Queen Victoria's Gene

by D M Potts

  Leopold, the younger son of a minor duke, pursued his dynastic ambitions with a unique pertinacity. It is clear from the letter to his elder brother that he had determined to marry Charlotte, the heir to the British throne, before he had even visited Britain. In spite of her untimely death, by the time Leopold died his family was firmly established in Britain, Germany and Portugal. It is difficult to understand what had inspired these imperial ambitions. His sister Juliana’s brief marriage to Constantine, the tsar’s younger brother, was not an auspicious beginning, and although Juliana would have become tsarina if the marriage had endured, this was not apparent when Leopold courted Charlotte.

  The part played by Stockmar in the dynastic ambitions deserves examination. One of our strengths as a species is to make alliances, usually between males and sometimes between those who are not our genetic relations. Stockmar, three years Leopold’s senior, was first appointed as Leopold’s physician but rapidly became private secretary and comptroller to the household. He later became mentor and private secretary to the much younger Albert. He was highly intelligent and diplomatic and gained widespread respect. On many occasions he played a key role. He tried to negotiate Leopold’s acquisition of the throne of Greece and when that failed, successfully negotiated his selection as King of the Belgians. He then retired to Coburg as it was felt he might overshadow the new king, but in 1836 he negotiated the marriage of Leopold’s nephew to the widowed Queen of Portugal. As soon as Victoria came to the throne he came to Britain as her adviser and persuaded Melbourne, the prime minister, to block Conroy’s design to make Victoire regent and himself Victoria’s secretary on the death of William IV. A year later he accompanied Albert on the grand tour, coaching him for the position of Prince Consort to Victoria. His influence was clearly decisive in the ascent of the Coburgs and he was evidently a brilliant negotiator and manipulator with a profound grasp of European politics and human nature. Although born in Coburg he was of Swedish descent. His loyalty to Leopold was remarkable; did he have any Coburg blood in his veins?

  Among animals the drive for leadership is sexual. It is the top baboon and the dominant chimpanzee that mate most frequently. Evolution has tailored behaviour so as to secure the greatest probability of passing an individual’s genes to the next generation. Among mammals, such as ourselves, the female makes a disproportionately greater investment in reproduction than the male – she must carry the progeny and then suckle the baby – and hence can only have relatively few offspring in a lifetime. The male, however, in the time it takes one female to deliver and breast-feed a child, has the potential to father many children. Hence nearly all mammals are polygamous and, although the female has the physical burden of pregnancy, it is the males who are larger because they must compete and in the last resort fight, to gain access to the females.

  Men, on average, are 10 to 15 per cent larger than women and there is no doubt that biologically we are a polygamous species, as are our nearest relatives, the chimpanzees. At the same time adults in all societies are capable of establishing passionate, sexually exclusive relationships, and fathers usually contribute to the upbringing of their children. In short, human beings are balanced on a knife-edge between monogamy and polygamy.

  In some respects human systems of government have declined from the level of the early primates because their dominant males have to be in fine physical condition and are frequently challenged by aspiring rivals. A great danger in modern societies of both east and west is that leaders frequently continue in power, even when they are sick or senile. It is noteworthy that the European Union, which rotates its leader every six months, does not meet the instinctive human need for an identifiable leader. Whatever the other faults of the Community this is an excellent thing and will temper the tendency of the EU, now the greatest economic power in the world, to dominate its neighbours and abuse its strength. However, it is likely that the European Union will in due course condense into a superstate superseding the national loyalties of its citizens. An essential stage in the process will be the enhancement of the powers and period of office of the President.

  Modern societies are structured so that most senior positions are held by the elderly. Democratic societies usually elect their leaders for periods of four or five years. Even if fit when elected, a man or woman in their late sixties or seventies has a fair probability of a major debilitating illness within their period of office, a probability increased by the stress of that office, yet they and their society are strangely reluctant to replace them when they do fall ill. Dictators such as Franco and Brezhnev clung to office as long as possible, retarding and paralysing their societies as they did so. In constitutional monarchies incapacity or senility in the monarch is no disadvantage, providing the ministers are young and capable; indeed the extent to which the growth of constitutional monarchy was facilitated by monarchical age and incapacity is worthy of study. The power of British prime ministers grew considerably during the long reigns of George III and Victoria.

  The dangers of ill-health among those in power are most strikingly displayed in the Russian royal family. The tsarevitch’s illness during the last fatal days of July 1914, coinciding with Rasputin’s absence in Siberia, may have distracted the tsar from the international crisis which led to the First World War. By providing Rasputin with a power-base the tsarevitch’s condition totally ruined the reputation of the Russian royal family and even when the tsar abdicated, it prevented an orthodox succession, which might have saved the dynasty. Apart from the haemophilia the outbreak of measles which affected the Russian royal children just as the Petrograd riots began in 1917 distanced the tsarina even further than usual from reality.

  Illness has played direct roles at many critical times in history and it is interesting to observe how often national leaders have been discovered to be ill when they fell from power. Napoleon was a sick man at Waterloo, Sir Anthony Eden was ill during the Suez crisis, Herr Honnecker was suffering from cancer when he was swept from power in East Germany, Roosevelt was dying when he ceded Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta. Churchill had at least one cerebral stroke while in power which impaired his judgement.

  The contemporary state often gives even more power, in absolute terms, to its leaders than any nineteenth-century monarch held. Giant wealth, sophisticated technologies and, above all, control of nuclear weapons, are concentrated in the hands of very few, often old, people. The tsar and his generals, over many months, could send six million to war on the eastern front in 1914 but they were never in a position where they might have only fifteen minutes to think about pressing the trigger of the ultimate weapons of human destruction. Would Khruschev or Kennedy have reacted less prudently at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis if, like the tsar when abdicating at Pskov, they had been obsessed with illness in themselves or their family? Nation states will always be run by human beings open to physical and psychological disease, possibly with dire consequences: we should therefore be aware that neither hereditary kings nor elected presidents will ever be free from the risk of illness. The more power vested in our leaders and the more complex and rapid the reaction time of our technology, the more likely that their illnesses may one day affect the body politic of a nation – or of the whole globe. Monarchs and other national leaders often fail to make effective use of the available scientific and medical knowledge in ordering national affairs. Ill-health among the leadership is an ever-present danger and open government is essential to ensure that unfit leaders are rapidly and smoothly replaced.

  During the nineteenth century the highest levels of European society were almost totally divorced from contemporary scientific and medical knowledge. Until the use of chloroform by Victoria to reduce the pains of Leopold’s birth, the medical assistance and advice the British royal family received did at least as much harm as good, and until the Romanian royal family declined a Russian bride no European royalty, or their advisors, seems to have had an accurate knowledge of the laws of genetics, although the inheritance of hae
mophilia had been understood empirically for at least two generations. Today, the whole population in the west has access to medical assistance and genetic counselling vastly superior to that available to royalty only a century ago.

  The mismatch in western civilization between the structure of our scientific and industrial establishments and that of our political establishments continues. In the former power is disseminated and the abilities of a whole population are utilized while in the latter power is concentrated in a hierarchical fashion, in a manner which goes back at least to the Neolithic and even beyond to our sub-human ancestors. Most primate societies are dominated by a mature male who has first choice of food and females but is required to defend his group against rivals. Even today human societies, particularly when in danger, prefer an identifiable leader rather than government by committee or by plebiscite. When rapid decisions are required the system has its advantages but in peacetime power is unreasonably concentrated in individuals, whether presidents, prime ministers or Communist Party secretaries. The British are unusual in that they are more willing than most people to accept a woman as leader, for example Boudicca, Elizabeth I or Mrs Thatcher, but male or female, president or party secretary, the leader, once established, is surrounded in all countries by a mystique which dulls criticism and may confuse it with treason. The British system, which concentrates the mystique around a constitutional monarch and the power in the prime minister, reduces but does not eliminate this danger. The obsession of the British establishment with secrecy and its draconian libel laws and security legislation offsets any advantage this division of labour might give.

  The desire for a single recognizable leader is so ingrained in our natures that an identifiable leader will be a feature of our society in some form or other for the foreseeable future, in spite of the rational side of our nature which pleads for a society with a more egalitarian or democratic system of direction. In future, we might moderate the system by demanding more medical information on a leader, both when standing for office and while holding it. A free press might be expected to perform this function but in Britain it is largely prevented by the secrecy which is cultivated as part of the mystique, while in the USA the efforts of the press to date have been clumsy and trivial. An enlightened society should not be expected to elect presidents or prime ministers in their late sixties or early seventies, as the probability of significant deterioration during their time in office is too great.

  Monarchs and aristocrats, through wealth and power, are often less constrained in their sexual behaviour than their subjects. Victoria’s family shows clearly, and on numerous occasions, the fine balance between male fidelity and infidelity. The Duke of Kent was reluctant to desert Madam de St Laurent, although his numerous brothers had little reluctance in changing partners and his brotherin-law Leopold is said to have raped his own brother’s mistress. Albert and Victoria’s passion seems to have lasted twenty-one years of marriage, while Albert’s brother Ernest was a rake who, according to Albert, required treatment for his venereal disease. Albert’s own death may have been hastened by the discovery of his eldest son’s first sexual adventures, but Edward VII more than made up for his parents’ chastity. He had several deep emotional relationships with married women such as Lillie Langtry, Alice Keppel1 and Daisy Warwick, as well as having numerous one-night stands. He would eye the audience from his box in the theatre and send an equerry to invite the most attractive woman to join him. It was an offer that was rarely refused, although one night in Paris the subject of his interest proved to be Prince Yussopov, later to be Rasputin’s assassin, who was in the habit of dressing in women’s clothes.

  The futile bloodshed of the First World War could so obviously have been avoided and most of the responsibility clearly lay with the closely related monarchs of Europe. When the war ended, monarchy as an institution had been widely discredited and Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia became republics. By 1945 Yugoslavia, Romania, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria and Albania had joined them but the dictatorships which replaced them usually proved to be worse, and many now look back to the monarchist years as a golden age.

  As long as they retained any real power monarchs and aristocrats created history by virtue of the authority and trust placed in them. The kings and queens of Europe all claimed their thrones by right of descent. When new nations like Romania or Bulgaria appeared they had to be ruled by scions of other European royal houses.

  Leadership, by definition, turns on a single individual, and as long as Victoria’s gene manifested its painful effects on the collaterals it made little difference to European and world history. But when the heirs to the Russian and Spanish thrones developed haemophilia then the disease helped to trigger two of the bloodiest civil wars of the twentieth century. Victoria’s pathological gene was an exceptionally rare one, and history will probably never determine whether Victoire slept with some haemophiliac in a desperate attempt to conceive the child she needed to win the war of the hymen, or whether the egg or sperm that became Victoria had suffered a 1 in 25 to 50,000 mutation. Whatever its origin, haemophilia in Victoria’s son Leopold influenced her life and in turn, to a slight extent, the life of the country. In the family of her grandchild Alexandra, it had a dramatic effect in clearing the path for Rasputin’s rise to influence and power and distracting both tsar and tsarina from affairs of state. At one level, the possible sexual adventures of Queen Victoria’s mother or whether Anastasia was who she claimed to be, may be seen to be as personal trivia beside the history of nations. But the personal stories of royalty continue to fascinate, because in a very real way they are the very stuff of history, as well as the triumphs and tragedies of real people.

  An aristocracy often displays more extremes of human behaviour, perhaps because it is subject to fewer economic and social constraints than the rest of society. The childhood of royal children was not always confined by normal restraints. George III’s children were whipped regularly, but many royal children were little constrained by authority or education. The Portuguese royal family were the last in Europe to bring up their children without any discipline whatsoever. King Miguel, a contemporary of Leopold I, was a monster, while his brother Pedro, the last Emperor of Brazil, is still fondly remembered as a humane patron of the arts and sciences. The antics of some of the Hanoverians are scarcely credible today, but the last Hanoverian, Queen Victoria, was held up as an exemplar to the whole nation. Leopold I of the Belgians, Victoria’s ‘dearest uncle’, fathered a pitiless brute who was responsible for the deaths of millions in the Congo and imprisoned his own daughter for most of her life.

  The effects of natural selection have eliminated Victoria’s gene from most of her descendants and the decline in the number of kingdoms and the growth of constitutional monarchy has eliminated the gene from all positions of influence, but as it can remain hidden in a female line it could still be carried by some of Victoria’s female descendants. There is a slight chance that it still survives among the descendants of Prince Leopold and a much greater chance that it survives among the descendants of the Spanish royal house, but it is unlikely that the gene will ever again have detectable effects on world history.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER ONE

  1. Officers of state continued to attend royal deliveries until the birth of Prince Charles to Queen Elizabeth in 1948, although only the Home Secretary was required to be present and then in a room adjoining the delivery room.

  2. Culpeper wrote in a 1651 Dictionary for Midwives, ‘Unless you draw back the blood you can never stop it; as you must pump out the Water of a Ship before you can stop the leak.’

  3. Forceps of this type had been invented by the Chamberlens, a Huguenot family who came to England in 1569. Their forceps were a giant leap forward on the hooks and violent, painful and destructive methods employed previously. However, the family deliberately kept their invention a secret for many decades, literally blindfolding the women in labour so they wouldn’t see how the operation was done. �
�He who keeps secret so beneficial an instrument as the harmless obstetrical forceps’, wrote one contemporary, ‘deserves to have a worm devour his vitals for all eternity.’ However, infection and other complications were common and the great eighteenth-century obstetrician and teacher, William Hunter, used to produce a rusty pair of forceps and tell his students ‘where they save one they murder twenty’.

  4. There was a teratoma, a benign tumour of the right ovary, which was unusual but could not have been associated with her death. The possibility of pulmonary emboli was not recognized in 1817 and could have been missed at the post-mortem.

  5. Blood transfusions, directly from a donor, were first used for postpartum haemorrhage much later in the nineteenth century. Caesarian operation was known in 1817 but was invariably reserved for cases where a mother died in labour and a valiant attempt was made to save the child, if still alive.

  CHAPTER TWO