Hemophilia is an inherited disorder that prevents the proper clotting of an individual’s blood. The condition, known to lead to fatal bleeding both spontaneously and after injury, is due to a lack of clotting factors. These clotting factors, which are proteins that act to stop bleeding, come in many forms. However, low levels of two types, factor VIII and factor IX, cause different types of hemophilia. These are type A and type B respectively (type B is less severe).
The X Chromosome
Hemophilia is caused by a genetic mutation on either the gene that codes for factor VIII or the gene that codes for factor IX. These genes are both located on the X chromosome. Their locations mean that women will typically only be carriers for the disease since they will usually have another X chromosome with a healthy version of the gene (women can have hemophilia if their mother is a carrier and their father has the disease) while men will suffer from the condition since they only have a single X chromosome (the one with the mutation). A genetic mutation that causes hemophilia can be devastating for families affected by it. This explains the chaos that ensued throughout Europe after the woman now known as Queen Victoria of England was born with one that caused her to be a carrier of hemophilia B.
Queen Victoria
It is not known whether Queen Victoria, at any time in her life, understood the inherited nature of the disease that ravaged her family. However, it is known that three of her nine children were affected. These children were married off to various royals in Europe, leading to at least ten of her male descendants (including one son) having the disease and six of her female descendants (including two daughters) being carriers.
England
Luckily, three of four of Victoria’s sons, including her first son who would later be crowned King Edward VII of England, did not have hemophilia. However, the same can not be said for her eighth child and fourth son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. Leopold spent much of his life being kept from political matters due to his illness until he eventually became private secretary to his mother. He died at the age of 30 in 1884 from a brain bleed but not before passing the hemophilia-causing mutation onto his daughter and at least one of his grandsons.
Spain
Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, was married off to King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Unfortunately, she was a hemophilia carrier and passed the disease down to two of her four sons. This left Eugenie, now queen of Spain, with only one healthy son after her only other healthy boy became deaf and mute. This would become a major hindrance later in the sons’ lives when the family was forced into exile in 1930. At the time, monarchists had little hope of reinstating the monarchy with only one healthy male heir.
Russia
Another granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Alix of Hesse, was married to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. This marriage produced four daughters and one son. Their only son, Alexei, was a hemophilia sufferer. A mystic named Grigori Rasputin was then introduced to the family and set about attempting to heal the young boy. The tsar and tsarina entrusted the man with their son and many feared that they had come to rely on Rasputin for political matters as well. Political unrest partially due to the relationship of the royals to Rasputin resulted in the Tsar being forced to abdicate for both him and his son, as his son was simply too sickly to rule. The entire family was later brutally murdered in the basement of the Ipatiev House in 1918.
The Rest of Europe
The murder of the Russian monarch along with his wife and children brought fear into the other royal houses of Europe. The monarchs had not only learned of the murder of a relative (many of them were descendants of Queen Victoria) but the slaying of a former ruler and his family. Some made an effort to appease their citizens with various methods while some became more willing to abdicate the throne in later years. Interestingly, the disease that caused all this turmoil seemingly disappeared in Queen Victoria’s descendants after three generations, allowing her great-great-great-grandson King Charles III to sit on the British throne today.
[…] to be queen from the day she was born. However, the royals were unaware that she was born with a genetic mutation that made her a carrier for a disease […]