburgs were associated with the patrician family of Colonna, which traced its origin from the Roman emperors of the Julian dynasty, from Gaius Julius Caesar himself.
The birth of this myth was facilitated by a simple fact. The election in 1273 by the German king of Rudolf Habsburg, who was not one of the most noble nobles, forced to "generate" a noble family tree.
Later, another theory arose, according to which the ancestors of the Habsburgs were the kings of the Franks from the Merovingian dynasty (V-VIII centuries). Through them, the roots of the clan went to the legendary hero of ancient myths Aeneas and the Trojans. This concept, due to the legitimization of his claims as the heirs of the Carolingians and Merovingians, most liked the Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg, who at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century, as the heir to the Burgundian dukes, fought against the French kings from the Valois dynasty.
For completeness, we add that there was also a third version, which arose at the beginning of the 18th century thanks to the genealogical research of the Hanoverian librarian Johann Georg Eckard and the learned monk Markard Herrgot. They called the ancestors of the Habsburg dynasty the dukes of Alemani, who were originally the leaders of a group of Germanic tribes, the area of which later became part of the empire of Charlemagne. The Alemanic Dukes were considered the common ancestors of the Habsburgs and the Dukes of Lorraine. After the daughter and heiress of Emperor Charles VI, Maria Theresa, married Franz Stefan of Lorraine in 1736, the use of this version sanctified the new Habsburg-Lorraine house with historical tradition and divine predestination.
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The first Habsburg that actually existed (the very geographical name that gave the name to the dynasty will appear later) was Guntram the Rich. In 952, the German emperor Otto I deprived him of his property for treason. At the end of the 10th century, his descendants appear in Switzerland. Guntram's grandson, Count Rathbod, in about 1023 founded the Habichtsburg castle (translated from the German Habichtsburg - Hawk Castle), the name of which later became Habsburg - Habsburg.
Charles II Bewitched (Carlos II El Hechizado) - his nickname can also be conveyed by the words "enchanted" or "possessed", since such a disease and deformity, as it was believed, could be caused by the evil eye or witchcraft - was born on November 6, 1661. This is the last representative of the Habsburg dynasty on the Spanish throne, he became king in September 1665. Karl was married twice, but because of impotence he did not leave children. He died on November 1, 1700 in Madrid and was buried in the royal pantheon.
The papal nuncio at the court of Madrid left a portrait of an adult king: “He is rather short than tall; fragile, not bad build; his face is generally ugly; he has a long neck, a broad face and a chin with a typical Habsburg lower lip … He looks melancholic and a little surprised … He cannot keep straight when walking, unless he is holding onto a wall, a table or someone. He is as weak in body as in mind. From time to time he shows signs of intelligence, memory and a certain liveliness, but … usually he is apathetic and lethargic and seems dull. You can do whatever you want with him, because he has no will of his own."
Karl often fainted, was afraid of the slightest draft, blood was found in his urine in the morning, he was haunted by hallucinations and tormented by convulsions. He began to speak with difficulty at the age of four, at the age of eight he went. Due to the specific structure of his lips, his mouth was always slobbering and he could hardly eat. The mentally and physically retarded Charles II, who had a disproportionate skull, was, among other things, badly brought up.
The childlessness of Charles II led to the fact that both the Austrian Habsburgs and the French Bourbons, who were also related to the unfortunate king, acted as contenders for the Spanish crown and its possessions in America and Asia. As a result, the War of the Spanish Succession broke out in Europe after his death (1701-1714).
The results of the research by Professor Alvarez and his colleagues are published in the journal PLoS One. A team of researchers studied three thousand relatives from 16 generations of the Habsburg dynasty, whose family tree is well documented, to calculate the "coefficient of inbreeding." It turned out to be the greatest for Charles II and his grandfather Philip III. If the son of Philip II and the father of Philip IV was not marked with such an obvious seal of degeneration, although he was married to his niece (their parents, moreover, were also very close relatives), then the villainous fate played out on Carlos.
The founder of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty, Philip I, had an inbreeding coefficient of 0.025. So 2.5 percent of his genes appeared due to closely related relationships. For Charles II, this coefficient was 0.254-0.255 percent. Every fourth gene is identical to that received by him from his father and mother, which in theory corresponds to being born from intercourse between a brother and sister or from parents with their own children. For the rest of the Habsburg dynasty, this coefficient did not exceed 0.2 percent. This figure is probably due to the high infant mortality rate - half of the Habsburgs did not live to see the first year of life. Among their Spanish contemporaries - only a fifth.
However, geneticists themselves are not inclined to exaggerate their discovery, which is called "highly speculative" on the basis that no full-fledged gene research has been carried out, and the coefficient is calculated only on the basis of genealogy. On the other hand, it is not yet clear at all whether closely related reproduction has biologically detrimental consequences leading to the appearance of degenerative offspring, or whether incestuous relationships are just a social and social taboo.