How Queen Victoria's Family Tree Spread Haemophilia Across Europe

Queen Victoria, who ruled Britain from 1837 to 1901 and became one of the most recognisable monarchs in modern history, had nine children. By the time she died in 1901, her descendants sat on the thrones of Russia, Spain, Germany, and several smaller European states. She was known, without irony, as the grandmother of Europe. What she was also, though nobody used the term at the time, was a carrier of haemophilia.

James Hollander explains.

Queen Victoria by Alexander Bassano, 1882. Glass copy negative, half-plate. Source: Public domain, available here.

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Three of Queen Victoria’s nine children inherited a mutation in the gene responsible for producing a clotting factor in the blood.

Males who inherited it could not stop bleeding from even minor injuries. Females carried it silently, with no symptoms, and passed it to their own children. Victoria herself showed nothing, and neither did Prince Albert, her husband and first cousin. There was no history of the condition anywhere in her family.

Geneticists today believe the mutation arose spontaneously, either in Victoria's own embryonic development or through her father, Edward, Duke of Kent. However it began, what followed from it touched the internal lives of three royal courts over the next sixty years.

The three who carried it

Of Victoria's sons, only Leopold, Duke of Albany, was affected. He lived carefully and with frequent difficulty; a bruise that would heal in days for anyone else could leave him bedridden for weeks. He died at thirty from a brain haemorrhage after a fall.

Of her daughters, two carried the mutation without knowing it: Princess Alice and Princess Beatrice. A third daughter, Helena, and the eldest, Victoria, Princess Royal, apparently escaped it. Edward VII's descendants (the main British royal line) were clear.

The condition passed through Alice and Beatrice into the courts they married into.

Carrier lines from Victoria through Alice and Beatrice to the affected descendants in Russia, Spain, and Germany. Created using EasyGenogram.

Alice's line: Russia and Germany

Alice married Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and had seven children.

Two of her daughters were carriers.

Irene married Prince Henry of Prussia; two of their sons, Waldemar and Heinrich, were haemophiliacs.

The more consequential line ran through Alix, who became Tsarina Alexandra of Russia after her marriage to Nicholas II.

Their only son, Tsarevich Alexei, born in 1904, was the heir to the Romanov throne. He was also severely affected. Episodes of internal bleeding could last for days. The condition was concealed from the Russian public, as the succession of the empire could not be seen to rest on a child who might not survive to adulthood.

That secrecy created space for Grigori Rasputin, a Siberian mystic who appeared, through methods nobody could fully account for, to calm Alexei's bleeding crises. His influence over Alexandra, and through her, over court appointments and decisions, became a source of serious political instability in the years leading up to 1917.

Beatrice's line: Spain

Beatrice's daughter, Victoria Eugenie, married King Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1906.

Two of their sons, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias and Infante Gonzalo, inherited the condition.

Both died young from bleeding following minor accidents; Gonzalo died in 1934, Alfonso four years later in 1938.

What the science confirmed

For most of the twentieth century, historians assumed the royal condition was Haemophilia A, the more common form.

But in 2009, genetic researchers analysed the remains of the Romanov family and identified a mutation in the F9 gene, confirming it was Haemophilia B, the rarer type, sometimes called Christmas disease. The scientific question was settled more than ninety years after Alexei's death.

By then, the affected lines had mostly ended. The Spanish branch died out. The Russian branch was executed in 1918. The German branch had lost its last known carrier during the Second World War. The mutation that entered the historical record through one woman in the 1840s had run its course across four generations and three royal courts.

Let us know what you think about Queen Victoria below.

Sources

• Wikipedia – Haemophilia in European royalty

• Rogaev et al. (2009), Science – "Genotype Analysis Identifies the Cause of the 'Royal Disease'"

• HemAware – "Why Is Haemophilia Called the Royal Disease?"

• Hemophilia of Georgia – "The Royal Disease: A Family History Update on Queen Victoria"

• unofficialroyalty.com – Royal Haemophilia Carriers

• unofficialroyalty.com – Royal Haemophilia Sufferers in Queen Victoria’s Descendants

What if Queen Victoria never made it to the Throne? Part 3 – The Impact of Queen Victoria on Europe

Queen Victoria is one of the most famous monarchs in history. Her reign of 63 years was the longest in the history of the United Kingdom until Queen Elizabeth II surpassed her, reigning 68 years and counting. Her name is synonymous with an entire time period. Surely there was never an individual that made such an impact on a country, if not the world.

But what if that had never happened? What if she never came to the throne?  What if the original heir presumptive had lived to take the throne? And most importantly, how would the world have been different? This is an examination of those scenarios and how one death changed the entire world.

In part one (here) we discussed the tragic death of Charlotte, Princess of Wales, and her stillborn son. Her death had major ramifications on the royal succession. In part two (here), we discussed the sons of George III and how the lack of heirs prompted the events that led to Victoria’s birth.

Here in part 3 we’ll consider Victoria’s children with Prince Albert, how the genetic disease hemophilia spelled disaster for Europe in the 20th century, and various ‘what if’ scenarios.

Denise Tubbs explains.

Prince Albert, Queen Victoria and their nine children, 1857.

To start, let’s consider hemophilia. It is a disease whereby a person’s blood does not clot. Clotting of blood is essential as clotting helps stop bleeding. As a result, the affected person will bleed for longer than those without the disease. They will bruise easily, take longer to heal, and can bleed internally. Any of these can lead to death. In the 19th century, a disease like this would likely result in a limited life span.  A lot has been learned about the disease since the time of Victoria and her immediate family. In fact, al lot of what was learned was from the study of Victoria herself and her children. 

So how does one get a disease like this? We already established that it is a genetic disease; so, the individual must carry that gene and then pass it to their children. Putting on our high school biology hats we learned that humans have 46 Chromosomes. So 23 from mother and 23 from father combine to make the next person. In that same class we learn about dominant and recessive genes. A large ‘X’ for example would denote a dominant gene, while ‘x’ means recessive genes. Now, women’s chromosomes are represented by ‘X or x’ symbols, and men are just ‘Y’. Hemophilia is a recessive disease that is carried in the ‘x’ chromosomes. Since we know that men only inherit one ‘x, X’ from their mother, the man will inherit one or the other. Men will have a 50/50 chance of getting the disease from their mother. And yes, in case you’re thinking, women can get hemophilia but only if she receives both recessive ‘x’ genes. 

Victoria’s impact

Victoria was a carrier of the disease and had a total of nine children with Albert. Of her four male children, only one had the disease. Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, made it to adulthood and had two children; but the disease killed him after a fall in 1884. His daughter Alice would inherit the gene from her father and went on to pass it to her son Rupert of Teck. This would become a pattern in all of Victoria’s children, influencing the world. 

Calling Victoria the ‘Grandmother of Europe’ was an understatement. All her children made it to adulthood, and all married into prominent families of Europe. And she would have a total of 87 grandchildren. Through this, her daughters brought the disease right into the heart of Europe. Daughters Beatrice and Alice both would pass on the gene to their daughters: Alix (future Empress Alexandra of Russia), Irene, Victoria (future Queen of Spain) all carried the disease. We already know how the story ends for Empress Alexandra and her son Alexei, Tsarevich of Russia. His disease would in part be the catalyst for the fall of the Russian Empire. 

But what of the other two? Beatrice’s daughter born Victoria Eugene married into the Spanish royal line. Later as Queen of Spain two of her three sons inherited the disease. Alphonso, Prince of Asturias, died after a car accident; his injuries exacerbated by the hemophilia inherited from his great-great grandmother Victoria. Eerily his brother Infante Gonzalo of Spain also died in a car accident years before and also had the disease. 

Irene, or Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, had three sons with her husband Prince Henry of Prussia. Two of her sons would inherit the disease, with one (Heinrich Viktor) dying at age four. The other son Prince Waldemar Wilhelm not only lived to adulthood; he lived the longest of all the men afflicted with the disease. Waldemar lived until the age of 56, by far the oldest of any of his cousins. During the final stages of World War II, Waldemar had fled the safety of his home in Bavaria when word came of a Russian advance. He relied on blood transfusions to keep his hemophilia in check. 

After leaving Bavaria, he and his wife made it to the town of Tutzing and Waldemar was able to get a blood transfusion. Unfortunately, the United States entered the city and took over all available resources.  The army had moved all medical supplies and personnel to the nearby concentration camp of Dachau. With no other option of medical assistance Prince Waldemar died in May of 1945, due to complications from the disease.

The importance of Victoria’s family

In looking at the impact of Victoria and her family, clearly, we see that this one family controlled more than just the fates of each other. They also held the world in its hands. Even after her death, her eldest son Albert (later Edward the VII) came to be called the ‘Uncle of Europe’ because of the number of relations by blood and marriage. Indeed, if Victoria had not been born, the world could look very different. It’s an interesting thing to contemplate - a lot of ‘what if’s’ begin to emerge. 

Starting with the circumstances of Princess Charlotte. If she had lived, and by extension her child (who was a boy), the line of Hanover would have continued through him. We can only guess who he would have married and subsequently the impact it would have had on Europe.

But in a situation where Charlotte had lived, and her son did not, there are two scenarios. Firstly, that the young age of Princess Charlotte would surely have allowed another chance to have a child with Prince Leopold. This could have prevented his crowning of Leopold as the first king of Belgium. Leopold stayed in London after Charlotte died, and the Belgian revolution resulted in a list of candidates to take the throne of the country. Leopold, who had already turned down the crown in Greece, may have opted not to take the crown and instead remain with his wife. With no Leopold as the king of Belgium, it could also mean that his son Leopold II would not have been born and the exploitation and atrocities in the Congo would not have happened.

The second scenario is that with Charlotte surviving and the child dying, there would still have been a succession issue since she and Leopold were still childless. It could be theorized that if she had become pregnant with a second child and still died, the crown is in the same position as before. Only in this scenario, if Victoria is not born, the crown would go to Ernst Augustus and subsequently his son George. The line of Hanover would then exist in Britain and Germany through the unification of Germany in 1866.

There are more ‘what ifs’ out there, regarding the line of Victoria; however I think these are probably the two largest. 

What do you think would have happened if Princess Charlotte of Wales had not sadly died? Let us know below.