Genes and queens

The latest instalment has been the marriage of William, son of Charles and Diana, and second in line to the throne, to a 'commoner', Kate Middleton, on 29 April 2011. While not exactly sweeping ashes for a living (the now Duchess is described as a 'former fashion buyer'), this Cinderella has broken new ground. As anyone who has seen the movie The King's Speech will know, marrying out of the aristocracy has hardly been embraced with joy in the past. But to those with a genetic or genealogical bent, these royal goings-on are food for thought.There's a widely held view that royal dynasties are a rather inbred lot, and maybe an injection of genes from a member of the populace would be a good thing: Inbred groups tend to have relatively high frequencies of genetic disorders. Queen Victoria seemed to agree: In a letter to one of her daughters, she wrote, 'I do wish one could find some more black-eyed Princes and Princesses for our children! I can't help thinking what dear Papa said that it was ... when there was some little imperfection in the pure Royal descent that some fresh blood was infused' [2].The best-known example of a genetic disorder within the British monarchy involves blood more literally: It is haemophilia. Queen Victoria herself was a carrier of this X-linked blood-clotting disorder, which at the time was untreatable in the affected males. Only a few haemophiliacs survived to reproductive age, because any external cut or internal bleeding after a bruise could be fatal. One of Victoria's sons, Leopold, died of it.While the past few generations of British royals have been haemophilia-free because they descended from Victoria's unaffected son Edward VII, other royal families of Europe have not been so fortunate. Ironically, Victoria's granddaughter (Victoria Eugénie) was brought into the Spanish Bourbon dynasty to revitalise their allegedly degenerate bloodline. The first dramatic evidence of haemophilia was at her baby son Alfonso's circumcision. Queen Victor