Haemophilia In European Royalty


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If none of her brothers have haemophilia, I doubt she's a carrier.
 
She could actually be a carrier, even if his brothers are free of haemofilia. If you read some of the essais published about the matter, you'll see that you can have only one of your sons with haemophilia, or all of them. Princes Sibilla of Luxemburg had only two sons. It could be that if she would have keeping having more children, one of them could have been an haemophiliac...or not. :neutral:

This disease is capricious and complicated.

Vanesa.
 
Sibilla only had one brother, Paul, and he died when he was young, and so it could be possible it was due to hemophilia. Even if Sibilla isn't a carrier, she has two younger unmarried sisters who could be, and her older sister has two daughters who could be.

Think of Queen Victoria. She had three completely healthy sons before she had Prince Leopold. Sibilla could also be in the same state, and perhaps her only daughter is a carrier, or perhaps not. Only time will tell. Sibilla's older sister, Beatrice, has two sons and two daughters. Now the sons may be healthy, but the daughters may be carriers. The same goes for their younger sisters Cosima and Domitilla.
 
Lets just hope that hemophelia is a thing of the past
 
I don't think it's a thing of the past. There still are haemophiliacs. But I think they can live better lives now than what they could back in the old days.
 
Princess Sibilla of Luxembourg (nee Weiller) is a descendant through the female line of Queen Victoria. As far as I know none of her three sons have Haemophillia. It is possible that her daughter, Princess Charlotte could be acarrier.

From which daughter is she descended?
 
Princess Sibilla is a descendant of Queen Victorias youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, through her daughter, Princess Victoria Eugenie who became Queen of Spain.
 
Princess Sibilla is a descendant of Queen Victorias youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, through her daughter, Princess Victoria Eugenie who became Queen of Spain.

Maybe this quote interests you:

" The King's choice was peculiarly acceptable to us as a family, and to Spain as a nation : the Princess brought newblood, health, and youth into our midst ; in her we had no reason to fear the curse of heredity, her "background" was untemperamental, nothing better could have been wished for in short, the advent of Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg was entirely welcome."

A statement by HRH Maria Eulalia of Spain, duchess of Montpensier from her book "Courts and Countries" from 1925 - you can read it as text only or on viewing the book at http://ia310903.us.archive.org/0/items/courtsandcountri011111mbp/courtsandcountri011111mbp_djvu.txt

If only they had known....

And another statement about Victoria Eugenie from the same book:

"
Victoria Eugenie never attempts to meddle in politics, and I am sure that she prefers to be known as a Queen of Beauty and a Queen of Hearts, rather than as a queen intrigued by diplomacy and questions of State. "

So in 1925 "Queen of Hearts" already was used to describe a Royal personality...
 
Last edited:
l have this in my family on my mother's side.
my grand mother as it and my mother as well as
my brother and is three girl's.
And my younger brother as it as well as his
new baby boy.
And i have it as well as my older son.
billie-jo
 
well then you should be in a position to tell us, whether this disease is something that could be completely hidden from the public or not.
Do you (not only you Billie-Jo, but a question to all) think that if for ex Prince Edward had HP (which would explain his absence from any military service) BuckHouse would have told us? Or would they have relied on and hoped for the advanced medical treatments? (Of course it is highly unlikely that Edward would have inherited it since the female line between QEII and VIctoria is interrupted)
 
l have this in my family on my mother's side.
my grand mother as it and my mother as well as
my brother and is three girl's.
And my younger brother as it as well as his
new baby boy.
And i have it as well as my older son.
billie-jo

That sounds like an unusually large number of females to have the disease rather than be carriers.
 
It is even more amazing to think how successful Victoria's and Albert's genes have been given the fact that her granddaughters gave haemophilia to two crown princes, and several other more distantly descended offspring. It has also been mooted that Victoria also passed on the genetic disposition towards porphyria to some of her German descendants.

Very true. It started with King George III, Victoria's grandfather, and later showed up in her own great-great granddaughter Feodora (through Vicky) as it did with her mother Charlotte (Vicky's daughter). Those are the only two QV descendants I can think of, but are there any more?

Also, about Victoria's paternity, it's said that she resembled the Duke of Kent's family very much in looks (and note, John Conroy did not have a genetic history of heamophilia nor did he suffer from it), and heamophilia can mutate in the genes of one person, it doesn't necessarily have to be passed on by an ancestor. There is no record of the disease showing up in the British royal family before Victoria, therefore the gene most likely began with her.
 
Or maybe it started with her mother, or with her mother's mother or her mother's mother mother? A woman can pass the gene down to her daughter without anyone noticing it. A girl usually won't suffer haemophilia unless both her parents carry the gene, while a boy only need to inherit the gene from his mother to be a sufferer (a boy can't inherit the gene from his father, as it lies in the X chromosone).
 
As far as I know, the gene didn't come from Victoria's mother's family either. Something tells me it's very unlikely for a gene like that to be passed down 3 generations without it being noticed (ie: a male bleeder). It's probably possible, just not very likely.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hmmm, you're right. And didn't Victoria even have an older half-brother, who would have been a sufferer, if her mother had been a carrier?
 
Hmmm, you're right. And didn't Victoria even have an older half-brother, who would have been a sufferer, if her mother had been a carrier?

She had an elder brother and sister,
  • Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Emich, Prince of Leiningen
  • Princess Feodora of Leiningen
 
She had an elder brother and sister,
  • Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Emich, Prince of Leiningen
  • Princess Feodora of Leiningen

Exactly. And Furienna to answer your question: yes, if Victoria's mother had been a carrier, it's very likely that Charles of Leinigen would've been a sufferer, but he wasn't, (as Feodora was not a carrier) so it's unlikely that their mother would've carried the defective gene.
 
I don't believe the Duchess of Kent knew Conroy until after she had concieved Victoria.
 
Hmmm... You're right. And boys can't get the disease from their fathers either. :huh:
 
If any current royalty has haemophilia or was or is a carrier of it, it's extremely unlikely that this information would be made public. This information would put them at risk.

Females are carriers but don't get the disease. Someone told me there is a female version of haemophillia but its different. You don't bleed to death but your blood thickens making life difficult. You can have children but you have to be careful if you get pregnant. That what someone told me but I'm not sure this is correct.

Females would never been able to give birth if they had haemophilia (they would bleed to death during childbirth).
 
Haemophilia is much less common in females than in males though, because a girl has to inherit the gene from both parents to have it (a healthy X chromosome will stop the disease from breaking out), while a boy only has to inherit it from his mother (a boy can't inherit it from his father). Females are more often "just" carriers of the gene than sufferers of the disease. So haemophiliac women giving birth probably doesn't happen that often, even though I'm sure it's not unheard of. I've never heard of that female version of haemophilia before though.
 
Last edited:
I heard this from someone when we were talking about a blood disorder that a female member of their family had (don't remember if it was their mother or their aunt). Both of these women had children but had very difficult childbirths. Since it was said it was a female version of haemophilia I assumed it was. It might not be though. It could just be a blood disease that's in the same family as haemophilia. Would be interesting if someone knew the answer to that.

Update: Looked this up in wikipedia. A female can have haemophilia but this is very very rare. Usually according to what I read it's a very very mild version of male haemophilia (for example during a dental procedure they might bled more than normal) but they have a cloting agents which stops it. They just have to be very careful as they also bruise easily.
 
Last edited:
It all started with Queen Victoria
Princess royal Victoria
Edward VII
Princess Alice -carrier
Princess Irene -carrier gave to son or sons
Princess alix -carrier gave to son
Prince Frederick -hemophiliac
Princess louise
Princess Helena
Prince Arthur
Prince Albert
Prince Leopold -hemophiliac
Daughter Alice- carrier gave to son
Princess Beatrice - carrier
Daughter Victoria Eugenie carrier gave to son

An uncle of king Juan Carlos I of Spain had it
Cousins of queen Elizabeth II had it
But besides the royal family does hemophilia exist today? And could it show up again in the royal families ( gr grand children of the present monarchs?)
 
An uncle of king Juan Carlos I of Spain had it

Two uncles of King Juan Carlos had haemophilia: Infante Alfonso, Prince of Asturias (1907-1938), and Infante Gonzalo (1914-1934); both them died young of internal bleeding following a car crash, Gonzalo in 1934 in Krumpendorf (Austria) and Alfonso four years later in Miami.
 
Haemophilia is the most known one, but there could be others. The dyslexia, that King Carl XVI Gustaf and Crown princess Victoria suffer from, comes from the king's father, Prince Gustaf Adolf. But where did he get it from? His father, King Gustaf VI Adolf, was very intellectual and sure not dyslectic. Maybe he had inherited it from his mother, the Brittish princess Margareth of Connaught? I don't know if she was dyslectic or not. But it's also very possible, that it started with Prince Gustaf Adolf.
Dyslexia, while some researchers believe it may be genetic as there is a lot of examples of it running in the family, has not been proven to be true. Many dyslexics are very intelligent, so Gustav having been intellectual doesn't rule it out.

I believe that the gene has completely disappeared from the descendants of Queen Victoria.
There is no way of knowing this. Females can be carriers and pass it along. I hope we don't see it reappear but it could be quite possible.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Dyslexia, while some researchers believe it may be genetic as there is a lot of examples of it running in the family, has not been proven to be true. Many dyslexics are very intelligent, so Gustav having been intellectual doesn't rule it out.
I haven't said, that a dyslexic can't be intelligent. But especially back in the day, when people had no understanding for this handicap, and sufferers hardly got the help, that they could have gotten today, I'm afraid it wasn't all that common, that dyslexics became intellectual. Since a lot of intellectual knowledge has to be gained through reading, I think many dyslexics have just given up, if it was hard for them to get through a book or a magazine, and done other things instead. And back in the day before there was radio and TV, people couldn't learn things through listening to a radio show or watching a TV show either. Many dyslexics say one hundred years ago just got a low-paying job, where they didn't have to read much, or they focused on being good at other things instead. That was what prince Gustaf Adolf, our king's father, did to avoid feeling like a totally failure. He wasn't only a prince, but also the heir appearant, so everybody had high expectations for him, and like I said, his father was a very gifted scholar, who alledegedly had very high expectations on his sons and nephews to be as "perfect" as he was. So poor Gustaf Adolf must have been very ashamed of being as "stupid" as he was. He ended up becoming a very good athlet instead, and that was probably partly because he wanted to compensate for his short-comings, when it came to reading. Carl XV seems to have suffered from dyslexia as well, so even though he's not a direct ancestor of the current Swedish royal family (his brother Oscar II is), the handicap seems to have been around in the Bernadotte family for a very long time.
 
Last edited:
There is no way of knowing this. Females can be carriers and pass it along. I hope we don't see it reappeare but it could be quite possible.
It is possible today to do a genetic test to see if a woman is indeed a carrier of haemophilia or not, so if a woman suspects that she has haemophilia in her family, it's easy for her to find out if she is a carrier or not. If she is a carrier, she can then decide if she wants to have children or not, and if she wants childen, she can for example choose to have IVF and choose to have only daughters or have a genetic testing done before the implanting a fertilized egg. For more info: Heredity of hemophilia - Canadian Hemophilia Society
 
Exactly. And Furienna to answer your question: yes, if Victoria's mother had been a carrier, it's very likely that Charles of Leinigen would've been a sufferer, but he wasn't, (as Feodora was not a carrier) so it's unlikely that their mother would've carried the defective gene.


I don't know about likely - after all only 25% of Victoria's own sons suffered so it is just as likely that her older half-brother wouldn't have suffered.

Victoria had four son (Edward VII, Duke of Edinburgh, Duke of Connaught and Duke of Albany with only the Duke of Albany suffering from this illness).
 
I do not understand why hemophilia was prevalent among the descendants of Queen Victoria.One of explanations seems to explain this as a spontaneous mutation.
 
Back
Top Bottom