Take the case of Charles's parents, who are both direct descendants from the line of George III and Queen Victoria, which makes them third cousins. Wilson, destroy all embarrassing documents that come to their attention.īut you cannot censor the possibility that inbreeding is a major factor in the royal family's unique psychiatric history. They are performed by the Queen's librarians at Windsor Castle, who, according to the respected British writer A.N. The acts of censorship continue to this day. And it's safe to assume that other compromising bits of Windsor family history have been censored. And the Queen Mother's mentally handicapped nieces, Nerissa and Katherine. There was also Eddy, the dim brother of George V (who was Queen Elizabeth's grandfather). The British press of the time never presented the British people with a clear picture of her whereabouts or condition. She died in 1969, having spent her last years out of public view, aimlessly roaming the back corridors of Buckingham Palace. Philip's mother Alice, a saintly woman in many ways, was nevertheless an embarrassment to the royals throughout the last 20 years of her life. Royal biographer Charles Higham notes that "Philip was born, in 1921, into a family whose tormented history involved assassination, death by blood poisoning, judicial murder, slaughter of the innocent, exile, and disgrace. When he died at the age of 14, his mother Queen Mary described his passing as "a great release." (For herself, she meant.)Īs for Prince Philip, he brought more exotic blood into the royal family. He spent his final years in enforced seclusion. Elizabeth II's Uncle John, who died in 1919, suffered from tantrums and fits throughout his short life. The 20th century also has its share of royal aberrants. Victoria's reaction was part of the pattern that began with her mother's death she became so distracted that she wasn't fit to appear in public for 10 years. In a cruel twist, his wish was granted when he died of typhoid at the age of 42. Her faithful and conscientious husband, Prince Albert, was so appalled by Victoria's frenzied response to her mother's death that he thought her on the brink of insanity.Īlbert, who was haunted by the thought that the dynasty suffered under a curse of madness, even wrote to the Privy Council about the possibility of a permanent separation from his wife. Take, for instance, Queen Victoria, who was George III's granddaughter. What we need here is a collection of crazy royals. Richard Galbraith of Rockefeller University says that the cause of the king's physical symptoms might have had nothing to do with his mental condition "George might just have been batty at the same time."īut you can't doubt the sanity of a member of the current generation on the basis of one controversially mad ancestor. In fact, George's diagnosis remains in question. Unfortunately for Charles' theory, George was out of his mind for weeks and weeks after his temperature returned to normal. George's shocking eccentricities, wrote the Prince, were caused not by madness but by "a mental state akin to the sort of delirium experienced by patients with very high fevers." In an essay produced after he finished his studies at Cambridge University, Charles stressed his belief that his ancestor George suffered from a physical - not a mental - illness. Since part of the mad old king's genetic inheritance lives on in the Windsor blood today, some of his mental estrangement may have come all the way down to Prince Charles.Ĭharles, who has long been known as "The Loony Prince," once took pen in hand to deny this possibility. unfit to be the ruler of a free people." The film accurately portrays him as a madman.Įlizabeth II and her family are directly descended from George III, who suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness from middle age to the end of his life. The George in question is America's last king, George III, who was dismissed by the Declaration of Independence as a "tyrant. And "The Madness of King George," which opens tomorrow, ties into the messy state of today's royal family. History films are doubly entertaining when they shed new light on the present moment.
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