Tea at Trianon: The Habsburg Jaw

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

The Habsburg Jaw

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

Marie-Antoinette of Austria

From All That's Interesting:

But while the line was intact, this inbreeding caused this royal family to exhibit a number of peculiar physical traits, especially one known as the Habsburg jaw. The most salient indicator of the family’s inbreeding, the Habsburg jaw is what doctors refer to as mandibular prognathism. This condition is marked by a protrusion of the lower jaw to the point that it’s significantly larger than the upper jaw and creates an underbite sometimes bad enough that it can interfere with your speech and make it difficult to fully close your mouth. When the first Spanish Habsburg ruler, Charles V, arrived in Spain in 1516, he couldn’t fully close his mouth due to his Habsburg jaw. This reportedly caused one bold peasant to shout at him, “Your majesty, shut your mouth! The flies of this country are very insolent.”

[....]

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 the 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.

One of the most famous Habsburgs (not of the Spanish Habsburgs, however) did not entirely manage to dodge the family trait either: Marie Antoinette [Queen] of France, although famously good-looking, had “a projecting lower lip” that made it seem as though she had a constant pout. But Marie Antoinette got off easy compared with the last Habsburg ruler of Spain, who took the throne in 1665. (Read more.)