DON CARLOS OF SPAIN, Prince of Asturias .Why inbreeding is bad. Mary I’s stepson. Spanish Habsburgs

He was badly inbred deeply unstable physically deformed and he just so happened to be the heir to the Spanish Throne. This is the disturbing story of Don Carlos Prince of Asturias son of Philip II of Spain stepson of Mary Tudor of England and a boy whose behavior was raising red flags from the time of his infancy until he eventually became so dangerous that his father had to take drastic steps which sent shock waves through the courts of Europe. Stay tuned to hear all the details including how Carlos was supposedly the recipient of a miracle the victim of a murder and what the city of San Diego has to do with it.

Don Carlos of Spain Prince of Asturias was born in Spain on the 8th of July 1545. His father was the future Philip II though at the time Philip’s father Charles I was still on the throne while his mother was Maria Manuela of Portugal. Unfortunately for Carlos his parents were double first cousins as I hope you can see from this family tree it is tough to do a tree when you are dealing with inbreeding like this but his maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother were siblings that is Isabella and John of Portugal and so too were his other grandmother and grandfather Catherine of Austria and Charles I.

This meant that Carlos’s parents shared 25% of their DNA and were the biological equivalent of half siblings. This was not even the limit of his inbreeding it is too complicated to put on this tree but Carlos had only six great great grandparents instead of 16 and one ancestor still alive at the time of his birth was his great-grandmother known to history as Joanna the Mad and sister of Catherine of Aragon. His mother who was just 17 years old died four days after his birth from a massive hemorrhage while his 18-year-old father was often busy and distant and spent little time with his son.

Right from the get-go it was clear that there were problems with the baby. One leg was shorter than the other and this would affect his posture throughout his life though it is not generally shown in portraits of him which diplomatically made his features appear more regular than they actually were. A better idea of his appearance comes from descriptions written by those who saw him. One was the Imperial Ambassador Adam Von Dikstein who described him in 1564 when Carlos was 18 as having brown curly hair long in the jaw heavy in the face one of his shoulders is slightly higher than the other he has a sunken chest and a little lump on his back at waist height his left leg is much longer than his right he has weak legs his voice is harsh and sharp he has problems in speaking and the words come with difficulty from his mouth.

This was hardly inspiring given that this boy was destined to be the next king of Spain. There were illnesses too the child had repeated fevers which turned his skin yellow and bites of what seemed to have been malaria. Nevertheless despite his physical ailments there was at first no question that Carlos who was at times under the guardianship of his aunts Maria and Joanna while his father was absent was the heir and would become king and he was treated as such. He took part in public events such as bidding farewell to and welcoming home his father from Philip’s various trips and was recognized as the heir to the thrones of Castile and Aragon.

His inheritance rights were also clearly laid out and even trodden upon in the marriage treaty between his father and Mary I of England whom Philip married in 1554 when Carlos was nine. Had they had a child for instance that child would have inherited Burgundy and the Netherlands not Carlos. Mary would be his stepmother for four years until her death in 1558 but he never met her. There was talk of Carlos’s own marriage prospects too. Elizabeth Tudor was floated as a potential bride though given her fed aversion to matrimony I can’t imagine that she ever would have considered for a second a Spanish Catholic 14 years younger than her physically deformed already rumored to be mentally unstable and her stepnephew still had the marriage been pushed through during her sister’s reign she might have been unable to refuse.

Mary Queen of Scots was another potential bride but it was to Elizabeth of Valois that he was actually engaged in 1559 only for his father to then marry the 13-year-old girl himself in February 1560 much to Carlos’s chagrin. Another mooted marriage was to his cousin Anna of Austria but that never came about and in fact Philip would go on to marry her too despite the fact that she was his niece. That was only after Carlos’s death though so we will not get sidetracked into that particular story. Before we get to Carlos’s mental state if you are enjoying this content please remember to give the video a like so that YouTube knows you approve and subscribe with the notification bell switched on so that you are kept up to date with my uploads.

If you have Irish ancestry and would like to find out if your family tree is as messed up as his and let us hope it is not you can also buy my book find your Irish ancestors online in both ebook and paperback format through the link in the description box. You will also find links there to my other platforms these include Patreon where I share bonus material including early access to ad-free videos mini podcasts and recommendations for other great history content on the web and my website historycallingofficial.com where you can sign up to my mailing list and get two free downloads.

More serious than his physical ailments were Carlos’s mental health problems. From childhood it was clear that he was not very stable. When his grandfather Charles I abdicated in 1556 he met Carlos on his way to the monastery of Yuste where he was going to retire and was deeply unimpressed with the 11-year-old. Aside from the physical problems he found him to be badly mannered disrespectful to his aunt Joanna and poorly educated. He even suggested having the boy kept at Tordesillas where Charles’s mother Joanna the Mad had languished for half a century until her death the year before.

Other stories from Carlos’s youth tell of his cruelty towards animals and humans alike from having creatures roasted alive to making a shoemaker cut up and eat a pair of shoes that were not to the prince’s liking. His gluttony and limited intellectual capabilities were commented on too and one Venetian observer wrote that he wished neither to study nor to take physical exercise but only to harm others. He was proud and utterly unmanageable and showed himself unable to carry out royal functions. His behavior on the 22nd of February 1560 when he received the oath of allegiance of the Cortes the Grandes and the cities was an embarrassment to his father for the boy kept refusing to let some of the nobles in attendance kiss his hand until Philip forced him to do so.

The king had considered making the boy governor of the Low Countries but it was by now evident that this would be a terrible idea. He was completely unsuited to any kind of command and the position was given elsewhere. Still Philip hoped that his son would improve with time and a better education. Carlos’s dynastic position was still secure and he was sent to the University of Alcalá de Henares with counselors of state to attend and instruct him. It was while he was there that a serious incident occurred which only made his mental state even worse.

On the 19th of April 1562 whilst on route to see a serving girl Carlos fell down some stairs in his lodgings and suffered a serious injury when he hit his head against a closed door at the bottom. He was it seems knocked unconscious though some accounts say he initially remained awake. Whatever the case he was soon suffering from severe fevers partial paralysis and slipped into a coma. On the 5th of May Philip came to be by his side and the doctors did all the things doctors in those days did including bleeding him cuing him applying balms to the wound trying to clean it and attempting to trepan the prince.

This means boring a hole in the skull but the firsthand account of his doctor states that although this procedure was begun it was not completed for upon opening his scalp up quote I find the skull white and solid and there began to come from the porosity of the bones some small drops of blood very red and I stopped trepanning. It was evident to the eye that the skull was not injured nor the internal part corresponding to that plexus. Lucky Carlos I would say having his skull drilled into was the last thing he needed at that point.

Another remedy and I use that word very loosely which was tried was to have the dead body of a local saint called Friar Diego brought in and laid up against the unconscious prince. That guy had been dead for a century by the way so let us just all pause for a moment and consider how unhygienic it must have been to put what was left of him on the bed and I suppose I should say that he had apparently barely decayed that was one of the things that made him so special. Many credited this move with an apparent miracle though for despite being almost dead and in fact his father was told there was basically no hope Carlos suddenly began to recover.

His pulse strengthened he woke up he was coherent and he was back on his feet by mid-June. I cannot tell you what his actual injury was I do not know if a concussion would act like this but if we have any medical doctors listening I would be curious as to any opinions you have as to what this might have been. It seems like his skull was not fractured at least so maybe some mild brain swelling very serious but not enough to kill him would that cause fever coma and paralysis? Let me know what you think below please.

Friar Diego by the way was at Philip’s request canonized by Rome as Didacus of Alcalá and it is after him that the American city of San Diego is named. Carlos’s recovery was to the delight of his father and Spain but this delight must have been tarnished with time as it became evident that his physical and mental health were as bad as ever. The prince continued to take severe fevers that concerned his doctors. There were rumors that he was impotent though he certainly made many advances on women randomly grabbing them in the street and kissing them and of course the fall had happened on his way to see a serving girl.

Other issues were more severe. He mistreated his father’s favorite horse so badly having forced the servant in whose care it was to let him ride it that the poor animal died and he showed an unhealthy devotion to his young stepmother and former fiancée Elizabeth of Valois to the point that later writers have invented a story of an affair between them though there is no real evidence of this. When he was walking on the street and a little water that someone threw out their window landed on his head he completely overreacted and ordered his guards to burn the house to the ground and kill all the inhabitants.

Fortunately they returned to him and said that the sacrament was being given to a dying man inside and so they felt it was best not to kill everyone. Luckily for those involved this explanation mollified this mercurial and dangerous young prince. By 1565 he was also increasingly desperate to leave Spain either to go soldiering or to be seen as a ruler and diplomat and he showed a special interest in heading to the Low Countries possibly to stir up discontent against his father with whom he had an increasingly fractious relationship.

Philip was not having it though and when the Duke of Alba was given a post in Brussels in April 1567 Carlos was so enraged that he had not been given the honor himself that he threatened and possibly even tried to kill the duke. Sources differ on the details but one story says he flew at him repeatedly with a knife and Alba had to hold him off. He had expected Philip to go too and take him with him but when the king canceled the trip his son became openly disrespectful to him began to plot to leave the country without consent which would have caused a political crisis and perhaps all-out war across the Spanish Empire and strongly insinuated to his confessor that he planned to kill his father.

When Philip learned from his illegitimate half-brother at Christmas 1567 that the prince was planning to escape to Italy he began to contemplate drastic action and when Carlos’s departure seemed imminent he took an incredible step. In the middle of the night on the 18th of January 1568 the king plus four members of state and additional guards crept into Carlos’s bedchamber. Philip was wearing armor and a helmet which I think tells you a lot about what he feared his son might do. They quietly removed all the papers and weapons in the room and when Carlos awoke he was reassured that he would not be killed but was placed under immediate house arrest though he begged to be murdered rather than imprisoned.

All heavy objects in the room were taken out probably for the protection of Carlos himself as well as those who were to have the care of him and the windows were nailed shut. He was later moved to another even more secure room. He would now remain imprisoned in the Alcázar for the rest of his life and in more or less solitary confinement save for his guards who were to ensure he was never left completely alone and the occasional visit from a doctor or barber. His reading material was limited to religious texts and he was allowed to hear mass through a small hole made in the wall.

It cannot be emphasized enough what an astonishing step this was on Philip’s part. He had no other sons at this point just two infant daughters. To have to admit even just to himself that his own heir was so unstable that he was a threat to his father and the realm and could not be trusted to ever rule would be a difficult move to make even for a modern parent. In the 16th century it was almost unheard of and a humiliation to Philip and the entire royal family though equally I am sure most were glad not to have to deal with Carlos’s violent moods and vicious tendencies anymore.

The queen mind you had always found him to be very kind to her probably because he was infatuated with her and she cried for two days when she heard the news until her husband basically told her to pull herself together. Philip tried to control the narrative and cover up the worst of his son’s behavior telling the pope that despite the rumors Carlos was neither a heretic nor was he plotting in rebellion. He was simply quote completely lacking in the capacity needed for ruling over states. The king’s actions had therefore been for the good of his realm and in service to God.

To his sister Empress Maria he admitted that his course of action had greatly grieved him. In other courts where the seriousness of the prince’s behavior was not fully understood it was believed by some that he was merely being punished to bring him into line. Philip though knew from the outside that his son could not be healed and that the move was permanent and he said as much in a letter to his brother-in-law. He stayed in Madrid apparently fearful of an uprising which would free Carlos and held a tribunal to establish that his imprisonment of his son and the prince’s exclusion from the line of succession were just though documents giving details of this body’s findings have now been lost to time.

As it turned out though this confinement did not last all that long and exclusion from the line of succession was not necessary. Carlos unsurprisingly given the conditions of his imprisonment and his general temperament anyway went even more demented now that he was confined and quickly went on hunger strikes then indulged in his old gluttony. At another time he swallowed one of his diamond rings thinking that the stone would poison him to death and he covered his bed in snow. His determination to ruin what little health he had quickly paid off and in July 1568 he fell ill.

Philip went to see him one last time to give his troublesome son his blessing then Carlos died on the 24th aged just 23. He was buried with full royal honors in the Church of San Domingo in Madrid then moved to San Lorenzo in 1573 where most Spanish royals are buried. Philip was reportedly distraught at how this whole sorry saga had ended and the court went into official mourning for a year. Later fanciful accounts which sought to tar Philip’s reputation claimed that the prince was a secret protestant and was murdered on his father’s orders possibly by poison or even beheading.

But while his death was certainly convenient in many ways motive and opportunity do not equal a certain crime and there is no evidence to support these stories. Carlos was a very unwell child and young man who was a danger to himself and nearly every other living being who came into contact with him and he died professing the Catholic faith and in front of plenty of witnesses. Had Philip wanted to kill him there would have been no point in locking him up first the deed could have been done quietly in January 1568 and put down to the prince’s known bad health.

See my video on the very suspicious death of Henry VI of England for an example of a monarch who probably was slain whilst in prison. With his demise Philip had no male heir and his wife Elizabeth of Valois died later that same year at the age of 22 after a miscarriage of another girl. Philip as I have mentioned later married his own niece Anna of Austria having clearly still not learned the dangers of incest and only one of their children survived infancy a boy who went on to become Philip III in 1598.

Personally I think the degree of inbreeding in the family was at least partly to blame for Carlos’s ailments both mental and physical but the illnesses he contracted during his lifetime and the near fatal head injury of 1562 may well have played a part in his dangerous behavior as well. I am interested to hear your thoughts though do you think repeated inbreeding was to blame here or do you find an explanation for his problems elsewhere or perhaps like me you think it is a combination of both? Let me know below and for another story of a royal whose bad behavior has been blamed on a head injury try this video on whether or not Henry VIII was brain damaged next. I will be back next week and until then keep learning.