Hemophilia in the Royal Family
How Disease can be Passed Through a Family Tree
The hereditary disease hemophilia is a well-known example of how genetics can travel through a family tree. It struck the royal families of Europe last century.
There are many legacies that can be passed down through generations of ancestors, be it land, titles or even simply stories and memories. But some things are less positive that can be handed down from one generation to the next: disease.
Probably the very best example of how a disease can travel through a family tree is the case of hemophilia that ran through the royal families of Europe during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Hemophilia is a hereditary disease that prevents blood from clotting, meaning that any small injury could actually cause a person to bleed to death. Until recently, most people who had hemophilia died young, rarely reaching adult-hood.
Because the disease is carried on the X chromosome, it is much more common in males, who have chromosomes XY. Females (with XX) will usually have one X still disease-free, so they do not show symptoms. But that leaves females as carriers, who can then pass on the gene for hemophilia to some of their male children.
How this plays into royal family history is through Queen Victoria, who turned out to be a carrier for hemophilia. Several generations of her children and grandchildren then married through several European royal families, causing many deaths and creating some instability in various royal houses. The progression of the disease through the generations went something like this:
Queen Victoria passed the defective X chromosome to three of her nine children, with Alice and Beatrice becoming carriers. Her one son who had the disease, Leopold, was one of the few people to live long enough to have children of his own, and therefore continue the disease along his family line.
Alice
It was through Alice that the disease reached the royal families of Germany and Russia. She married Prince Louis (Ludwig) of Hesse, and they had six children. The son Fred died without having children, and daughters Irene and Alix were carriers. Irene then married into the German house with Prince Henry of Prussia. They had three sons, two of whom died of hemophilia without issue (Waldemar and Henry). Alix's husband was Tsar Nikolas II of Russia. Of their five children, there was only one son, Alexis, and he had the disease as well. Whether the daughters were carriers is not known and becomes irrelevant because they were all killed during the Russia Revolution.
Beatrice
Princess Beatrice was Queen Victoria's youngest daughter, who married Prince Henry of Battenberg. Only one of their four children escaped the disease. Two sons, Leopold and Maurice died, and daughter Eugenie was a carrier. Eugenie married into Spanish royalty, through her husband Alfonso XIII of Spain. Two of their sons died from hemophilia and it's believed that neither of their two daughters were carriers. So the line of the disease ended there.
Leopold
The one hemophiliac son of Queen Victoria had only one carrier daughter, Alice, whose son Rupert had the disease and died young.
Overall, the disease persisted for three generations after Victoria and thankfully is no longer a concern in any modern royal family. So don't worry if you have royal ancestors, there is no chance of your own family having the disease from this source.
Sources
John van der Kiste, Queen Victoria's Children, (Sutton Publishing, 2004) pp.
Robert K. Massie, Romanov's: The Final Chapter, (Balantine Books, 1996) pp.
