Haemophilia in European royalty
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Haemophilia 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. Her husband, Edward, was not haemophiliac, and the probability of her mother having had a lover who suffered from haemophilia is minuscule (in those centuries, male haemophiliacs tended to die before they could sire children).#redirect [[Template:Fact]] Descendents of Victoria's maternal half-sister, Feodora, are not reported to have suffered from the disease, either.
The disease passed on to
- Alice, who passed it on to at least three of her children:
- *Friedrich, who, after a fall, began to suffer from bleeding on the brain and died at age two.
- *Irene, who passed it on to two of her three sons: Waldemar and Henry.
- *Alexandra, who passed it on to her only son, Alexei. Alexei's haemophilia was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of Imperial Russia during the Russian Revolution of 1917 (according to Massey, Nicholas and Alexandra, 1967) It is not known if any of Alexei's sisters were carriers, as the whole family were executed while the children were still young. One of Alexandra's daughters, Maria, is thought by some to have been a symptomatic carrier because she haemorrhaged during a tonsillectomy.#redirect [[Template:Fact]]
- * Victoria, Alice's oldest daughter and maternal grandmother to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who does not appear to have inherited the mutation; or, if she did, she does not appear to have passed it on to her descendants.
- *Elizabeth, who may or may not have been a carrier. As she was childless when killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918, we do not know.
- *May, who may or may not have been a carrier. She died of diphtheria at the age of four.
- Leopold, a sufferer (one of the rare male haemophiliacs of this early era to survive to adulthood and have children), who passed it on to his only daughter,
- *Alice, who in turn passed it on to her oldest son, Rupert. The younger son, Maurice, died in infancy, so it is not known if he was a sufferer.
- Beatrice, who passed it on to at least two, if not three, of her children:
- *Victoria Eugenie, who passed it on to Infante Alfonso, Prince of Asturias and Infante Gonzalo. Her two daughters, Infanta Beatrice and Infanta Maria Cristina, may be carriers, but none of their descendants have had the disease as of 2004.
- *Leopold.
- *Maurice. (This is disputed by various sources, although the fact that he was killed in flight in 1914 suggests that he was allowed to fly—unlikely for a known haemophiliac.)
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