Inbreeding
Though it is no longer a common practice, inbreeding and inter-family marriages are believed to be one cause of history’s resultant spread of the hemophilia gene.
Having started from Queen Victoria’s marriage to her first cousin and later forcing her children to marry within the family, Queen Victoria began breeding the ‘royal disease’ (hemophilia B) through the mutation of the F9 gene resulting in changes in RNA splicing of the X-chromosome. Though it didn’t seem serious that royals took longer to heal when wounded at the time, the inbreeding of the royal disease hemophilia B had a particularly notable effect on the downfall of the royal family of the Romanovs in Russia.
Queen Victoria may have had good intentions in keeping close family ties by arranging inter-family marriages. However, the mutation of the F9 gene that led to the spread of the recessive, X-linked genetic blood disorder called hemophilia B may be something she never imagined she’d have caused. Consequently, the bid for power played a vital role in the high incidence of mutated alleles and congenital hemophilia B within royals at the time.
