History RoyallyScrewedUp / RealLife

*** Both Thutmose II and Thutmose IV had serious health problems from being the offspring of siblings. However, while both officially married their own sisters,[[note]]Which in the case of Thutmose II was Hatshepsut, his half-sister. Her famous decision to take the throne for herself was mostly made possible by her marriage to the old king while being descended from another king (Ahmose I) in the female line, all the while her late husband's oldest son and male heir was just a toddler.[[/note]] they had no children (or at least no surviving children) from these unions; their sons and heirs (Thutmose III for Thutmose II, Amenhotep III for Thutmose IV) were both born of lesser consorts--still highborn, but not royal. In the case of Amenhotep III, his mother may have been an Egyptianized Nubian (or of Egyptianized Nubian ancestry); certainly, the statues of Amenhotep III[[note]]Of which more survive than of literally any other ancient Egyptian monarch[[/note]] have stronger sub-Saharan African features than most other royal Ancient Egyptian images. Since these two kings were at the time and still are widely regarded as the greatest monarchs of the Eighteenth Dynasty (and are regarded as being in the Top 10 if not Top 5 ancient Egyptian rulers full stop), the Egyptians clearly didn't see this as ''that'' big an issue.

*** Both Thutmose II and Thutmose IV had serious health problems from being the offspring of siblings. However, while both officially married their own sisters,[[note]]Which in the case of Thutmose II was Hatshepsut, his half-sister. Her famous decision to take the throne for herself was mostly made possible by her marriage to the old king while being descended from another king (Ahmose I) in the female line, all the while her late husband's oldest son and male heir was just a toddler.[[/note]] they had no children (or at least no surviving children) from these unions; their sons and heirs (Thutmose III for Thutmose II, Amenhotep III for Thutmose IV) were both born of lesser consorts--still highborn, but not royal. In the case of Amenhotep III, his mother may have been an Egyptianized Nubian (or of Egyptianized Nubian ancestry); certainly, the statues of Amenhotep III[[note]]Of which more survive than of literally any other ancient Egyptian monarch[[/note]] have stronger sub-Saharan African features than most other royal Ancient Egyptian images. Since these two kings were at the time and still are are widely regarded as the greatest monarchs of the Eighteenth Dynasty (and are regarded as being in the Top 10 if not Top 5 ancient Egyptian rulers full stop), the Egyptians clearly didn't see this as ''that'' big an issue.

* Over a thousand years earlier [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Yōzei Emperor Yōzei]] was even more screwed up. His actions including feeding live frogs to snakes, chasing people while wielding a sword, and murdering one of his servants. In 884 his advisors decided to dethrone him. That didn't stop his insanity; during his cousin's reign he started murdering women and trampling people with his horse.

** Queen Heonjeong, another first cousin and Heonae's sister. After Gyeongjong's death Heonjeong had a child with [[{{Squick}} her uncle]].

* King Gongmin, Chunghye's half-brother, was every bit as screwed-up. He came to the throne by having Chunghye's fourteen-year-old son deposed and poisoned. During his reign he raped five underage boys (that we know of). He finally died after he discovered one of his concubines was having an affair with another man; afraid of being executed, the concubine's lover murdered Gongmin in his sleep.
* UsefulNotes/YeonsangunOfJoseon had the dubious honour of being the worst tyrant in all of Korean history before North Korea became a thing. When he first took the throne, he seemed competent and mentally stable, but that quickly changed. Yeonsan had an [[EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas obsession with restoring his late mother's reputation]], which led him to launch two purges of the scholars who were even tenuously connected (if at all) to his mother's deposition and execution. He went as far as to punish officials who weren't in the palace when his mother died, on the grounds that [[InsaneTrollLogic they did nothing to stop it]]. Two of his father's concubines considered most responsible for his mother's execution were beaten to death. He fatally injured his grandmother during an argument and murdered an official who confronted him about his behaviour. In his later years, he drove people from their houses to build his hunting grounds, exiled a minister for spilling a drink, and kidnapped a thousand women and turned a former university into his personal brothel. His people finally had enough, staged a coup, and overthrew him. It's no coincidence that even though he reigned as king, he's remembered only as "Prince Yeonsan" (the literal translation of "Yeonsan-gun") and not as "King Yeonsan" (which would be "Yeonsan-wang").

* King Dae Won-ui of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balhae Balhae]] [[note]]a Korean kingdom covering parts of modern China, North Korea and Russia[[/note]] was assassinated by his ministers shortly after he took the throne -- apparently because he was violent, though no information survives on exactly what he did.
* Injo of Joseon had a violent disagreement with his son Crown Prince Sohyeon. Sohyeon had spent years as a PoliticalHostage in China, and while there he encountered Europeans who introduced him to Catholicism and European science. He brought those ideas back to Korea, and his father [[BerserkButton disapproved]]. Shortly after returning to Korea Sohyeon was found dead of head injuries in his father's room. His death was never explained, but legend says [[OffingTheOffspring Injo killed him by hitting him with an ink slab]]. Sohyeon's wife attempted to investigate, but was framed for treason and executed on Injo's orders.

* Yangnyeong's illegitimate daughter Yi Gu-ji married a slave after her first husband's death. [[ValuesDissonance A law had been passed forbidding widows from remarrying.]] The ensuing scandal resulted in her and her second husband being executed, and she was [[{{Unperson}} removed from the family tree and her name was made taboo]] for the next four hundred years.
* UsefulNotes/NorthKorea officially doesn't have a monarchy, but for all intents and purposes they are run by the [[UsefulNotes/TheRulersOfNorthKorea Kim dynasty]], which is a pretty damn messed up family. In accordance with their country's insane propaganda, all three Kims are portrayed as [[GodEmperor gods among men]], who at various times are said to have magic powers, never urinate or defecate, have invented the hamburger, and have shot a perfect golf game. Their foreign policy amounts to an extreme isolationism and desperate attempts to develop [[UsefulNotes/TheHoovesOfChollima nuclear weapons]] to keep all the "enemies" at bay. And their fickleness certainly matches the extremes:

* Rama II married fifty-three women, including his cousin and at least one of his half-sisters, and had ''seventy-three'' children. Three of his sons became kings after him. Rama III had forty-two consorts and fifty-one children, but didn't choose any of his children to be successors. So when he died the throne went to his half-brother Rama IV (better-known as Mongkut; yes, the King in ''Theatre/TheKingAndI''), who chose another half-brother, Pinklao, to be vice-king. Pinklao had fifty-eight children to an unknown number of consorts. Mongkut outdid him and all of his other relatives: he had sixty-one consorts, including three of his great-nieces, and ''eighty-two'' children.
* Rama V (better-known as Chulalongkorn) had ninety-two consorts, including five of his half-sisters and three cousins, and seventy-six children.
* Things became slightly saner when Vajiravudh took the throne as Rama VI. He only had four consorts, three of whom were his cousins, and only one child. Prajadhipok, [=AKA=] Rama VII, was the first monarch in the dynasty who wasn't a polygamist. His only wife was also his cousin, and they had no children -- probably a good thing considering the amount of incest in their family tree. After that the Thai royals stopped marrying such close relatives. Unfortunately some of them became screwed-up in other ways; Rama VIII died under very suspicious circumstances, in what looked like a murder clumsily disguised as a suicide. And Vajiralongkorn, the currently-reigning king, is notorious for being the most unpopular king Thailand has ever had. Among other things he has a history of marrying women then divorcing them acrimoniously, and in the 1990s he abducted his own daughter after her mother took her to live in Britain.

* Nang Keo Phimpha -- an [[RedBaron epithet]] meaning "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast The Cruel]]"; her real name has been lost to history -- spent ten years ruling Lan Xang through a series of {{Puppet King}}s who she murdered. Out of seven kings who ruled under her, all of them were assassinated and none ruled longer than three years. After the seventh king's death she decided to rule the country herself. A few months later she was overthrown and executed [[EvilOldFolks at the age of ninety-five]].

* Prince Mỹ Đường of the Nguyễn dynasty was accused of [[ParentalIncest sleeping with his mother]]. As a result he was banished and his mother was imprisoned for the rest of her life. The accusation was probably a lie; the emperor at the time, Minh Mạng, was Mỹ Đường's uncle, some people thought that Mỹ Đường had a better right to the throne than Minh Mạng, and the scandal guaranteed that Mỹ Đường would never become emperor.

* The Empire of Trebizond was notable for a high turnover rate among its emperors. Between 1330 and 1349 it had seven emperors (or five emperors and two empresses), and only two of them stayed on the throne for more than two years:

** At first Basil had Manuel imprisoned in a monastery. But one of Manuel's supporters attempted a coup, and [[DeathOfAChild Manuel]] was executed as a result. This and later events proved the empire might have been better off if they hadn't invited Basil back; he was unable to restore order among the nobility and had to hire foreign mercenaries as bodyguards. In the end he was poisoned by his wife Irene Palaiologina.

* The country is run by the House of Saud. It's one of the few countries named after a guy, said guy being UsefulNotes/AbdulAzizIbnSaud. Every king of Saudi Arabia since then has been one of Abdul Aziz's many many sons, reflecting the country's peculiar succession laws that more or less require going through all the sons before going to the grandsons. The last few kings have all been increasingly aging and haven't lasted that long, which is why they agreed in 2017 on one of Abdul Aziz's grandsons, Mohammad bin Salman (popularly known as "MBS"), to be the new heir. The Saudi monarchy has had a reputation for being startlingly backwards and promoting religious extremism -- the country was long known for its frequent public executions for trivial offenses, its ''mutaween'' or religious police, and its bizarre religious prohibitions -- women famously weren't allowed to ''drive''. All of Abdul Aziz's sons had their own levels of extremism, leading to factionalism among them -- for instance, in 1975, King Faisal was assassinated by his own half-nephew (ostensibly for being too progressive -- this four years before a group of extremists invaded the Grand Mosque itself seeking to overthrow the House of Saud for ''still'' being too progressive). MBS, for his part, was widely lauded as the young, progressive world leader who would bring Saudi Arabia into the 21st century -- he championed legislation that allowed women to drive, for instance. But then he turned around and arrested and tortured most of his rivals in an "anti-corruption" campaign[[note]]They were all probably guilty as hell -- the boundaries between "state assets" and "royal family's personal bank account" are pretty blurry -- but MBS was clearly being selective in whom he chose to pursue[[/note]], imprisoned women's rights activists, engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign in Yemen, and was likely responsible for the gruesome murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, so it's likely he's not going to be much of a change. But hey, oil money buys you a lot in this world.

* Talal, the second King of Jordan and grandfather of the current King Abdullah II, had a severe case of schizophrenia that led him to almost kill his wife and children, but he repeatedly refused to step down for the sake of the monarchy. Knowing just how dangerous he could have become if let loose, the Parliament forced him to abdicate after ruling the country for only a year, to be succeeded by his son, Hussein. Talal spent the rest of his life in a sanatorium in Istanbul.

* The sanity of Henry VIII's daughter [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Queen Mary I]] (the historical "Bloody Mary") is a question historians have never settled. She sought to re-establish the Catholic church, after her father had dispensed with it in the English Reformation as a way of divorcing her mother, who was then dying of cancer. She responded with a campaign that led to an unusually large number of brutal executions in her six-year reign and brought the country to the point of outright rebellion. She may also have had a "hysterical pregnancy" -- ''i.e.'' she was convinced she was pregnant when she really wasn't -- which makes sense, because [[MyBiologicalClockIsTicking she was 38]] and desperate to produce an heir to head off her very Protestant half-sister UsefulNotes/ElizabethI. For centuries it was assumed to have been extreme wishful thining, but evidence now suggests she had ovarian cysts, or possibly uterine cancer.
* George III is considered the archetypcal "mad king", although the exact extent of his madness is now disputed. It is believed that he suffered from porphyria, based on contemporary accounts of his urine being bluish purple, but some modern scholars attribute this to a [[HealingHerb herbal sedative]] (the kind of thing that [[WorstAid passed for medicine back then]]). Porphyria is hereditary, and although its onset often occurs late in life, there was no evidence of it in any of George's Hanoverian ancestors. He certainly wasn't ''always'' mad; he was considered quite charming and reasonably well-adjusted when he was younger, so his "madness" may have just been garden-variety dementia. The famous incident where he [[TalkingToPlants conversed with a tree]] thinking it was the king of Prussia was isolated, happened late in his life, and could well have been made up by his son [[TheHedonist George IV]], who resented having to rule as prince regent in his father's latter years (and had his own share of issues what with the incessant partying and gambling -- ''Series/{{Blackadder}} the Third'''s portrayal of him isn't ''that'' exaggerated). Thankfully, by this time, Parliament had enough power that a "sane-ish" monarch was good enough.

%%* Donatien Alphonse François, better known as Marquis De Sade, was a prolific writer, philosopher and novelist around the time of the French Revolution. Unfortunately, most of his writings revolved around acts of ''unspeakable'' sexual cruelty, with his own misconduct forcing him to spend more than a third of his life in either a prison or an asylum - including the infamous Bastille. His scandalous life was such a disgrace to the Sade family name that his own son burned every book he could find that was written by his father. The damage was already done however, as De Sade's name became the very origin of the word "sadism."

* Modern UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} is made up of different places who used to have kings:

** Frederick William I of Prussia had porphyria, and also liked to carry a wooden cane, [[CaneFu much to the regret of everyone around him]] (who naturally couldn't defend themselves without being accused of treason). He was known for chasing his children around the palace and randomly attacking commoners in the streets of Berlin, hollering, "You're supposed to love me, not fear me!" This seems to have had a negative effect in his relationship with his son, UsefulNotes/FrederickTheGreat, although the mutual intense antipathy between the two surely didn't help.

* John George IV, Elector of Saxony, began a relationship with Magdalena Sibylla ("Billa") of Neidschutz. Officially Billa was the daughter of Colonel Rudolf of Neidschutz and his wife Ursula Margarethe of Haugwitz; however, Ursula Margarethe had been the mistress of John George IV's father, so Billa may have been his half-sister. John George IV's mother, Anna Sophie of Denmark, forced her son to marry Princess Eleonore Erdmuthe of Saxe-Eisenach in an attempt to separate him from Billa. It didn't work. Not only did John George IV continue to live with Billa, [[MurderTheHypotenuse he attempted to murder Eleonore Erdmuthe]]. In the end he had a rather ironic death: Billa caught smallpox and passed the disease on to him. She died in his arms, and he died twenty-three days later.

** Joanna's husband was Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy, the son of [[UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire Holy Roman Emperor]] UsefulNotes/MaximilianI. Philip was from the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]], a famous and powerful royal family -- so much so that they engaged in ''extensive'' RoyalInbreeding to prevent power from falling into the wrong hands. They wouldn't marry non-royalty (it was beneath them) unless absolutely forced, they wouldn't marry their enemies (of course) unless they dictate the terms, and after UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation, they wouldn't marry non-Catholics either unless they converted. All of this drastically reduced the pool of possible marriage partners, so they kept [[KissingCousins marrying their cousins]] as the only people they could trust. Philip's marriage to Joanna was a strategic union, and a politically shrewd one, but it only bought them a little time (especially as the Trastámara family was already pretty inbred, so it wasn't a great source of genetic diversity).
** As it turned out, it was a PerfectlyArrangedMarriage, and much of Joanna's "madness" can be traced [[ExcessiveMourning to Philip's untimely death]]. Philip provided ample competition for Ferdinand in the game of "Control the Damsel", and "husband" usually trumps "father" in that game -- Philip declared himself King of Castille ''jure uxoris'' (by right of marriage) to try and talk some sense into Ferdinand, but to no avail. Joanna much preferred Philip to Ferdinand, and when Philip died, she kind of [[HeroicBSOD lost it]]. After several attempts to reopen her husband's casket, and a few political and military defeats, Ferdinand had her [[MadwomanInTheAttic locked up in a nunnery]] and exercised as much control as he could. That lasted until Joanna's son Charles I -- who was Holy Roman Emperor UsefulNotes/CharlesV -- was old enough to exert himself in his own right. Charles' successors split into Austrian and Spanish branches, who kept intermarrying, leading to problems down the line.

* UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain was the last Habsburg King of Spain. They called him "Carlos el Hechizado" or "Charles the Bewitched", and it's not hard to see why -- that's his portrait in the page image, and that's as ''flattering'' as they could make it. He was severely physically disabled, mostly as a result of the extensive RoyalInbreeding practised by the Habsburg family, and may have not been entirely right on his head either -- he was descended from "Juana la Loca" ''fourteen'' times, with less than two centuries separating them. That chin is the most prominent example of the famous "Habsburg lip", which he had so prominently that he couldn't masticate or close his mouth (that's why his tongue is poking out). [[Website/{{Wikipedia}} The Other Wiki]] describes Charles as "short, lame, epileptic, senile, and completely bald before 35, always on the verge of death but repeatedly [[WhyWontYouDie baffling Christendom by continuing to live]]." Since Charles had no heir (and possibly was incapable of reproducing)[[note]]The contemporary autopsy report is [[BodyHorror very revealing]] -- it claims that Charles' body "contained not a single drop of blood, his heart looked like the size of a grain of pepper, his lungs were corroded, his intestines were putrid and gangrenous, he had a single testicle which was as black as carbon and his head was full of water." The accuracy of that report is disputed, but he never did produce an heir, so maybe it was[[/note]], his death sparked the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheSpanishSuccession, where two competing branches of the family in Austria and France[[note]]Dynastically, the French branch was more closely related, but through a female line, while the Austrian claimant was more distantly related but in an exclusively male line. (The Austrian Habsburgs were even more closely related than that, having married their Spanish cousins a few times, but none of their female-line connections were closer than the French branch. So a big chunk of their legitimacy was that at the end of the day they were the seniormost male-line descendants of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile.) Legally, the issue was that the Spanish realms had used male-preference primogeniture (allowing not only inheritance in the female line but women to rule in their own right if they had no brothers) before Charles V's succession as Carlos I; however, the fact that the ''Habsburg'' house law traditionally followed Salic law muddied the waters as to whether succession in the female line was still permitted. Politically, the French branch was represented by Charles' grand-nephew, UsefulNotes/PhilipV, who also happened to be the grandson of UsefulNotes/LouisXIV of France--so most of Europe basically ganged up on the French to prevent them from gaining control of Spain as well and becoming an unified, Catholic super-superpower[[/note]] fought for control of the Spanish crown. About the only non-Habsburg genes Charles had received in the last four generations were from [[{{Squick}} his father's syphilis]], which by then was like throwing swamp water up a backed-up sewage line.

** Astonishingly, Margaret Theresa was relatively healthy in spite of the ghastly amount of inbreeding in her ancestry, and the portraits show her as a beautiful little girl. But she ended up marrying the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, who was her mother's brother and her father's nephew. That's right: her husband was simultaneously her uncle and her cousin. The couple had four children, only one of whom survived infancy. Margaret Theresa somehow got the idea that Vienna's Jewish population were responsible for her children's deaths (and not, y'know, the fact their parents were related so many times over that they had a family ''tangleweed'' instead of a family tree), so she tried to make Leopold expel the Jews from Vienna. The constant pregnancies took a tool on her health, and she died at 21 during her fifth pregnancy.
** Maria Antonia of Austria was the only surviving child of Margaret Theresa and Leopold I, and was also the most inbred member of the entire Habsburg family, with a consanguineity coefficient of over 0.30 (for comparison, Charles II had an inbreeding coefficient of .254, and [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire Daenerys Targaryen]] is at .375 and a child from BrotherSisterIncest or ParentalIncest is at 0.25), due to her parents '''and''' grandparents being uncle and niece. Despite that, somehow, Maria Antonia was relatively healthy, lived to adulthood and married someone that was not in her family or a relative, but the marriage was unhappy, and after three pregnancies, she died at the age of 23 a couple of months after her final child was born due to her body being weakened. Her surviving child died at seven from smallpox, and one year later, his great-uncle Charles II died as well, extinguishing the Habsburg of Spain forever.

* Vittorio Emanuele III was the product of generations of RoyalInbreeding (his parents being first cousins, with three of his grandparents being ''also'' first cousins), owing to this his short stature and poor health. In addition to this he suffered from the traditional spartan education of House Savoy, severe parental neglect, and [[HarmfulToMinors at nine he saw the prime minister getting seriously wounded when he put himself between his father and a would-be assassin]]. As a result he grew up shy and withdrawn, and somehow missed that, in an effort to keep his descendance from being inbred, [[ShipperOnDeck every single royal house in Europe agreed to set him up with Elena of Montenegro, that wasn't related to the House of Savoy in any way]], eventually resulting in appointing one UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini as his prime minister and [[UsefulNotes/FascistItaly twenty years of dictatorship]]. His saving grace was that he was conscious of his flaws, and purposefully caused the failure of his betrothal to a German princess out of fear of inbreeding (resulting in the "conjure" to get him married to Elena of Montenegro) and let his wife raise his son less harshly than he himself had been.

* Boris Godunov was a generally reasonable monarch, despite laying the groundwork for Russian serfdom. However in 1604, a young Polish man claimed to be Dimitri. Boris was already unpopular for his weak claim to the throne and a recent famine gave Dimitri peasant support. Boris probably would have won the war if he hadn’t died in 1605, leaving his sixteen-year-old son Fyodor II in charge. Due to his youth many boyars defected to Dimitri’s side and Fyodor was murdered.
* Dimitri only lasted eleven months on the throne until he alienated the Russian boyars so much (by marrying a Catholic, being friends with a Catholic country, and wanting to make Russia Catholic) that they murdered him and [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill shot his ashes out of a cannon back to Poland.]] They then put the old Vasily Shuisky on the throne, however soon another imposter emerged claiming to be both Tsarevich Dimitri [[RefugeInAudacity and the Dimitri they shot out of a cannon.]] He also made it Moscow before being killed by one of his supporters. A third Dimitri emerged who never had much support before being murdered. In 1613 the ‘Time of Troubles’ ended with Mikhail Romanov’s election as Tsar.
* [[UsefulNotes/PeterTheGreat Peter The Great]] and his son Alexei never got on. Alexei opposed Peter’s reforms and he eventually tried to flee. Peter interrogated and tortured his own son until he died. [[UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat Catherine the Great]] had a notoriously AwfulWeddedLife with her husband Peter, a Manchild and [[BoomerangBigot Russophobe and Prussophile]]. Within a year of his ascension she deposed and probably murdered him. She also had a ''very'' contentious relationship with her son Paul, who was an extraordinarily difficult person himself (he would exile officers [[ReassignedToAntarctica to Siberia]] for a [[FelonyMisdemeanor misplaced coat button]]) and likely organised ''his'' assassination to ensure the throne to her favourite grandson, Alexander I. (Alexander probably consented to all this, at least tacitly, but he did feel [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone horrendously guilty about it]] and perhaps never intended for him to be assassinated outright.)

* George II's son Levan was a good king but a very poor father. His eldest son Alexander should have been his heir, but Alexander was TheUnfavorite and his half-brothers were treated better. When Levan died Alexander and his half-brother El-Mirza both claimed the throne, leading to a civil war that ended with Alexander's victory and the deaths of El-Mirza and two of his brothers. Alexander later faced yet more family troubles. His son David seized the throne and forced him to abdicate. David died a year later, Alexander took the throne again... and three years later was murdered by his younger son Constantine. At the same time Constantine also murdered one of his brothers and several nobles, but he never got to rule because he was killed in the ensuing rebellion.

* Ghias ad-Din, Rusudan's husband, was a Seljuq nobleman who converted to Christianity when he married her. Records disagree on the circumstances but he probably had no choice in either the marriage or the conversion -- one account says he was a PoliticalHostage and Rusudan ordered him to marry her, while another says the marriage was arranged by his father who ordered him to convert. Whatever the truth, though, he was a teenager at the time and at least twelve years younger than Rusudan. The marriage was [[AwfulWeddedLife a disaster]]. At some point in the 1220s Rusudan sent Ghias ad-Din away from the royal court, reportedly because he walked in on her in bed with a slave. When the Khwarezmids invaded Georgia he defected to their side and reconverted to Islam. When the Khwarezmids left, he redefected to the Georgian side and reconverted to Christianity. He disappears from history after this, and some historians believe he was killed on Rusudan's orders.
* Tamar/Gurju Khatun, Rusudan and Ghias ad-Din's daughter, was [[ArrangedMarriage married on her mother's orders]] [[KissingCousins to her cousin]] Kaykhusraw II of Rum but falsely accused (by her own mother!) of an affair with another cousin, David VII of Georgia. Kaykhusraw believed the accusation and as punishment he [[DomesticAbuse beat Tamar]] then forced her to convert to Islam. When Kaykhusraw died he designated Tamar's son his heir, but the boy died young -- possibly murdered -- and a succession crisis ensued. It was resolved when Mu'in al-Din Suleiman Pervâne seized the throne by murdering Tamar's stepson and marrying Tamar. History doesn't record if she had any choice in this. Pervâne was later executed by the Mongols in 1277 (one account claims that the Mongol khan ordered his subjects to [[ImAHumanitarian eat Pervâne's corpse]]) and Tamar's fate is uncertain.

* Creator/IbnKhaldun, in talking about North African bedouins, made the observation that basically every monarchy is doomed to go through this, especially when they engage in conquest. The first generation is tribal and not quite civilised, but also tough and a natural leader. The second generation can see what made the first great, but growing up in a castle lacks a little perspective. The third generation goes soft, and subsequent generations get softer and softer until someone else sees an opportunity for conquest and takes over. He had the experience of being close enough to the Islamic dynasties of Spain, which were an excellent example of this paradigm, but it's a startlingly appropriate observation -- practically every great dynasty was essentially started by a rough hick whose descendants became more and more educated.
* UsefulNotes/{{Uganda}}: Mwanga II of Buganda was furious when the male members of his harem converted to Protestantism and Catholicism and promptly refused to have sex with him. In 1886 he ordered all converts in his court to either renounce their new religion or die. At least thirty chose to die, and Mwanga had at least twenty-two of them burnt alive.

* UsefulNotes/{{Thailand}}:
** Before the twentieth century the Chakri dynasty was right up there with the Pharaohs for the title of "most in-bred royal family". Not only were they polygamists, they practiced BrotherSisterIncest. The first king, Rama I, had thirty-two consorts (it's unknown how many were his sisters or cousins) and forty-two children. That's a TangledFamilyTree all on its own, but it just got worse from then on.
** Amarindra/[[SpellMyNameWithAnS Amarinthra]], Rama I's wife, was furious when her husband paid more attention to his concubine Khamwaen than to her. So she beat Khamwaen with a wooden stick. Rama I threatened to murder Amarindra for this, forcing her to flee for her life.
** Rama II married fifty-three women, including his cousin and at least one of his half-sisters, and had ''seventy-three'' children. Three of his sons became kings after him. Rama III had forty-two consorts and fifty-one children, but didn't choose any of his children to be successors. So when he died the throne went to his half-brother Rama IV (better-known as Mongkut; yes, the King in ''Theatre/TheKingAndI''), who chose another half-brother, Pinklao, to be vice-king. Pinklao had fifty-eight children to an unknown number of consorts. Mongkut outdid him and all of his other relatives: he had sixty-one consorts, including three of his great-nieces, and ''eighty-two'' children.
** Rama V (better-known as Chulalongkorn) had ninety-two consorts, including five of his half-sisters and three cousins, and seventy-six children.
** Things became slightly saner when Vajiravudh took the throne as Rama VI. He only had four consorts, three of whom were his cousins, and only one child. Prajadhipok, [=AKA=] Rama VII, was the first monarch in the dynasty who wasn't a polygamist. His only wife was also his cousin, and they had no children -- probably a good thing considering the amount of incest in their family tree. After that the Thai royals stopped marrying such close relatives. Unfortunately some of them became screwed-up in other ways; Rama VIII died under very suspicious circumstances, in what looked like a murder clumsily disguised as a suicide. And Vajiralongkorn, the currently-reigning king, is notorious for being the most unpopular king Thailand has ever had. Among other things he has a history of marrying women then divorcing them acrimoniously, and in the 1990s he abducted his own daughter after her mother took her to live in Britain.
* UsefulNotes/{{Laos}}:
** Nang Keo Phimpha -- an [[RedBaron epithet]] meaning "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast The Cruel]]"; her real name has been lost to history -- spent ten years ruling Lan Xang through a series of {{Puppet King}}s who she murdered. Out of seven kings who ruled under her, all of them were assassinated and none ruled longer than three years. After the seventh king's death she decided to rule the country herself. A few months later she was overthrown and executed [[EvilOldFolks at the age of ninety-five]].
** Lan Xang faced a SuccessionCrisis in the late 17th century. King Sourigna Vongsa/[[SpellMyNameWithAnS Suliyavongsa]] had two sons, but one of them was executed for adultery and the other was caught having an affair with [[BrotherSisterIncest his half-sister]] and fled to avoid being executed too. When Sourigna Vongsa died a nobleman seized the throne. He was deposed a year later by Sourigna Vongsa's cousin, who in turn was overthrown and executed by Sourigna Vongsa's nephew Setthathirath II.
** Prince Souphanouvong became a communist and in 1975 he led a coup against King Sisavang Vatthana. The king, queen, crown prince, and the king's brothers were imprisoned in a camp where they disappeared, [[RulingFamilyMassacre presumed murdered]].
* UsefulNotes/{{Vietnam}}:
** Prince Mỹ Đường of the Nguyễn dynasty was accused of [[ParentalIncest sleeping with his mother]]. As a result he was banished and his mother was imprisoned for the rest of her life. The accusation was probably a lie; the emperor at the time, Minh Mạng, was Mỹ Đường's uncle, some people thought that Mỹ Đường had a better right to the throne than Minh Mạng, and the scandal guaranteed that Mỹ Đường would never become emperor.

* UsefulNotes/{{Nepal}} doesn't have a monarchy anymore because of this. The Nepalese monarchy had lasted 240 years when in 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra went AxCrazy, gunned down most of his relatives -- including [[SelfMadeOrphan his parents the king and queen]] -- and then shot himself. By law, Dipendra was crowned Nepal's new king, despite being comatose and accused of multiple murders. Dipendra quickly succumbed to his injuries, and his uncle Gyanendra was crowned king, despite being widely suspected of having orchestrated the massacre -- so whether it was Dipendra or Gyanendra, Nepal made at least one mass murderer its king. Gyanendra went on to become particularly authoritarian and tried to abolish the Parliament, which so pissed off the Nepalese people that they abolished the monarchy and established a republic (making peace with the [[DirtyCommunists Maoist rebels]] to do so).
* In UsefulNotes/{{India}}, Tukojirao Holkar III of Indore had a concubine named Mumtaz who wanted to escape his harem. So she fled to Bombay and took shelter with a man named Bawla. Holkar's men tracked her down, murdered Bawla, and tried to abduct Mumtaz. She testified against Holkar in court, and he was forced to abdicate because of the ensuing scandal.

** Charles II's mother, Mariana of Austria, was first betrothed to her cousin Balthasar Charles, Prince of Asturias. Balthasar Charles died when he was only sixteen, so his father UsefulNotes/PhilipIV [[LoveFatherLoveSondecided to marry Mariana instead]]. Mariana was fourteen. Philip IV was ''forty-four, triple as old as she is''. They had five children, only two of whom survived: the aforementioned Charles, and a daughter named Margaret Theresa.

*** UsefulNotes/{{Tutankhamun}}, the last Eighteenth Dynasty king of the blood of Ahmose I, was revealed to be a petri dish of diseases, including the very rare Köhler disease II, which likely factored into his death. He was also said to have large front incisors, a trait passed down from the Eighteenth Dynasty royal family. He also had a cleft palate, which would've given him a speech impediment and caused difficulty feeding as an infant. Skeletal deformities afflicted the two stillborn fetuses, identified as his daughters, which were entombed with Tut as well. On the other hand, Tutankhamun gives every impression of actually having been a fairly active young monarch (albeit one with a limp): the chariots and throwing sticks[[note]]Throwing sticks were a bit like non-returning boomerangs, used to flush game birds out of vegetation so one could shoot them with arrows[[/note]] with which he was buried clearly saw actual use (at least, the ones that weren't clearly ceremonial), and the armor found in his tomb, which would have fit his body, bears the distinctive marks of actual battle. It seems that whatever illnesses Tuntankhamun suffered, they weren't enough to keep him from the traditional pharaoh's role as a hunter and warrior. Modern consensus is that his diseases did not kill him directly; rather, he died after breaking his good leg in a chariot accident, which caused an infection, and that infection (exacerbated by chronic malaria--which wasn't exactly uncommon in Egypt back then) is what killed him so young.

** Maria Antonia of Austria was the only surviving child of Margaret Theresa and Leopold I, and was also the most inbred member of the entire Habsburg family, with a consanguineity coefficient of over 0.30 (for comparison, Charles II had an inbreeding coefficient of .254, and [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire Daenerys Targaryen]] is at .375), meaning that it's extremely high, so freakishingly inbred that her siblings didn't survive, and that she's more inbred than a child between parent and child or two full-siblings, since both her parents '''and''' grandparents were uncle and niece. Despite that, somehow, Maria Antonia was relatively healthy, lived to adulthood and married someone that was not in her family or a relative, but the marriage was unhappy, and after three pregnancies, she died at the age of 23 a couple of months after her final child was born due to her body being weakened. Her surviving child died at seven from smallpox, and one year later, his great-uncle Charles II died as well, extinguishing the Habsburg of Spain forever.

* The by-word for Spanish royal insanity is Queen Joanna of Aragon and Castille, commonly known as "Juana la Loca" -- "Joanna the Mad". The extent of her madness is a matter of debate. Scholars suggest it derives roughly equally from genetics (she is theorised to have at least some form of hereditary depression) and her [[AbusiveParents unhappy family life]] -- which, given the nature of royal families, is heavily intertwined with politics.

** Joanna's husband was Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy, the son of [[UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire Holy Roman Emperor]] Maximilian I. Philip was from the House of Habsburg, a famous and powerful royal family -- so much so that they engaged in ''extensive'' RoyalInbreeding to prevent power from falling into the wrong hands. They wouldn't marry non-royalty (it was beneath them), they wouldn't marry their enemies (of course), and after the Protestant Reformation, they wouldn't marry non-Catholics either (unless they converted). All of this drastically reduced the pool of possible marriage partners, so they kept [[KissingCousins marrying their cousins]] as the only people they could trust. Philip's marriage to Joanna was a strategic union, and a politically shrewd one, but it only bought them a little time (especially as the Trastámara family was already pretty inbred, so it wasn't a great source of genetic diversity).

** There's a sort of interesting [[WhatCouldHaveBeen divergence point]] in history here. Joanna's younger sister was Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII of England. Their daughter Mary, in the grand Habsburg tradition, married her cousin Philip II, Charles V's son. They never had children (and Philip eventually remarried his niece Anne of Austria) -- but if they had, and England had managed to stay Catholic, that could have given the Habsburgs control of damn near half of Europe if things had shaken out right -- but perhaps at the cost of the integrity of the English royal bloodline.
* [[RoyalBrat Don Carlos]] the rebellious son of Philip II and grandson of Charles V, was insane to the point of being physically dangerous and would take swipes at passing servants with a knife. He once attacked UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria with a sword and almost managed to kill him, and one day, when chasing female servants, he had an almost fatal head injury that caused his madness to spiral even more out of control, even trying to assassinate his own father. Philip ended up removing him from the line of succession on the basis that he was unfit for the throne, and he spent the last six months of his life under house arrest before starving himself to death.
* UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain was the last Habsburg King of Spain. They called him "Carlos el Hechizado" or "Charles the Bewitched", and it's not hard to see why -- that's his portrait in the page image, and that's as ''flattering'' as they could make it. He was severely physically ''and'' mentally disabled, mostly as a result of the extensive RoyalInbreeding practised by the Habsburg family -- he was descended from "Juana la Loca" ''fourteen'' times, with less than two centuries separating them. That chin is the most prominent example of the famous "Habsburg lip", which he had so prominently that he couldn't close his mouth (that's why his tongue is poking out). [[Website/{{Wikipedia}} The Other Wiki]] describes Charles as "short, lame, epileptic, senile, and completely bald before 35, always on the verge of death but repeatedly [[WhyWontYouDie baffling Christendom by continuing to live]]." Since Charles had no heir (and possibly was incapable of reproducing)[[note]]The contemporary autopsy report is [[BodyHorror very revealing]] -- it claims that Charles' body "contained not a single drop of blood, his heart looked like the size of a grain of pepper, his lungs were corroded, his intestines were putrid and gangrenous, he had a single testicle which was as black as carbon and his head was full of water." The accuracy of that report is disputed, but he never did produce an heir, so maybe it was[[/note]], his death sparked the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheSpanishSuccession, where two competing branches of the family in Austria and France[[note]]Dynastically, the French branch was more closely related, but through a female line, while the Austrian claimant was more distantly related but in an exclusively male line. (The Austrian Habsburgs were even more closely related than that, having married their Spanish cousins a few times, but none of their female-line connections were closer than the French branch. So a big chunk of their legitimacy was that at the end of the day they were the seniormost male-line descendants of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile.) Legally, the issue was that the Spanish realms had used male-preference primogeniture (allowing not only inheritance in the female line but women to rule in their own right if they had no brothers) before Charles V's succession as Carlos I; however, the fact that the ''Habsburg'' house law traditionally followed Salic law muddied the waters as to whether succession in the female line was still permitted. Politically,the French branch was led by Charles' grand-nephew, who also happened to be the grandson of UsefulNotes/LouisXIV of France--so most of Europe basically ganged up on the French to prevent them from gaining control of Spain as well[[/note]] fought for control of the Spanish crown. About the only non-Habsburg genes Charles had received in the last four generations were from [[{{Squick}} his father's syphilis]], which by then was like throwing swamp water up a backed-up sewage line.
** Charles II's mother, Mariana of Austria, was first betrothed to her cousin Balthasar Charles, Prince of Asturias. Balthasar Charles died when he was only sixteen, so [[LoveFatherLoveSon his father Philip IV decided to marry Mariana instead]]. Mariana was fourteen. Philip IV was ''forty-four, triple as old as she is''. They had five children, only two of whom survived: the aforementioned Charles, and a daughter named Margaret Theresa.

* UsefulNotes/YeonsangunOfJoseon had the dubious honour of being the worst tyrant in all of Korean history before North Korea became a thing. When he first took the throne, he seemed competent and mentally stable, but that quickly changed. Yeonsan had an [[EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas obsession with restoring his late mother's reputation]], which led him to launch two purges of the scholars who were even tenuously connected (if at all) to his mother's deposition and execution. He went as far as to punish officials who weren't in the palace when his mother died, on the grounds that [[InsaneTrollLogic they did nothing to stop it]]. Two of his father's concubines considered most responsible for his mother's execution were beaten to death. He fatally injured his grandmother during an argument and murdered an official who confronted him about his behaviour. In his later years, he drove people from their houses to build his hunting grounds, [[DisproportionateRetribution exiled a minister for spilling a drink]], and kidnapped a thousand women and turned a former university into his personal brothel. His people finally had enough, staged a coup, and overthrew him. It's no coincidence that even though he reigned as king, he's remembered only as "Prince Yeonsan" (the literal translation of "Yeonsan-gun") and not as "King Yeonsan" (which would be "Yeonsan-wang").

** Maria Antonia of Austria was the only surviving child of Margaret Theresa and Leopold I, and was also the most inbred member of the entire Habsburg family, with a consanguineity coefficient of over 0.30, meaning that it's extremely high, so freakishingly inbred that her siblings didn't survive, and that she's more inbred than a child between parent and child or two full-siblings, since both her parents '''and''' grandparents were uncle and niece. Despite that, somehow, Maria Antonia was relatively healthy, lived to adulthood and married someone that was not in her family or a relative, but the marriage was unhappy, and after three pregnancies, she died at the age of 23 a couple of months after her final child was born due to her body being weakened. Her surviving child died at seven from smallpox, and one year later, his great-uncle Charles II died as well, extinguishing the Habsburg of Spain forever.

* King Yeongjo and his son UsefulNotes/CrownPrinceSado had a difficult relationship, to say the least -- Yeongjo was [[WellDoneSonGuy never happy with anything Sado did]] and went out of his way to publicly humiliate him. Sado, for his part, was already mentally ill, suffering from hallucinations and a bizarre phobia of clothes. Over time, his mental state deteriorated, and he became violent. In 1757, he beheaded a eunuch and carried the severed head around with him. He started killing palace servants, raped ladies-in-waiting, was abusive toward his wife, threatened to kill his sister, and beat his concubine to death. In 1762, Yeongjo dealt with Sado by ordering him to climb into a rice chest, [[CruelAndUnusualDeath locking him inside, and leaving him to starve to death]].

** Joanna was the product of [[UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs a very strategic political union]]. Her father Ferdinand was King of Aragon and from the House of Trastámara (which produced the aforementioned Peter I). Her mother Isabella was Queen of Castille in her own right, and Joanna inherited both and was a legitimate queen. However, being a woman, she became a catalyst for all the men in her life trying to exert power through her. Ferdinand basically considered himself king of both Aragon and Castile and was particularly intent on exerting power.