Haemophilia in Queen Victoria's family
Queen Victoria, mother of nine children and grandmother of forty grandchildren, the most of who married within the most important Royal Houses in Europe, was a transmissor of the blood disease konown as haemophilia. and she spread it through several thrones in Europe. Haemophilia characterizes itself by the impossibility of blood to coagulate. This is becuase one or more of the plasma proteins needed to form a clot is missing or reduced in blood. Haemophilia is transmitted to males trough their mothers, who don't manifest the disease. This is because it is transmitted by the sexual female chromosome X and it is a recesive gene. For understanding this it is necessary to remember that the sexual pair of chromosomes for males is XY and for females is XX . When a man affected with haemophilia is injured, he does not bleed harder or faster than normal but will have prolonged bleeding because he cannot make a firm clot. Babies with haemophilia usually have no difficulty during birth porcess; circimsicion may produce prolonged bleeding. When he begins to walk any samll fall will produce bruises and as the haemophiliac child matures and his activity increases, he will have more bleeding crisis, including deep muscle bleeding. The blood will even spread into his joints causing severe pains. The haemophilia gene can be carried through several generatios of females without shoeing up, if no affected male children are born In families with no previous cases, the appearence of an haemophiliac individual could also mean a sudden change in the X chromosome. This would be a mutation of the gene.
In Queen Victoria's family we have:
Prince Albert
XY
Queen Victoria
Xx
Arthur
XY
Leopold
xY
Alice
Xx
Alfred
XY
Helena XX ?
Beatrice
Xx
Vicky
XX
Bertie
XY
Louise XX ?
Where x is the haemophilia gene
. Of Albert and Victoria's four sons, Bertie, Alfred and Arthur were healthy and Leopold was haemophiliac. Of the five daughters only Vicky was surely free of the disease gene since all her issue was healthy. Helena and Louise are uncertain because although Helena had healthy issue she had no grandchildren and there is the possibility that one or both of her daughters could have been a carrier. Louise had no issue. The other two daughters, Alice and Beatrice, were carriers and their descendants would have special impact on European history
Prince Leopold was the first haemophiliac to appear in the Royal Family. He married a healthy woman, Princess Helen of Waldeck and Pyrmont, with whom he had two children, a daughter and a son. The daughter, Alice, had by force to be a carrier because one of her X chromosomes came from her father who, in his male condition, only have one X, the one with hemophilia. Of Alice's children, her two sons were hemophiliacs, one of whom died in childhood and the other grew to manhood dying on a motorcycle accident; her daughter was not a carrier.
Leopold's son, Charles Edward had by force to be a healthy man because his only X chromosome came from his mother who was not a carrier.
Helen of Waldeck
XX
Leopold
xY
Alice.
Xx
Charles Edward
XY
Queen Victoria's third child and second daughter, Alice, was carrier of haemophlia. She married Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and had seven children, five daughters and two sons. Her eldest son, Ernest, was healthy and the second one Friedrich, was haemophiliac. He was the second one to apppear in the family after his uncle Leopold; he died after falling down from a window having an internal brain hemorrage when he was three years old. Alice's eldest daughter, Victoria, was not a carrier, she had healthy issue. The second one, Elizabeth, was uncertain because she had no issue. The youngest, May, was also uncertain because she died in childhood after having contracted diphteria. The other two, Irene and Alix, were carriers. Irene married her cousin Henry of Prussia (Kaiser Wilhelm II's brother) introducing haemophilia into the Royal House of Germany, which had already been in danger of getting the disease within its members when Vicky, Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, married the Prussian heir, Fritz. Fortunately Vicky was not a carrier and now her niece Irene did it by marrying her son. Irene and Henry had three sons, two of whom were haemophiliacs. The youngest, Henry, died in childhood. The other, Waldemar grew to manhood, having a very difficult life. If Vicky had been a carrier and her son Henry a haemophiliac, he and Irene might have the chance of having an haemophiliac daughter, which would have been a very strange case.
The case of Alix was of extremely importance in European history. She married Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, becoming Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. During their first ten years of marriage, the Imperial couple had only four girls, Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia, who were all uncertain to be carriers because they died without issue in 1918, during the Russian Revolution. At last in 1904, the long-waited heir was born, the Tsarevitch Alexis, who was haemophiliac. This was a great pain for her mother who felt guilty of having transmitted her son the disease; she felt as dying each time the boy had a crisis. And suddenly a dirty Russian peasant came to the court and he was the only one who could stop the Tsarevitch's bleedings and pains; he was Rasputin and his bad influence towards Alexandra would ruin the Imperial family and Russia too. It is said that if the Tsarevitch hadn't been haemophiliac there wouldn't have been Russian Revoltion because there wouldn't have been Rasputin.
Alice
Xx
Louis of Hesse XY
Henry
XY
Victoria
XX
Elisabeth
XX ?
Ernest
XY
May
XX ?
Irene
Xx
Friedrich
xY
Alix
Xx
Nicholas II
XY
Sigismund
XY
Henry
xY
Tatiana
XX ?
Anastasia
XX ?
Waldemar
xY
Olga
XX ?
Marie
XX ?
Alexis
xY