Queen Victoria and Haemophilia


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Why would it rule out that she was a carrier? If the mutation could have happened in her son, why could it not have happened in her father? As well as the Russian royal family, haemophilia seems to have afflicted the Spanish royal family, and Leopold wasn't an ancestor of that family.

Those same questions are precisely why the hemophilia story is flawed.

Victoria's father was not a hemophiliac... and that was the whole point of the 1995 book "Queen Victoria's Gene', in which the authors had questioned Victoria's parentage and suggested that she may have been illegitimately fathered by another man who must have been a hemophiliac... as the only way to explain how Victoria could have passed on the gene (as has been popularly claimed but has still not been scientifically proved).

Recent research shows how hemophilia starts in a family by either a gene inversion or the phenomenon now known as "jumping DNA" in the first boy to have the disease... not in the mother... which in Victoria's case was her fourth of four sons. If the disease can only start in the first son to have it... which in Victoria's case is Leopold... and not in his mother... then she cannot be a carrier and cannot pass on the faulty gene to her daughters because she does not have the faulty gene. She cannot be the first to have the faulty gene if the recent research shows that the DNA flaws that initially cause the disease originate almost "exclusively in male germ cells"

For this reason, among numerous others, somewhere in Queen Victoria's line the disease must have been misdiagnosed... because the currently known facts of recent DNA research into the way that hemophilia starts do not fit well at all with the way that the story has always been told.

JK
 
didnt like most of her daughters pass it on to their childern or grand childern add to that we have no account for the brit royal family from 8 generations before victoria medically speaking so who knows what they had in 1690 add to that doesnt it jump like 7 or so generations before it shows again in a family so victoria could very well have inherited it from her mother or father
 
Unfortunately in those days many children died young and would not have been diagnosed.
Queen Anne had 16 children and only one of these survived to about 9 years old, the others mainly died at birth or soon after, this happened so often in so many families that it is difficult to know if any of Victoria´s ancestors were carrying the gene or not. The same with RH negative, no one knew, all they knew that children died and often, and came to accept the fact without really wondering, at the time, what was causing this.
I read an autobiography of a person who spoke of an ancestress of his of whom he said her only claim to fame was the fact that she had had 16 children and they all survived until old age - it was something remarkable in those days.
I had never heard the theory of Queen Victoria not being the Duke of Kent´s biological daughter but that could be true as she was so different from her forbears in everything. This is all very interesting.
 
I've also read that some of Queen Victoria's children did not carry the disease. It's also strange how Alice carried the disease, and her son Frederick suffered from it and Ernest didn't have hemophilia. Princess Beatrice also carried the disease too. The other sisters didn't carry the disease.

Maria herself reportedly hemorrhaged in December 1914 during an operation to remove her tonsils, Olga Alexandrovna also said that all four of the daughters were possible carriers of hemophilia.

Wasn't there a mutation in either Victoria's genes or in the sperm of her father, Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent?

Haemophilia, is a condition which is inherited from parents. Generally only males suffer from haemophilia, but both males and females can pass on the genetic defect.

The genes in our cells are arranged in long chains, called "chromosomes". Two chromosomes; in particular called "X" and "Y" determine the haemophilia condition. The "X" chromosome is indirectly responsible for the body to produce clotting factors.

Females have two "X" chromosomes whereas males have an "X" and a "Y" chromosome. This difference in genetic makeup accounts for females being carriers (and to a lesser extent, sufferers) and males being sufferers.
 
There are links from previous posts that have excellent presentations of the haemophilia linkages:

The British Haemophilia Line

Haemophilia in Queen Victoria's Family:
Part 1
Part 2 - includes possible forebears and theory the gene may have passed from Karoline of Reuss-Ebersdorf, neé Erbach-Schönberg, QV's great-grandmother.
 
Those same questions are precisely why the hemophilia story is flawed.

Victoria's father was not a hemophiliac... and that was the whole point of the 1995 book "Queen Victoria's Gene', in which the authors had questioned Victoria's parentage and suggested that she may have been illegitimately fathered by another man who must have been a hemophiliac... as the only way to explain how Victoria could have passed on the gene (as has been popularly claimed but has still not been scientifically proved).

Recent research shows how hemophilia starts in a family by either a gene inversion or the phenomenon now known as "jumping DNA" in the first boy to have the disease... not in the mother... which in Victoria's case was her fourth of four sons. If the disease can only start in the first son to have it... which in Victoria's case is Leopold... and not in his mother... then she cannot be a carrier and cannot pass on the faulty gene to her daughters because she does not have the faulty gene. She cannot be the first to have the faulty gene if the recent research shows that the DNA flaws that initially cause the disease originate almost "exclusively in male germ cells"

For this reason, among numerous others, somewhere in Queen Victoria's line the disease must have been misdiagnosed... because the currently known facts of recent DNA research into the way that hemophilia starts do not fit well at all with the way that the story has always been told.

JK

So you're saying that the haemophilia in the Spanish royal family wasn't haemophilia regardless of the doctors who said it was, that the haemophilia in the Russian royal family wasn't haemophilia regardless of the doctors who said it was, and that the haemophilia in one of Princess Alice's sons wasn't haemophilia regardless of the doctors who said it was.

While I don't have a great deal of confidence in the "Queen Victoria's Gene" book (I was using it last year when I had to do some technical writing about major genetic and infectious diseases and I wasn't wildly impressed by it), I think the notion that Queen Victoria's actual father was an unknown haemophiliac is every bit as likely as the notion that haemophilia has been misdiagnosed in three royal families.

Oh, and by the way, when they say something happens almost excusively in male germ cells, the ethical way to do your highlighting is as follows:

"happens almost excusively in male germ cells" not "happens almost excusively in male germ cells."

Just sayin'...

However, if we're going to resort to argument based on trading quotes from newspaper articles, then I'll add some emphasis to a quote which you apparently thought wasn't worth emphasising.

"In her case, it caused no problem. Kazazian said he suspected that the line1 element jumped from her Chromosome 22 to the X chromosome either in the mother's egg cell or during an early stage in the development of the embryo that became the boy."

That, right there, ought to give a clue that "almost exclusively in male germ cells" (wherever you want to put your emphasis) is by no means the whole story.

First, the article which refers to it is nearly 15 years old, so if it was true that haemophilia in general only originates in men, I think it would have worked through to being common knowledge by now. However, that paper doesn't refer to haemophilia in general, it refers to the specific case of haemophilia caused by inversions in the Factor VIII gene. That's actually a different process from the one in the newspaper article, which is a migration of genetic material from one chromosome to another. Also, the paper states quite clearly that the gene inversion process accounts for only around half of all cases of this particular type of Factor VIII-related severe haemophilia; not only that, but Factor VIII isn't the only clotting factor whose defects result in haemophilia.

So what we have here is an example of inductive reasoning run wild - "this is how it is for a minority of cases so therefore this is how it must be for all cases and certainly for this case." Before falling back on the "almost exclusively" argument - or, in your case, the "almost exclusively" argument - you'd need to show that the haemophilia in Prince Leopold's family was due to this sort of inversion in the Factor VIII gene, which as far as I can tell, you haven't. And the supporting evidence for more widespread haemophilia in the Russian and Spanish royal families as well as in one of Princess Alice of Hesse's sons suggests that this particular piece of inductive reasoning is, to say the least, seriously flawed.
 
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I don't know alot about the biological/scientific aspects of hemophilia but I do have first-hand experience with it. A man I used to work with had a son w hemophilia. The son got this from his mother (it was medically determined she was indeed a carrier). This condition ran throughout the mother's family and they had traced it back to a great great grandmother (somewhere in the mid 1800s) as the first documented case. In every generation since then someone had it. The son - and his siblings - were told they all could pass this along to their offspring. Indeed, a cousin of the son did pass it along to her son (born in 1992). So I do think that once it is in a family, it can pop up at any time. Thus, I believe any descendants of QV - Charles, Wm, etc. - has the potential to still carry the gene and pass it on to their children.
 
I wish people would read up on how haemophilia is inherited before they make claims that Charles/William could have the haemophilia gene. If Charles had the gene he would be haemophiliac.
As for claims that QV was not her fathers daughter one only has to look at photos of her and of paintings of her Hanoverian ancestors. She is Hanoverian through and through.
 
I wish people would read up on how haemophilia is inherited before they make claims that Charles/William could have the haemophilia gene. If Charles had the gene he would be haemophiliac.
As for claims that QV was not her fathers daughter one only has to look at photos of her and of paintings of her Hanoverian ancestors. She is Hanoverian through and through.
Sorry to so offend you fearghas with my ignorance of this disease as I clearly stated I had. I am just repeating what I was told by a family who actually has the disease.
 
Sorry to so offend you fearghas with my ignorance of this disease as I clearly stated I had. I am just repeating what I was told by a family who actually has the disease.


Your earlier post also explains why Charles, William etc couldn't have the disease.

It comes through the female line and their female line doesn't go back to Queen Victoria. Philip's does but not Charles and William's.

Charles mother is QEII whose mother was the Queen Mother etc.

William's mother was Diana and then back to Frances Shand-Kydd etc.

Victoria's female line descendents who could have passed on the disease were Victoria (into the Prussian/German royals), Alice (into the Hesse-Darmstadts - and through whom Philip might have got it as he has a female line back to this Alice and then to Victoria but his life activities rules out him having the disease), Louise, who had no children, Helena and Beatrice (whose daughter Ena took it to Spain).

Victoria's British descendents are male line to the present Queen - Edward VII, George V, George VI, Elizabeth II.

Your original post includes the following sentence:

This condition ran throughout the mother's family and they had traced it back to a great great grandmother (somewhere in the mid 1800s) as the first documented case.

which is the very reason why it isn't in the current British Royal Family. They are not female line descendents from Victoria.
 
I found this very interesting. Thank you iluvbertie
 
Sorry to so offend you fearghas with my ignorance of this disease as I clearly stated I had. I am just repeating what I was told by a family who actually has the disease.

Bella I wasn't specifically referring to you as there are a number of comments on this thread that are ill informed about the inheritance of haemophilia. However my comment does come just after yours and reads as rather rude for which I apologise.

I'm also interested in just why some people feel the need for some sort of conspiracy theory (poisoning of the Russian royal family amongst others) to explain something that doesn't need explaining.
 
Nowadays, a 7th generation descendant of Queen Victoria is suffering from Hemophilia. Ferdinand Soltmann, whose mother is descended from Queen Victoria twice paternally (via the Queen's children Alice and Alfred). It has been proved that Ferdinand suffers from hemophilia, as a result I would think that this fact demonstrates that Alexei was a hemophiliac. After all these years the sickness reappears, it seems that when 2 gene carriers procreate Hemophilia is likely to reappear. The 2 genealogic lines of Ferdinand Soltmann that descend from Queen Victoria are the following:

1. QUEEN VICTORIA-> PRINCESS ALICE OF THE UK-> PRINCESS VICTORIA OF HESSE-> PRINCESS ALICE OF BATTENBERG -> PRINCESS MARGARITA OF GREECE ->

-> KRAFT, 9TH PRINCE OF HOHENLOHE-LANGEBURG -> PRINCESS XENIA OF HOHENLOHE-LANGENBURG -> FERDINAND SOLTMANN


2. QUEEN VICTORIA-> PRINCE ALFRED OF SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA-> PRINCESS ALEXANDRA OF EDINBURGH-> GOTTFRIED, 8TH PRINCE OF HOHENLOHE-LAGENBURG->

-> KRAFT, 9TH PRINCE OF HOHENLOHE-LAGENBURG -> PRINCESS XENIA OF HOHENLOHE-LANGEBURG -> FERDINAND SOLTMANN.
 
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It is possible that Prince Kraft inherited the gene fron his mother but Was Prince Kraft of Hohenlohe haemophiliac? If he wasn't then he couldn't have passed the gene onto his daughter, there fore Ferdinand doesn't have QVs.version of the disease. Princess Xenia might have inherited it from her mother, again that would mean it was not QVs version. Or it might have been another spontaneous mutation.
As QVs son, Prince Alfred was not haemophiliac he didn't pass the gene on.
 
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...Princess Xenia might have inherited it from her mother...
Xenia's mother is Princess Charlotte, daughter of Prince Alexander of Croÿ (Austrian Branch) and Anne Campbell (born in the UK).
 
Xenia's father, Prince Kraft, had some clotting issues, which led the family to believe he may have been a mild hemophiliac. Probably the fact that both Kraft's parents were QV descendants was a factor in this reappearance of the sickness.

Some scientists considered that hemophilia might have been latent in the Saxe-Coburg family and the fact that Queen Victoria married her maternal first cousin provoked an "spontaneous mutation" which resulted in the sickness being passed on to many of their descendants.

Neither Queen Victoria's parents nor grandparents were hemophiliacs, as a result nobody can be sure on how did the sickness appear. Some people investigated in order to find out if it was possible that QV was the result of an extramarital relationship of her mother the Duchess of Kent, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; however, given other factors like lack of evidence and the strong similarity of Queen Victoria and her paternal relatives like her first cousin, Princess Mary of Cambridge "fat Mary" most researchers decided against the "lover's theory".

In my opinion, the bloodline from QV to Ferdinand Soltmann demonstrates that the sickness suffered by QV descendants was hemophilia. QV's daughters, princesses Alice and Beatrix, were very strong in passing the sickness on to their descendants in the German, Russian and Spanish royal families.

The way the sickness reappeared in the Queen's family remains a mistery.
 
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Since 'Queen Victoria's Gene' appeared, another book, 'Purple Secret', has demonstrated pretty convincingly that there has been porphyria in Queen Victoria's descendants, which seems to knock out the 'Victoria was illegitimate' theory (never very convincing, in my view). I have a copy, but it's at home and I will have to look at it to get the names of the authors.

Unlike haemophilia, it's not a case of having porphyria or not having it, so it is much more difficult to spot. The effects are quite variable. The main effects seem to be digestive problems, plus skin problems. William of Gloucester was diagnosed with porphyria about two years before his death - apparently, in case case the main manifestation was skin trouble. Funnily enough, the doctor who diagnosed him (an RAF dermatologist) treated my brother for eczema.

My feeling on George III is that what he was suffering from was not 'madness', whether caused by porphyria or not. What was mistaken by his doctors for madness was delirium resulting from the fevers which often go with porphyria.

Mountbatten's elder brother, George, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, died from bone cancer. In any case, he could not have been a haemophiliac, since he had a lengthy and active career in the Royal Navy.

Prince Maurice of Battenberg, son of Princess Beatrice, is sometimes said to have been a haemophiliac, but this is very unlikely as he was fit enough to go through Sandhurst in the ordinary way. He was killed in action in 1914 (if you go to the military museum at Ypres in Belgium, you can see his sword, which he apparently left in the care of the Belgian lady he was billeted on).

A possible porphyria sufferer was one of Queen Mary's brothers, Adolphus, Marquess of Cambridge. A few years ago the British National Archives made WW1 soldiers' records available and a newspaper article sniped at Cambridge being frequently on the sick list and intimated that he was 'dodging the column'. Apparently he had chronic digestive troubles, and was still under 60 when he died in the 1920s. Given that he was a great-grandson of George III, porphyria seems a possibility.
 
The authors of 'Purple Secret' are John Rohl, David Hunt and Martin Warren.
 
Is there some descendant of Victoria with Aemophilia still alive?
 
The local newspaper, The Oregonian, once did an interesting piece on haemophilia starting with Charles and Diana and the Wales boys (Probably got it from another source). They concluded that the haemophilia gene had worked itself out of their DNA and none of the descendants could/would carry it. I should check on that. It would be an interesting read.
 
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There could be haemophilia amongst Princess Beatrice descendants, they are private individuals not closely related to any of the royal families. (Other than the Spanish Family). It may have reapaeared in the hohenlohe line also, otherwise it has probably died out.
 
Is there some descendant of Victoria with Aemophilia still alive?

Yes, there is at least one. Ferdinand Soltmann, a 7th generation descendant of Queen Victoria has been diagnosed with hemophilia; nowadays, hemophilia is treated with medication and sufferers can have a quite normal life. Mr. Soltmann's mother is princess Xenia of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, twice a descendant of Queen Victoria. The genealogic lines are as follows:


1. QUEEN VICTORIA-> PRINCESS ALICE OF THE UK-> PRINCESS VICTORIA OF HESSE-> PRINCESS ALICE OF BATTENBERG -> PRINCESS MARGARITA OF GREECE -> KRAFT, 9TH PRINCE OF HOHENLOHE-LANGEBURG -> PRINCESS XENIA OF HOHENLOHE-LANGENBURG -> FERDINAND SOLTMANN


2. QUEEN VICTORIA-> PRINCE ALFRED OF SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA-> PRINCESS ALEXANDRA OF EDINBURGH-> GOTTFRIED, 8TH PRINCE OF HOHENLOHE-LAGENBURG-> KRAFT, 9TH PRINCE OF HOHENLOHE-LAGENBURG -> PRINCESS XENIA OF HOHENLOHE-LANGEBURG -> FERDINAND SOLTMANN.
 
But Xenia is a male descendant of Queen Victoria, and aemophilia is carried by women...So Xenia would carry aemophilia from her maternal family, not from her father...
 
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She is a male line descendent through her father but...there has been a suggestion that Kraft may have been a mild sufferer of haemophilia, in which case he would have past it on to his daughter.

The chance that Kraft had the gene is there as he was a female line descendent of Victoria.

Modern medicine makes dealing with the disease much easier and far more people have the disease without anyone knowing these days as they are able to treat it. It is therefore possible that he might have had a mild form of the disease and thus past on the gene.
 
So if you are male you can transmit aemophilia to your descendants is you are suffering of it?
 
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Queen Victoria's son Prince Leopold did. He was haemophiliac and his daughter, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, was a carrier.
This is discussed earlier in the thread so we are repeating ourselves.
 
Queen Victoria's son Prince Leopold did. He was haemophiliac and his daughter, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, was a carrier.
This is discussed earlier in the thread so we are repeating ourselves.
Ok, I'm sorry; I didn't read all posts...
 
The intermarrying of cousins and other close relations in various royal families have produced many undesirable effects, not just Haemophilia. The Hapsburg Lip for example. Madness for another (although hopefully not these days). Some royal families (Braganza for example) were notorius for marrying uncles to nieces not just once, but repetitively over the generations. That type of close inbreeding really multiplied not only the chance of the offspring inheriting whatever defect, but also intensifying the severity. Also, in the old days, a potential spouse having whatever grevious defect was not eliminated from contention. In fact, it seems to have mattered little in securing a spouse as long as they had the title and rank considered appropriate. Out in the rest of the world, if you were a drooling, deformed, insane hunchback you most likely would not marry and pass on those genes. If you were the Crown Prince of X it was a matter of state to provide an heir. And where did they look for a brood mare? In the family of couse.
 
The sort of thing that you are talking about occurred in the fifteenth century and had more to do with the inheritance of lands than anything else. The gross deformity known as the Hansburg Lip diedd out with the main Habsburg line (the current Habsburgs are not Habsburgs in the male line).
 
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