Ah yes. Rich Hall on Jerry Lee Lewis

The charms of Habsburg jaw.

The Cost Of Royal Inbreeding In Europe

While marriages between biological relatives were common in the ruling houses of Europe well up until the last century (Queen Elizabeth II actually married her own third cousin), the Spanish Habsburgs engaged in the practice with particularly dangerous abandon. In fact, nine out of the 11 total marriages that occurred among them during the 184 years they ruled Spain from 1516 to 1700 were incestuous.

In fact, modern researchers widely state that generations of inbreeding among the Spanish Habsburgs resulted in the infamous “Habsburg jaw” deformity and ultimately caused their downfall. Due to incest, the family’s genetic line progressively deteriorated until Charles II, the final male heir, was physically incapable of producing children, thus bringing an end to Habsburg rule.

The Cost Of Generations Of Inbreeding

“The Habsburg dynasty was one of the most influential in Europe, but became renowned for inbreeding, which was its eventual downfall. We show for the first time that there is a clear positive relationship between inbreeding and appearance of the Habsburg jaw.”

Besides ensuring that the throne remained in the grip of the Habsburgs, this inbreeding also had unintended consequences that would eventually lead to the dynasty’s downfall. It wasn’t just the crown that was passed down from generation to generation, but a series of genes that produced birth defects.

In addition to being socially and culturally taboo, incestuous marriages are harmful in that they lead to higher rates of miscarriages, stillbirths, and neonatal deaths (only half of the Habsburg children survived to the age of 10, compared with the 80 percent survival rate of children from other Spanish families of the same time period).

Marriage between close family members also increases the chance that harmful recessive genes — which would normally peter out thanks to healthy dominant genes from non-related parents — will continue to be passed down (Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom unwittingly spread recessive hemophilia across the entire continent thanks to the continued inter-marrying of the European royal families).

For the Habsburgs, the most well-known trait that was passed down was the Habsburg jaw.

And so while even ants and lions have protection instincts against inbreeding, humans with their big brains can come up with cultural or religious or personal reasons to overcome this safety instinct. That is how we ended up with LGBT and Transgender religions today.

In other words, humans are fukcing idiots.

@Krunoslav The outward features and to some degree the mental acuity of members of the British Royal family all are predictably reflective of the costs of inbreeding.
I always believed the reason Queen Elizabeth held on to the throne for so long was because she was loathe to saddle the people with that half wit inbred son of her own - Now King Charles.
He is taking the throne at age 72 I believe...hopefully he won't live for as long as his mother did. At least the next in line for the British Throne will have some Spencer genes - don't know how intelligent he is or is not.