On this day in 1526 there was a royal wedding in Seville. Isabella of Portugal travelled there to marry Charles V & I. Don’t worry, she wasn’t being married off to a couple of polygamous monarchs, Charles was both V – as Holy Roman Emperor and I as King of Spain.
Pretty Lady
You may wonder why we’re having a look at a European royal wedding that happened nearly 500 years ago. Well, I shall tell you. Both Isabella and Charles were members of the Habsburg family. In fact they were first cousins and not the only ones keeping it in the family. Isabella’s brother, King John III of Portugal married Charles’ younger sister. The Habsburgs, you see, were keen on protecting their lands and their power and it was round about this period – although it had started a little earlier – that they began to do this by only marrying another member of the Habsburg family. And that, my dear friends, is what we’re going to take a look at today, because it’s with Isabella and Charles that the whole thing really gets started.
The first documented use of the name Habsburg was in 1108, but at that time they were just a bunch of counts and not that big a deal on the European stage. They were also marrying outside the family, mostly women or men with lots of land and power, the better to
Remember, they'd try to flatter you in portraits in those days
get more for themselves. They carried on doing this sort of thing for a few centuries until in 1452 Frederick III finally got the role the family had been aiming for all along: Holy Roman Emperor. He was succeeded by Maximilian I and then we got Charles V.
From this time onward nearly every marriage within the Spanish branch of the family was to another Habsburg and not to a distant cousin. They were generally between first cousins, double first cousins, or uncle and niece. Researchers going through the family tree from 1516-1700 found that 80% of the marriages were consanguineous. Now, of course at the start of this intermarriage thing, this wouldn’t have been too problematic. Isabella and Charles were first cousins, but as well as being Habsburgs, they both had mothers who were from outside the family. But as the years went on, first cousins might have nothing but Habsburg parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents. The problems started arising. The Habsburg chin and the Habsburg lip became famous; both are genetic birth defects. On top of this there was also the infant mortality rate among the family which ran at about 50%, which was higher than the average for the period and far higher than the average for such an aristocratic family.
You’d think that as they noticed that things weren’t quite as they should be, that they’d maybe rethink the marrying deal they had going on, but no. By the time of the last Spanish Habsburg, Charles II, the inbreeding coefficient was so high that even though is parents were only uncle and niece, they might as well have been brother and sister. In fact it was even worse than that. It was as though a few generations of brothers and sisters had produced children, who’d produced children who’d, etc.
Charles II produced no children. He was born with serious physical disabilities and mental problems too. Not only did he have the Habsburg lip and chin, but his tongue was so large that it was difficult to understand his speech. He didn’t start to speak until the age of four and only began walking at eight. He had no schooling, he often didn’t wash and was in no way fit to be the King of Spain. Nevertheless this is what he did become, defying all the odds by living until 1700 and dying just before his 39th birthday. His growth was stunted, he was unable to walk properly, he was epileptic and bald and senile before the age of 35. This was what the Habsburg’s desire to hold onto land and power had come to. The family survived outside of Spain, where outer-marriage was more usual, and continued to be a strong and powerful force until the beginning of the twentieth Century.
If we go back to Charles V and Isabella, we see a handsome couple, whose ancestors, if the family had married more wisely, could have gone on to be as fine and sound as they were. That said, Charlie and Bella weren’t the ancestors that most scientific researchers start with. They were Philip and Joanna of Castile. When considering what went down with the family over the centuries it’s worth bearing in mind that Joanna was known as Joanna the Mad. Poor old Charles II never had a chance.
So, if you were thinking of marrying your cousin or your niece, well first “yuck!” and second. Look at Charles II and just say no.
Today is the birthday of Australian bastard magnate, Rupert Murdoch. He was born into a newspaper family and throughout his life has done all he can to purchase every newspaper in the world and make us all read only the stuff he likes, which is mostly tits and whatever politics he likes best at the moment. Tired of only having newspapers, mostly because the print kept getting on his fancy
Gloomy Gonad
suits, the sad scrotum lookie-likie, started buying television stuff and film studios. It is understood that he cries most nights because he doesn’t own the internet and still hasn’t invented the terminator.
He wants to own the world and the moon on a stick and if you say horrid things about him he turns up at your house with a poker and threatens to stick it up your arse if you don’t give him a lollipop and say sorry. I have my lollipops prepared. If Satan was walking around the earth, you get the feeling he’d be a bit like Murdoch, but better looking. One can’t quite imagine Beelzebub choosing to look like a slack walking testicle. So, even though it often seems that Murdoch is the devil, he isn’t, because not only is he not good-looking enough to be old Nick, er, the devil ain’t real people!
Murdoch is merely a very rich, powerful, greedy, arrogant and ugly man, who would own your vital organs if he could. That said he’s 80 today, so he probably won’t be around being all slimy and sort of evil for much longer, so Happy Birthday, Digger, you old fucker. Don’t eat and drink too much, it’s not good for you at your age.
Almaniacal 