genetics
The Habsburg jaw – how inbreeding ruined the Spanish empire
Philip IV and Charles II show the Habsburg jaw.
© Wikipedia / Commons
With a clever marriage policy, the Habsburgs created a world empire from Austria. In order for the structure to survive, they married each other for 200 years – with terrible consequences.
“Let others wage wars, you, happy Austria, get married” – with this motto the Habsburgs married a world empire in which the sun never set. The beginning was made by the bitterly poor Maximilian I, who managed to marry the richest heiress in Europe, Archduchess Maria of Burgundy (read: “How peasants defeated the proud knights and Switzerland became a superpower”):
As with all noble houses, marriages were determined by strategic considerations. The Habsburgs were masters here and were also fortunate enough. Lands, treasures and power increased incessantly (read: “Climate change through genocide – the extermination of the Indians cooled the world”).
The rise was accompanied by a noticeable physical decline of the clan. While Maximilian I, the “last knight”, was still a strikingly attractive lad, the beauty of the ruling family quickly went downhill. Its distinctive feature was the so-called “Habsburg pine”, which grew from generation to generation. The lower jaw thrust forward, joined by a conspicuous arched lower lip and a long nose that reached far down. The characteristics are visible even in the embellished portraits of the rulers of the time, in reality the impression will have been far more inharmonious than in the idealized paintings.
An investigation confirmed the theses that this head shape was a consequence of continued inbreeding. The observation was nothing new. In the novels “Goya” by Lion Feuchtwanger and “The Youth and Perfection of King Henri Quatre” by Heinrich Mann, the Spanish rulers of the family are exposed as a degenerate clan.
A world empire is falling apart
The geneticist Román Vilas of the Spanish University of Santiago de Compostela examined 15 members of the Spanish family branch. This land fell under the rule of the family when Philip I married Joan of Castile in 1496. They ruled Spain for two hundred years. At the beginning there were outstanding rulers, the end was reached with Charles II. An incompetent ruler, sterile and stricken with great health problems. When he died at the age of 38, the line was extinguished.
The decline of the Habsburgs has a meaning in Spain that goes far beyond the family, because parallel to the physical decline of their rulers, the meaning of the Spanish Empire also died out. The scientists analyzed the family tree over 20 generations. The average inbred degree of the Habsburgs is .093. That means: nine percent of the maternal and paternal genes match because the parents had the same ancestors. For comparison: If two cousins are married, the value is .0625.
Then they had oral and maxillofacial surgeons analyze the portraits they received and examine them for degenerative features. The more pronounced the Habsburg face – protruding lower jaw and sunken middle face – the higher the inbreeding value.
The end of the dynasty
With Philip IV, Charles I (known in Germany as the Roman Emperor Charles V), and Charles II, the symptoms were most pronounced. Emperor Charles V, had “a long, corpse-like face and a crooked mouth (which stands out when he is not on his guard)”, wrote the Italian diplomat Antonio di Beatis in 1517.
The last Spanish Habsburg, Charles II, suffered from the jaw, a huge tongue, epilepsy, and other diseases. He had an inbreeding value of .25 – which corresponds to the children of brothers and sisters. The Habsburgs themselves did nothing to stop the decline of their bloodline. That is amazing. Because even without knowledge of modern genetics, the connection between inbreeding and hereditary diseases was known. However, the Habsburgs always chose power over health. Their dominant influence over Europe was based on the fact that the branches of the family that ruled the various areas were repeatedly linked through marriages. If one had omitted this practice and married others, the foreign marriages would have weakened the cohesion of the family. Above all, it should be prevented that the marriage of women would have transferred domains through succession into the hands of other families.
The parents of the unfortunate Charles II were niece and uncle, as if one wanted to challenge misfortune. The Spanish King Philip IV married Maria Anna of Austria, who was supposed to marry his deceased son. Like other Habsburgs, Philip IV had several illegitimate children – they were very healthy. The children with Maria Anna, on the other hand, were either born dead or died shortly after birth. Charles II could only speak at the age of four and learned to walk at the age of eight. The fifth generation of the ancestors actually has 32 heads, due to the marriages within the family, this number had shrunk to only ten for Charles II. The Briton Alexander Stanhope described the king as follows: “He has a greedy stomach and simply swallows everything he eats, because his lower jaw protrudes so clearly that his two rows of teeth cannot meet”.
Plaything of foreign powers
The Vilas team suggests that the Habsburg jaw was caused by a recessive gene. These genes only come into play if both copies of the gene in a person have the same trait. If the person has a “healthy” gene, the effect is suppressed – but can be passed on to the offspring. Continued inbreeding increases the likelihood that the recessive gene will appear twice and take effect. In addition to the visible consequences, inbreeding also massively reduced the chances of survival for the offspring.
After the unfortunate death of Charles II, the War of the Spanish Succession broke out. Once so proud Spain became the plaything of foreign powers. The French Bourbons finally came to the throne – their claim was based on a treaty that Charles II had signed at a time when the king, nicknamed “the bewitched”, had already been finally knocked out.
Source: Annals of Human Biology
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