The Wild World Of Royal Incest
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Hello everyone, Sekou Yi here. And I'm Gabby. And welcome back to the podcast, my hoes. Welcome back to something that we are getting back into, the fun stuff. You've already probably looked at the title here. So describing it as fun stuff since they've already seen the title is so funny business. Maybe is that is that better? Is it funny? Is it funny? Could it be?

I don't know. You have to answer that with the episode. No, at this point, since I'm telling the story, I'm asking the question and you're going to have to decide if it's actually funny. Literally, some of the stuff that we're going to be talking about here with the course, because, OK, we're talking about inbreeding. OK, guys, you already saw the title. We're talking about royalty and history and inbreeding. And when I was initially doing this, this whole thing wasn't actually supposed to be a podcast episode. This was supposed to be an episode that would be going on to YouTube. And then I was writing it. I was like, you know what?

I didn't have something properly prepared this week for an episode, and I have a chance to make this even longer so I can turn it into a podcast episode because there is so much incest in history. Surprising. Shocking, even. Yeah. Um...

Look, look, when I put out that post on Patreon asking you all what it is that you wanted to see, I know that people didn't just answer incest. Okay, please don't think that that is what it is that I am saying. But it does seem like the overwhelming majority of people wanted to return to all the weird parts of history that we largely would cover later.

kind of in the beginning when we started out. You know, we did a lot of food history at that time, and I thought that stuff was awesome. But as time runs on, you know, you start needing to go into different areas. And we started to cover a lot more stuff with military conflict and other kinds of things. But I still love the weird stuff. Like incest. Yeah. As a man from Kentucky to where I, you know, when I married my wife, I had to fill out a section of a form confirming that we were not, in fact, related to one another.

Why not cover in reading? I love your segue to that. That's not even a segue. That's just that's just like the reality of it. Like, I thought that would be great because, OK, not the incest part. No, the whole thing about me having to fill out that form. It was hilarious because obviously those of you listening who have seen us, I'm white. Gabby is not white.

Shocking. She is. She is not. And so standing up there and having to fill out something that confirmed that we are not related is truly hilarious to me. Yeah.

Oh, and just as a heads up before it is that we begin things here today, my friends, if you all want to travel with me from December 3rd through December 4th, there is actually a special thing that is going on right now where if you sign up for a trip, you get a $50 discount on it. So if you want to travel to Turkey or Mongolia with me, which still has some early bird spots left for a $100 discount, then by all means, click the link down in my description and have some fun with us. There are so many more adventures that we are yet to have, and I can't wait to see you all there.

Anyway, for the meat of this inbreeding subject, we are naturally going to have to focus on royal inbreeding. There's unfortunately a lot of examples that we can pull up in history of inbreeding and way more dark terms. Like, yeah, the subject we're going to be talking about here today is disturbing. But if you go and compare that to some of the stuff that you see of actual inbreeding,

crime level stuff. Like think of the, Gabby, have you heard of the cases of like the families that the kids were basically locked up and then there was generational incest that were in cycles of abuse? No. Okay. That's a story. We're not covering that story because this is looking at more the history of this and not just crime. But yeah, that's really disturbing stuff that you might want to do for your own show. I'm going to have to pass on that one, bud.

Alright, well, look. What we're talking about here today, we're talking about the whole thing with royal incest. The most literal sense of this is true. Generations of inbreeding would oftentimes lead to physical and mental characteristics, traits, and deformities from the promulgation of recessive genes within the family that in some cases would kill off members of said family. This is something that would oftentimes, as time went on, lead to the destruction of royal families itself.

Now, when I say that, my friends, I am not saying it is inherently bad to have recessive genes. But for most people, carrying a recessive gene isn't necessarily a death sentence, right? But if you put the both together, you'll for sure get whatever that is. Exactly. So if...

someone is then restricted to only picking a partner from their family, that chance of something going really wrong can start to rise dramatically as successive generations collect identical or near identical bits of genetic code, which is a state known as

I'm going to butcher the pronunciation for it. Gabby, do you want to go ahead and say the word? Homozygosity. Homozygosity. Yeah. With it being the same, because that's what happens where your genetics are just the same going down. There are family trees that we're going to be covering that are less of family trees and more ladders because they just keep on going across and straight down. Yeah. You want like a significant amount of genetic diversity.

in any population. So exactly. Now, as for why inbreeding happens, it can be due to a variety of different factors, including geographic isolation. Like, you know, if there's people that are on an isolated island or something, you know, you're not going to be able to

get many outside sources. Typically, you could have social restrictions where based off your caste or wealth or family values or whatever that you're not actually allowed to marry outside of a certain group. It could be from your culture, religious beliefs or rare but very brutal in cases of abuse, which again, we're going to be skipping past those even though that is something that is real that can happen in history.

Now, some groups may simply want to follow familiar traditional paths, marrying people from similar stations who over time, because of that, tend to become all kind of related. Go figure. People from the same family are likely to be at similar levels in society or wealth. So oftentimes a cousin becomes a very strong match. When talking about things geographically, this is one of the reasons why the highest rates of some of the highest rates of

Birth defects are in societies with high rates of cousin marriage, which is why you typically see this in populations such as in Pakistani groups. Because if I don't have the statistic immediately in front of me, but I remember seeing it before that it was something along the lines of half of marriages were between cousins in Pakistan. And that with time creates quite a number of issues. Liking your cousins enough to marry them is wild. Yeah.

Now, historically... Not that I don't like my cousins, just to clarify. Just to clarify, but you don't like them in that way. Right. Like, not like that. I like my cousins. I don't like like my cousins, put it in the middle school way. So, historically speaking, royal dynasties have been especially prone to inbreeding as royal family members typically want to keep their wealth, their power, and their prestige intact.

Well, within the family itself. Marrying one's cousin, uncle, or whatever allows you to consolidate your familial holdings so that land and thrones don't somehow find their way into other families if someone ends up having an accident and falls off their horse and dies.

Or someone dies in childbirth, which leads to inheritance. That is actually one of the groups we're going to be talking about is the Habsburgs. And they managed to inherit so much land from outside sources from just literally unfortunate accidents happening where they were the only ones left to inherit. And then they just kept on marrying each other, which in turn kept it in the family for generations. Okay, so if we want to keep our wealth in the family, we have to do that?

No, we don't. We don't have to, Gabby, but that is a technique, a strategy that has been used historically. You don't want to secure our $200,000 house. Gabby, listen. For future generations. Listen, listen, listen, listen. All 1500 square feet. There is a joke that I made with our daughter that said, oh, Joya, you want to be treated like a princess? Yes. All right. Time to marry you off to the king of Poland and secure an alliance.

I would rather do that than offer my daughter to a cousin. I mean, she doesn't have any cousins. I know, but you get the idea. Like, that is not the level that I want. Thank you.

So, social beliefs, like ones that claim that certain people are special or literally divine, like descended from the gods, can make marriage with those of common or outside blood significantly more unappealing. After all, why would a demigod go and dilute their holy, sacred bloodline with mortal genes, after all? You know?

So, yeah, on that note, with the background out of the way, I want to cover a series of examples throughout history of inbreeding just so you can understand then how bad it gets. And of course, I said this from the very get go, Gabby, if we are talking incest in history and considering we literally just left Austria, what family do we have to mention? The Habsburgs, but also the Ptolemies. Yes. Yeah. The Habsburgs for Austria and the Ptolemies, which actually on this, I didn't put the Ptolemies in here. And the blue people from Kentucky.

The Blue Man Group, if you will. That is one of the examples that I would give of just like a general incest story due to isolation rather than the historical cases that we're talking about here. The Blue, the Blue Family would actually be a fascinating episode in and of itself, which I feel like I've said that about like three different things here so far as this story has gone on.

Either way, yes, the classic example that one could give in this scenario is the Habsburgs, and I would be doing a disservice if I did not touch upon them. Like, a lot of you who are listening to this may have even seen the video that I did on YouTube a year, I think, ago it was, which was quite literally titled, How Inbred Were the Habsburgs? And in short...

The answer is a lot. Like, I'm pretty sure I even put the episode up as a bonus episode here for the podcast. But to go and explain that, and we're not going to cover the entire history of this family, but the Habsburgs are one of those royal families who are relatively well known in the minds of the public and are, to a great extent, the perfect example of the downsides of inbreeding.

The most perfect example of that, or I guess you could say imperfect, is Charles II, King of Spain, the last of the Spanish Habsburgs and an imbecile whose premature death at the age of 39 would usher in a period of dynastic chaos which would lead to the War of Spanish Succession and millions of people would die.

all because of his inbreeding. Hello everyone, it's Dr. E here, and before it is that we get back into today's episode, I would just like to thank today's sponsor, Rocket Money. Now, for those of you who do not know what Rocket Money is, I am not sure how, again, considering how many ads I've done for them here in the past. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps to find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitor your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. It is genuinely one of the best things that I have ever utilized, and I say that full stop because, well...

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Now, these conflicts between France and other European powers were one of those turning points in history, major turning points, mind you. France's position as the unchallenged supreme power of Europe, because they were, they were the dominant land force at this time,

That was ended here, primarily due to the fact that they basically bankrupted themselves from the war and overextended themselves drastically militarily, which all of this was because Louis, the Sun King, specifically wanted to secure the Spanish throne for his grandson.

Really? Yeah, literally. That's it? That's it. Because think about it this, Gabby. You have... Spain was the preeminent empire of the previous couple centuries, right? It was the state that was responsible for all the colonization or the majority of the colonization in the New World. All of the wealth of it, the silver and gold mines, the raw resources and goods. This was flooding into Europe because of Spain in the previous 200 years. So...

They had fallen quite a bit from what they were, but were still quite powerful, technically speaking, in the 1700s. And so or could be at least on paper. So if France and Spain ended up combining resources, then this is something that...

That could have been that would have been easily the most powerful empire in all of Europe. So we talk about royal incest and the fact that they kept their wealth and power consolidated. What if they wanted to divorce like they're

Brother or husband? Oh, great question. Normally, you didn't want to get the divorce unless you were able to retain the land. So as an example, in a royal marriage, typically a wife comes into a wedding with a dowry. So she has her own money, her own land, her own other stuff that though the husband can get access to some of it, sometimes depending upon what happens with the actual marriage negotiation, it is expected that at the time of the divorce that the wife still retains her dowry.

So if something happens to the husband and the land gets inherited and taken by a brother or cousin or son, the widow or divorcee, which in most cases would literally be just a widow, would still have her dowry to sustain herself. Okay. So, okay.

I'm still... I know it's a confusing thing, especially when talking about inheritance laws and this kind of thing. But think about it this way. Let's say that you had a person that she was a countess, right? Yeah. She married another or she wasn't a countess. I know, but she's coming in with her own land and whatnot. But what if... They're all... It's all the same land, though. They're cousins. They're siblings. They're... Now you see the point. They didn't get divorced when all this stuff happened. Were they allowed to have...

that were outside of the family? No. No, no. Because this is Christianity. Like, that's not a thing that would be happening this time. I'll give you a prime example of something. So they didn't just step out? When has Christianity ever stopped anyone from... Legally. Legally, it would stop this here and they wouldn't do things. Like, that's the thing. Legally, people would still have kids out of wedlock, of course. Yeah, that people did that. But...

It didn't mean that they were legally allowed to inherit. Final question. Did the Habsburgs realize they started to look a little wonky? Yes. And they were still into it. They were like, I love your... It was this thing that was done for power necessity. Jaw? I'll give you an example. Oh my God. Yes. So remember how we were touring the Schönbrunn Palace there in Austria and there's a whole thing with Maria Theresa and having, I think, 16 children? Yeah. Okay. So the thing is...

She was not, she was the Empress, yes, but she wasn't actually the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. She was the ruler of the Habsburg Empire, but it was actually her husband who was the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire at that time. So it's a bit of a complicated thing where she still retained large control. Like she had arguably more power being the ruler of the Habsburg Empire there within the Holy Roman Empire that she was the dominant force within all that.

Okay. People still could retain their own lands. It's just entirely dependent upon, you know, their individual circumstances. The thing is, by the time that it gets to Charles II and, you know, his actual genetic issues,

This is something that went on for a while. Like, this is a story of genetics as well as history because historians have long assumed that there was something actually rotten in the gene pool of the Spanish Habsburgs. As an example of that, here's an excerpt from an online biography about Charles II.

The Habsburg king, Carlos II of Spain, was sadly degenerated with an enormous misshapen head. His Habsburg jaw stood out so much that his two rows of teeth could not meet. He was unable to chew. His tongue was so large that he was barely able to speak. His intellect was similarly disabled. His brief life consisted chiefly of passage from prolonged infancy to premature senility.

Carlos' family was anxious only to prolong his days with little thought about his education so that he could barely read or write. He had been fed by wet nurses until the age of five or six and was not allowed to walk until almost fully grown.

Even then, he was unable to walk properly because his legs would not support him and he fell several times. His body remained that of an invalid child. The nature of his upbringing, the inadequacy of his education, the stiff etiquette of his court, his dependence upon his mother and his superstition helped to create a mentally retarded and hypersensitive monarch. That is an incredibly harsh description, but it's accurate.

How then did it get that bad, you may wonder? Well, that is because of 150 years of continuous first cousin and uncle-niece marriages. Which, mind you, when I say that, it's obviously not good to marry a close relative. It's made worse, though, when it's not just you that does it, but it's your entire family again and again and again. So with each prospective first cousin or uncle-niece marriage, they are in fact already closer related than the previous generation.

In the case of Charles II, this was particularly bad. And I highly recommend you check out the video that I did diving into the full history of it and how it happened. But in short, his parents were uncle and niece. Okay. So House of Dragon had everybody all like rooting for this type of relationship. And now we know where it leads. So go look in the mirror, everybody, and think about what you supported. Think about it.

Yeah. Yeah. The Targaryen thing is a very I think there was an argument in it that because their blood was magical that they didn't have as many effects, but it did affect them psychologically as time went on. Is Damon right? Damon was the. Yeah. Yeah. Prince Damon, I think, is specifically. Yeah. Like the brother of the king who was going mad at leprosy and everything else.

So, yeah, his parents were uncle and niece. His father was the child of a second cousin marriage, which is actually, you know, not bad. His mother was a first cousin marriage. His grandfather on his father's side was the result of an uncle niece marriage. His grandmother, a first cousin marriage on his mother's side. His grandfather was the result of a first cousin marriage and his grandmother was

Well, she was a child of the previous second cousin marriage that we already mentioned from the previous side of the other family. They were they were wrapped up together. So at this point, you can then see how it all kind of intertwines as the generations go back and intermingle. And it gets really bad.

From the year 1516 to 1700, it was estimated that over 80% of marriages within the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty were consanguineous, which, in other words, that means they were marriages between close-blood relatives. Not just like distant cousins, close-blood relatives. The union would often take form in the marriage of between first cousins, double first cousins, uncle-nieces,

It was bad. And infant and child mortality would rise to 50% among Spanish Habsburgs, which is much higher than the average of the period, which I think if I recall correctly was like 20 or 30%. The rate of their children dying before, you know, reaching even being toddlers was horrible. Like 50% of those kids would not make it.

Charles II ended up being more inbred mathematically than what would have happened if two full-blooded siblings had children together. And that is saying something. Wow. Anyway, at this point, I'm not going to get more into that. If you want to hear more about specifically Charles II and the story with the Habsburgs, you need to go and check out my full video. But in the end, Charles was never able to have children with his wife, Maria Anna, as Charles was effectively incapable of doing so. His autopsy later would reveal that his one remaining testicle had atrophied.

In fact, the doctor who performed the autopsy wrote that his body, quote, did not contain a single drop of blood. His heart was the size of a peppercorn, his lungs corroded, his intestines rotten and gangrenous, he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.

And so, after Charles II's death in November of 1700, the question of succession was more pressing than ever before. But rather than reaching a peaceful conclusion to this tragic tale, what instead would happen is that you would see a 13-year conflict known as the War of Spanish Succession, which would begin, and the Spanish Habsburg reign was over. Millions of people would die. Yeah, fun times. Anyway, with that out of the way, we can then talk about another historical inbreeding example in other parts of the world.

Next up, Zoroastrianism. Now, when I explain this, this is going to require some context. For those of you who have not

heard of this before Gabby I think I've told you a little bit about Zoroastrianism before when I told you about things I'm playing like Crusader Kings and other stuff do you remember that yeah so Zoroastrianism for those of you who are not familiar this is an ancient Persian religion that may have originated as early as 4,000 years ago we don't really know it is arguably the world's first proper monotheistic faith it is one of the oldest religions that is still in existence and

Basically, the way this thing works is that you have the prophet Zoroaster, who is regarded as the father of Zoroastrianism, and most of what we know about Zoroaster comes from something called the Avesta, which is a collection of Zoroastrian religious scriptures. Now, it's unclear as to why exactly Zoroaster or when Zoroaster may have lived, though most linguistic and archaeological evidence points to an early date, sometime between 1500 and 1200 BC.

Maybe it was earlier, maybe it was after that, we don't really know. Zoroaster is thought to have been born in what is now northeastern Iran or southwestern Afghanistan, and he may have lived in a tribe that followed an ancient religion with many gods, you know, polytheistic, and the religion likely would have been similar to that of Hinduism, potentially.

But according to Zoroastrian tradition, what happened is that Zoroaster had a divine vision of a supreme being while partaking in a pagan purification rite at the age of 30. And from there, Zoroaster began to teach followers to worship not many gods, but a single god called Ahuramazda.

Now, Zoroastrianism would end up being the state religion of three different Persian dynasties, that being until the Muslims would come in in the 7th century AD and conquer Persia.

After that, Zoroastrian refugees, called Parsis, would go and escape Muslim persecution in Iran and emigrate to India. And Zoroastrianism to this day still has practitioners, but it is small. It is now estimated to have around 100,000 to 200,000 worshippers worldwide and is practiced today as a minority religion in parts of Iran and India. Though, as you can imagine, they're in Iran with the theocratic state that it is.

This is not something that is well-received and people have to do things in secret there.

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So, yeah, when describing the religion and what happened to it and where it is today, that in and of itself, I can't believe I'm saying this again. That would also be a fascinating story. But why have I gone into detail so much in this episode about inbreeding talking about this religion?

Well, that is all because of the concept of divine blood and divine marriage or Zudoda, which is a theme within Zoroastrianism. It's so funny because we learn about Zoroastrianism in my, I think it was my New Testament class because it was so...

Much of a concern back in that time period. When you say a concern, I mean, obviously it was the Persians who restored the Jews to Israel. Like that's like part of the whole thing there. In the context of, I guess, Christianity at that time, it was the it was concerning due to the fact that.

religions like that were going strong. You know what I'm saying? In comparison to what the Christians are trying to do. Yeah, so I guess it was something that was happening. But the concept we're talking about here though, Sudota, this was a type of incestuous marriage practiced in Zoroastrianism and was considered very pious if you did this. This was deemed to be a very good thing. It was a high act of worship in Zoroastrianism as you were quite literally imitating the divine when you did so.

You're going to have to elaborate so much. I know. It's a whole concept that has to do with like Zorashism and duality and how incestuous divine relations would actually create the heavens and

I can't even begin to explain this because at that point I'm going to be having to get into the theology of specifically Zoroastrianism itself. But it's something that because of the religion, they would do this at least for royalty in order to propagate this image of themselves being divine.

This form of direct familial incest marriage would allow Zoroastrians to marry their sisters, their daughters, their granddaughters, and their own mothers. They could take all of these different people as wives. Not just wife, wives. Okay, that's what I was going to ask. So they can have all of their family members married too? Yes. Did they have to consummate or could they just be married? Yes. Okay. Yes.

Zadota was commonly practiced by royalty and nobility, but it was primarily focused on the royalty and it could be done by the clergy, but it's not really known if it was commonly practiced in other families of other classes. It seems to be really a thing that was commonly associated with just the royalty. Okay, so this wasn't even to consolidate their practice.

It was to be holy. Yes, it was primarily a religious thing, but there does end up being, and I can't believe I'm saying this like this, a practical reason as to why.

elaborate we're gonna explain this okay but to explain the whole thing in Zoroastrianism their origin beliefs and the understanding of the universe Ahura Mazda is said to not have sired the other divine creations but rather to have fashioned or set them in their proper place and is referred to both as or like referred to as both mother through spiritual nurturing and father through material development all existence so it's like the supreme being above everything

and from their relations between these different, not primordial, these different celestial beings, that is what creates the universe. The Denkard, which is a 10th century book of Zoroastrian beliefs and customs during the time, includes passages encouraging the action and the Dadastan Edenig, which is

which is a 9th century Middle Persian work written by Manushir, who was high priest of the Persian Zoroastrian community of Pars and Kermenbolth, claimed that not only was the world created through Zidota, but rather humanity from the co-sanguine marriage of Masha and Mashanya, the first humans on Earth. Which, I guess, if you go back, because remember there's the whole thing with Adam and Eve and how they had

like the whole thing we started with Cain and Abel, but then what ends up happening, it's one of those confusing things. I'm not going to get into theology here right now, right? But it was one of those really confusing things at the beginning, like, okay, Adam and Eve were the first humans on earth.

So then how did they have more kids? Where did the other children come from? Where did the other humans come from that then propagated the rest of the people? I think about this a lot, but also back then, didn't they also, I don't know if this is true, but like I think pre-flood or something, they would have supernatural beings like angels and stuff. Hypothetically that

allegedly would procreate with the sons of men, like, you know, the children of Adam and Eve. I'm pretty sure that was a thing. I'm so rusty on my Old Testament. I'm now going to have to go back and review things so I can kind of understand because at this point I'm just talking. I'm pretty sure because when it came to, was it Sodom and Gomorrah? I'm pretty sure there were

beings like supernatural beings that we're procreating with. We're going to need to bring in Madison here. We're going to need to go and discuss old biblical things now. Yeah, we need to do one of those and I'm going to go review my notes. All right. So in addition to those documents that I was talking about, the Revyats were a series of exchanges between the Zoroastrian community in India and their co-religionists like the people who also practice Zoroastrianism in early modern Iran from the 1400s. They would

It would further explain the different levels of incest and how specifically defined they were. Because this wasn't just a thing of like, oh, you marry your sister. That's good. It's like they had tiers to this. You had a ranking system. Depending upon how close of a relation you were, that is something that would give a different degree of depth.

Holiness. According to the Revyats, the marriage between a mother and son was the most superior type of Jadotah. That was the holiest of the holy, was a mother marrying her son, followed by that of a father and a daughter, which is followed by the brother and sister. Cousin can also be included in this, but brother-sister relationships were actually the lowest of the low in terms of the high holy tiers of relationship. Good.

But get this, the Zerodota also becomes even more superior if the mother daughter is also the sister of her son father. This is so confusing. Okay. All right. All right. So get this right. Like, let's say that you let's say that a dude marries his mother. Right. Right. Right. But, but.

That happens because he is her. No, he is her son, but she perhaps married her father or brother or some other relation previously, who was the previous king. Right. Right. So from that, the child is already the product of a Shadoda marriage and then in turn marries his mother, which repeats the cycle in a holy circle. This is so confusing. And that's,

Really gross when you look at it here, but that was part of the belief, right? So how then does this translate into politics, you may wonder? Well, the Achaemenids are a Persian royal dynasty who ruled from 550 to 330 BC, who are commonly credited as spawning the first cohesive world empire and are notorious for their well-documented battles against the Greeks in the classical era.

The transition of power from one ruler to another would take place through ruler designation of one of his male children from several wives. This being in opposition to the practice of primogeniture, where you would just give everything to the oldest. Like if a king had three children and he would just appoint, you know, his oldest son is the one that gets the throne. But when you were in a situation with kings,

multiple wives, and also now the practice of Jidoda, it creates complexities to that layer. You typically want to pick not just your firstborn child, but what is the best one for the empire. And then at the same time, how closely related that child was to the practice of Jidoda would also influence their level within society.

This created a transition volatility that led to familial intermarriage and occasionally direct dynastic incest. As an example, Cambyses II, who married his two sisters in order to be able to boost his legitimacy within the empire. And that resulted in families with very, very, very high degrees of consanguinity that were at risk of severe autosomal recessive conditions.

As an example, and this is something that I found in here when looking at a medical journal that actually was applied to the old Persian, like they were studying the Persian royalty and like their DNA and bodies. The first historical description of

Hemihyperplasia, which I'm probably butchering the pronunciation of, through upper limb gigantism was described 2,500 years ago. This takes place in the classical era within the context of the ancient Achaemenid dynasty where the emperor Artaxerxes I is described as suffering from arm gigantism. Think of it like this.

Have you ever seen an orangutan? Yeah. You know how orangutans are not very big, but their arms are huge and they go like all the way down to the ground? Yeah. That was him. So just like one side of his body was really, really large. So like his arms were longer and much bigger than what an arm probably should have been.

And that is something that specifically I've looked at the images of people because this is a thing that can still happen to people today. It's rare, but it does happen. And it's a congenital birth defect, I think. Exactly. And because that was within the royal family and they were marrying their siblings and parents and grandchildren and everything else, it kept it in the family quite strongly.

So classical sources typically ascribe the selection of the emperor Artaxerxes I following the political murders of his two elder brothers, the crown prince Darius and Eustapius. Studying the family tree of Artaxerxes I, it can be seen that Artaxerxes I's parents were first cousins, and there are multiple consanguineous loops in the family. Botanies, who is Artaxerxes' first maternal grandfather, is the uncle of his paternal grandmother.

Artaxerxes' grandfather, Atanis, who is concurrently his uncle by marriage, his biological great uncle, and even the father to another child of his grandmother, demonstrates the extreme consanguinity that was present in the family. That's a lot. It was mixed. Here's the thing. They go into the mathematics of this. One way that you can measure the degree of consanguinity in a family is to look at the number of direct ancestors within your specific pedigree, right?

In a non-consanguineous family, this means that there's supposed to be two parents. Well, of course, there's always two parents. But there's two parents. Each of those two parents have their own separate parents. So that's four grandparents with at least eight grandparents. Eight great-grandparents. Yes, and then 16 great-great-grandparents and so on and so forth. But in a consanguineous family, these numbers are reduced and it's referred to as a pedigree collapse.

In Artaxerxes' family, we can trace back his ancestors five generations and see that there are only eight great-great-grandparents in comparison to the expected 16. That is a 50% collapse in pedigree. This is comparable to the consanguinity of the Spanish royal family where the king within the Habsburg line was like...

Is this what led to the Habsburg jaw? This is what led to the Habsburg jaw. Yes. This is the thing that when you go and look at it here, people get confused with the Habsburgs because they think it applied everywhere. Yes, the Habsburgs were all over the place in Europe, but it was specifically the Spanish line that died out, as we mentioned, and they were the ones that got the worst of this. So they had like the same level of pedigree collapse that Charles II did. Like Charles II had a 50% pedigree to collapse in six generations of ancestors, meaning that the

the Persians were even more inbred by that logic than Charles II. Wow. That is saying something.

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But okay, it's not good, but we need to move on to another group. Is this the Ptolemies time? No. No. See, she saw that it said Egypt. It's not the Ptolemies. I could have put up the Ptolemies, but I figured I wanted to do more stuff around the world. And the Ptolemies, even though they are Egyptian, they are Greek. So I figured since we already did a European one in there, I wanted to do something that was different. In this case, when we talk about Egypt,

The Ptolemies were doing what the Egyptians were already doing for literally thousands of years. This is a similar note to when we talked about the whole thing with the Zoroastrians and is actually the older example, since when we talk about the different dynasties of the pharaohs, this extends back some 5,000 years.

As for the reason why, it's down to the whole divine blood thing again. In ancient Egypt, religion wasn't just like a simple aspect of life. It was the very essence that permeated through every facet of your existence. Every single thing was geared around religion, the gods, the customs, the rituals, everything. It was that important.

The pharaohs, as both rulers and divine representatives on earth, were central figures in this kind of religious landscape, and their actions, their choices, their personal relationship, all of these were seen through the lens of religion and were significant in their own right. Their marriages were no exception to this because who they married had divine implications.

The pantheon of Egyptian gods provides a blueprint for the pharaohs that they were supposed to model themselves afterwards. Among the different stories of deities, you have the story of Osiris and Isis that stands out. This being the brother-sister god and goddess who were not only siblings, but devoted spouses.

C. Osiris, the god of the afterlife, and Isis, the god of magic and motherhood, together would represent the cyclical nature of life and death, of rebirth, of regeneration. For the pharaohs, emulating that divine relationship was a way to align themselves with the gods and would draw parallels between their earthly reign and the eternal watching rule of the deities above.

After all, they were living gods on earth, descended from the gods themselves with divine blood flowing through their veins. Why would they not want to keep it pure? Furthermore, there is the concept of Maat, which is the ancient Egyptian principle of truth, of balance, of cosmic order, and all of this played a pivotal role in the pharaoh's decision to marry their sisters.

By keeping the royal bloodline pure and undiluted, they believed that they were upholding the concept of Maat, the ultimate truth of the universe, ensuring that cosmic balance was undisturbed.

If they did not do this, any deviation from like the general customs, this goes back to the thing of like, you know how there's the stories when even it comes to with the ancient Jews of like, oh, if they didn't perform a sacrifice on this set day in this set amount or did something, then God would be angry with them. Right? This is that same concept of this is their view of the universe. And so they believe that if they deviated from that, it would result in horrible things happening. Was it the ancient Jews?

Jews it was the I remember it was with Cain and Abel where one would sacrifice the animal and the other one would sacrifice vegetables or something yeah and remember there's the story about I can't remember the exact city of what it was but it's like oh that they were ordered to lay waste to a settlement to destroy all the things but the soldiers instead took back sheep and other things and slaves wasn't that King Saul I'm pretty sure that was and because of that they were punished

Or was it David? That happened quite a few times because Saul was supposed to destroy everything in cities. But then also with Moses and the Canaanites, like once it switched over to the other guy after Moses died, they were all like supposed to destroy everything with someone hid something. And so they started losing all their battles. So you see what I'm talking about here. That is kind of like,

mat for the Egyptians. That was the whole point. They had to uphold the specific idea. Any deviation from that would invite chaos. It would disturb the equilibrium between gods and man and invite everything to go to shit. Now, that is the religious side, but one also has to understand that there was a political motivation as well. The Pharaoh's position, although it was divine in nature because, you know, they were a living god,

They were not immune to being challenged, both from within the royal family and also from outside sources who potentially would want to bring down the pharaoh and take the riches of Egypt for themselves because it was a very rich state. Marrying a sister in this context was actually a very smart and true political maneuver with many different benefits, believe it or not, which sounds so wrong of me to say.

First and foremost, these marriages ensured there was going to be a clear and uncontested line of succession, which is always a major problem in any monarchy or political system that is based off of lineage. When you are going off of someone's children, how do you know who it is that is the one that is supposed to be in charge? How is it because people would share the same blood theoretically, or you could have people that are competing for the throne. It gets really messy.

siblings, cousins, and more with distant claims to the throne could lead to civil unrest and even outright war. But by keeping the lineage or the logic of keeping the lineage within the immediate family, this minimized, at least in their mind, potential disputes. Because if you didn't have your children going off and marrying other people outside, then this means that outsiders wouldn't get a claim to the throne. You would only have the internal disputes within the family.

So a son born from a union between the Pharaoh and his sister, they were seen as having the purest royal blood in comparison to if the Pharaoh had a child with a cousin or a concubine, like someone that wasn't related to them. Like, let's say that a Pharaoh went in, just he got married or he he knocked up a girl and that girl was not related to him whatsoever. And he had a son.

That's his firstborn son. You would think that child has the highest level of inheritance right? No, because it doesn't have a lot of the most royal blood. Correct. So if his third wife was his sister, because maybe she was too young to actually have children before when they got married. Now they have children together. Her firstborn son, that is actually the one that even if there's a 15 year age gap,

That child is going to end up having a higher claim to the throne. By doing this, it made claims to the throne less, we're going to say less contested, or at least it should have been. The idea was this is something that would secure peace. Why do I see the logic though? Like that's kind of smart. There was, again, there was a logic behind it. Did it actually make peace?

Maybe, maybe it did something to that effect when talking about outsiders and their claims. But what it also did was concentrate a whole lot of backstabbing within the immediate family, as could be seen with Cleopatra VII and the disputes between her siblings. Because, yeah, this is the whole thing where you mentioned from the beginning, Gabby, the Ptolemies. Cleopatra, for anyone who has somehow not heard of this year before, the lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony and whatnot. Yeah, she was married to her brother before that.

In fact, she wasn't just married to one brother. I think she'd actually been married to two brothers, if I recall correctly, when I did that before. Yeah. Yeah, it was not a fun thing. This in turn led to a lot of disputes and there was an actual war in the palace between her, her brother, her sister. The family dynamics were messy. Anyway, moving on to an actual example of this, or I should say examples of

We are at this point taking several thousand years of incest, so there are a variety of things that we could choose from. Examples of Egyptian rulers who were married to their siblings include Sinwusret I, who reigned from 1961 BC to 1917 BC. He was married to his sister, Neferu. You had Amenhotep I, who reigned from 1525 to 1504 BC, who was married to his sister, Amose-Ertamun.

And our girl Cleopatra, who reigned from 51 BC to 30 BC, who was married to her brother Ptolemy XIV before he was killed. Yeah, this is a common thing. And the Ptolemies would use this history of incest as a way to cement their own legacy.

There were also instances of pharaohs marrying their daughters. You had Ramses II, who was ruling from 1279 to 1213 BC, who took Meritamin, one of his daughters, as a wife.

It also does not help then that pharaohs in Egypt also had multiple wives and concubines, which means that theoretically you could have a pharaoh that married one full-blood sister, two half-sisters, and then a couple of his cousins. That makes things incredibly more messy to track, which in turn leads to further possibilities of genetic disorders and health issues, like what we see with the famous King Tut. This is the example that I wanted to bring up when talking about things. King Tut is...

arguably the most famous pharaoh, not because of anything that he did, but because we actually found his tomb. That's really the big reason that he is so famous is because we actually have his tomb with all of his treasures. That is something that didn't happen. His reign began more than 3,000 years ago when he was nine years old, and it lasted only a decade. In fact, less than a decade. But the treasures from his tomb, which were preserved and found, made him a celebrity, and those treasures helped to fuel a lot of speculation about his health.

See statues and other depictions of Tut when all this was discovered, this would tend to show him as having an oddly shaped head, a feminized body, including breasts.

His face typically had very full and swollen lips and a slim nose. He sounds like a baddie. For decades, scholars thought that King Tut may have had different syndromes or genetic defects that could account for that appearance. And when I was a kid, I remember on like the old documentaries, them specifically saying, yeah, he had these genetic disorders from incestuous relationships. And this is something that created the issues that he had. So,

Little did I know when then going and doing the research for this, that in 2010, a team of Egyptian and German researchers went and analyzed 11 mummies dated back from the 18th century, which were closely related. You mean the 18th dynasty, not century. 18th dynasty, right? Because you said 18th century. Yeah, which would be a little bit confusing for the listeners. They couldn't do genetic DNA testing in the 18th century. I'm sorry. So they did this. This is from the 18th.

Dynasty, sorry, all of which were like mummies that were closely related to King Tut. These were scanned and the DNA was extracted from their bones and the information they could get from these analyses enabled them to identify the mummies and along with that, determine the exact relationships between members of the royal family. This would also help to identify possible illnesses and causes of death. The result of it.

The results of the DNA analysis show the Tutankhamun was 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt the child born from a first-degree brother-sister relationship between Akhenaten and Akhenaten's sister. So his parents were full-blooded siblings.

This would imply to anyone watching that, yes, of course, King Tut was absolutely riddled with genetic mutations, like some form of gynecomastia or Marfan syndrome, which feminized his appearance. But no.

No, as it turns out, neither Akhenaten nor Tutankhamen were likely to display a significant bizarre or feminine physique. No, the particular artistic representation of people in the Amarna period, this whole time with Tutankhamen, his father, and more, this appears to have literally just been the style.

Maybe related to the religious reforms of Akhenaten or just the style of the day. We don't really know. It just appears that even if they didn't look like this, the art wanted to make them look as androgynous as possible. Potentially like a stereotypical representation of a K-pop band. Oh my God. You know exactly what it is that I'm talking about when I say that. They're all very pretty. A lot of them are very pretty. That is an accurate way to describe it.

So that really did surprise me when doing research for this episode, as I, like many people growing up, learned it was the opposite in school. However, that does not mean that King Tut was in the clear. No, the incestuous relationship between Akhenaten and his sister may have had other consequences, because Tutankhamen suffered from something called congenital equinovaris formidae, also called clubfoot.

The tomography scans of Tutankhamen's mummy also revealed that the pharaoh had a bone necrosis for quite a long time, which might have caused a walking disability. And this is supported by the objects that were found in his tomb with his mummy, which included 130 different walking sticks. They really made sure he could walk in that afterlife. Yeah, exactly. As it is, though, many of King Tut's health problems could have come from inbreeding, which was very common in the royal family.

Along with his father, Tess suggests that Tut's wife was either his full sister or his half-sister, which means that he was the progeny of a brother-sister relationship, who may in turn have been the progeny of a previous incestuous relationship, and then he was married to either his full sister or half-sister, which would have continued it.

Their particular marriage produced two pregnancies, but neither of the fetuses would survive. And so King Tut would ultimately die childless at either the age of 18 or 19. We don't know.

The problems related to inbreeding probably contributed to Tut's death, but they weren't the immediate cause like a bunch of people thought. They thought that he was essentially like Charles II. But no. Earlier studies found that Tut had a badly broken right leg, which could have been a factor from getting infected or something. And he also apparently had a really bad case of malaria as the new study found DNA in Tut's bones from the parasite responsible for the most severe form of malaria. So this kid...

At the end of his life, he was going through it. He was suffering. Thus, in the end, it's likely, though not absolutely certain that you had a combination of a broken bone that got infected, malaria and other underlying health problems from incest. This all coming together to be what actually killed King Tut. And he was only 18, 18 or 19. We don't know. Wow. Yeah. Moving on from that, though.

Perhaps one of my favorite examples of something, because it's not something that really anyone expected, because you typically study a lot of royal families in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Hawaii. Hawaii? Yeah. Now, I know what you're thinking when I say that. Hawaii having an incest issue probably does make sense historically because it is a small series of islands out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which makes it hard to get more varied genetic diversity. And you might be right, except for a couple things. One, there was multiple periods of large-scale migration over to Hawaii that had occurred in previous centuries.

even if there wasn't as much afterwards. So they did actually get a decent amount of genetic diversity that was brought in. But more importantly, the cultures and traditions of Hawaiian royalty and the elite made incest so, so, so much worse. Now, what do I mean? You may wonder.

Well, when early navigators reported on Hawaii, its practices and customs, one of the most often mentioned characteristics of the archipelago was the practice of incest among members of the royal families. Though it was restricted to a very limited number of people, not everyone did this, it was specifically just the royal family that did it.

Did other people think it was strange that the royal family did this? Like, imagine you're just like the little villagers and you're like that. Look at them. No. Being strange. No. And we'll explain why. They had the exact opposite view on incest that we do today. You know how we will typically say that progeny of incestuous relationships are more likely to have genetic defects and weaknesses in comparison to other types of children? Yeah. Yeah.

Their view, and I'm going to get into this, was the opposite. That by virtue of their blood, that a brother-sister relationship from what was already a strong and divine blood, that that child was going to have like superhuman strength and intelligence. They believed that they weren't going to suffer from mental disabilities. They were instead going to be geniuses. I'm not kidding. That is actually the belief that they have.

So, though it was restricted to a limited number of people, it was such an openly practiced tradition that it couldn't be ignored. It was very hard to go unnoticed. All the more so as it concerned the rulers of the islands. These were the people that were in charge of everything. What really struck and surprised these first observers was also the fact that it was not considered a sin, nor something peculiar by the natives. Although the taboo of incest is almost universal, the people here would celebrate it.

The historic specifics of incest in Hawaii then is kind of dual nature. It was not allowed for the common people, but it was not only encouraged, but demanded by the royalty. This is a very complex thing. Why though? I'm going to dive into it, but considering the amount of new names and terms that I'm going to be using here, if there are any native Hawaiians that are listening to this right now, I am sorry. I am trying to pronounce things as well as I can.

It's gonna happen. Anyway, all of this has to do with society, hierarchy, and divine blood.

Go figure. That's been a common theme with literally everything that we've talked about here. The only one that was not divine blood was the Habsburgs. And that the Habsburgs sort of had a belief in divine blood, but their thing was primarily around power politics and keeping it within the family. Everyone else was like descended from the gods. So, yeah, this has been a common thing. And all of this is exemplified with Hawaiians in the system or the Kapu system.

To explain this, the kapu system was a foundational set of laws in ancient Hawaiian society which served as a framework of taboos and decrees that governed daily life. It governed the religious practices. It governed the social order of the people, of the islands, everything. With the name meaning forbidden or sacred in Hawaiian, kapu would delineate what specifically was allowed and what was prohibited, which would significantly influence everything. And when I say everything,

I mean everything. Every aspect of life. Fishing, farming, warfare, societal interactions, religious ceremonies. Everything you can think of was determined by Kapu.

This is a system that was established and enforced by the Ali'i, this being the nobility, to maintain control and order within the islands. It was a system that was integral to creating and upholding the hierarchies and roles of the community, and its components were deeply intertwined with the spiritual beliefs of the Hawaiians and how the world worked and interacted with each other.

Emphasizing specifically how the land itself, spirits, all this was divine and how kings and priests were part of this. They were associated and part of this divine blood and connection. The most important form of kapu was possessed by chiefs of the highest rank. It required others, commoners, but also lower rank chiefs to immediately lie face down upon the ground when within their presence.

Like if you were just casually, Gabby, walking around through, it's not the street, but walking along the beach of Hawaii and all of a sudden the Ali'i, like the, or not just the Ali'i, but like the king of one of the little kingdoms there in Hawaii that existed at the time, just walked up next to you. If you saw him there or it was announced that he was there, you would be required to immediately prostrate yourself off on the ground. So like literally face down on the ground. So not even bowing, just bowing.

Face plant? Like face plant on the ground. You have to be down. The penalty for not doing this was death. What if you didn't like see they were there? You might have some guards that come over and like knock sense into you or something. It's like get your attention that this is a thing. They're going to put some kind of announcement or people are going to notice. And if you don't notice, they may make an example of you to be more aware of things. Yeah.

Some kapus of chiefs were considered equal to those of the gods. And the proximity between kings and gods was just extreme. This was the way that everyday life functioned.

That is something that may be shocking for a number of people because unlike what some modern depictions of ancient societies being full of carefree and equal people who do no harm to each other and everyone is just happy picking fruit and making love in the trees. No, no, ancient Hawaii was not that at all. It was a strongly stratified society from the highest ranking class at the Ali'i to the commoners called the Makai'ana.

An intermediate class between the Ali'i and the common people was that of the Konakiki. The priests, or kahunas, were not actually things that were set apart from the rest of society. They were not placed on a separate status level like something that you see normally in other places. The status of a priest actually was determined by their inherited rank.

which could vary from low to high, entirely depending upon their background. And I am not even kidding with that. It's like the priests were also part of this stratified society that could have different levels depending upon their own lineage. The priests or kahunas would, their rank would be determined by their inherited rank, which is something that is, as I said, would depend entirely on their family.

One group that was set apart, though, completely was the Kawa or the Untouchables. They were born outcasts and were strongly despised. They were so contaminating, it was seen, that it was improper to eat with them, to sleep near them, and even their shadow, if it fell upon an ordinary man, then the penalty for doing this could be death. How, then, does this relate to incest, you may wonder?

Well, the concept of family is a very important major feature of Hawaiian life. You had the great chief, the Ali Nui, who was often represented as being a father and caring for his people. And this relationship was part of the social custom, the kapu. This was part of his relation with the tribe, with the kingdom.

Family was everything to the upper class, the same as it was in just about any other part of the world throughout history, but their degree to which they held this was kind of unique. For the Alii, the choice of a first wife of high rank was an absolute necessity. If this was not done, it would lower the rank of a child from that union.

The first union of a chief was the most important because that would secure proper offspring for succession purposes. The higher the parents rank, the higher the child's. Now, of course, when I explain this, this seems pretty obvious, but there's also a very important caveat to all of this. The father's rank, weirdly enough, was not as important as the mother's.

In a union, the rank of a child would not diminish if the status of the father was lower than that of the mother. But the opposite is true when the mother was of a lower rank. The rank of a child would be lowered in that circumstance, even if the father was higher. Now, for anyone who's listening to this and may be curious as to why that doesn't really make much sense. Well, think on it this way. Without DNA tests, there is no way to guarantee that

who the father of someone is. No way to 100% guarantee. You can, however, guarantee who the mother is going to be, which means that in a highly stratified society, tracing people through the mother, by for rank purposes, this is a very easy way to keep track of whose kid is whose. From this importance on status, you can probably imagine how incest would begin to propagate itself within society.

For the Hawaiian elite, special care was taken to select the nearest possible relative as a wife or a high chief. This was practiced to such an extent that it led to marriages between brothers and sisters, something that, again, yes, that is incest, but that is a word which does not exist in the Hawaiian language.

Incestuous unions were considered to be a very good thing. If the royal union resulted in children, then that child would be of the highest kapu rank. His kapu would then be equal to those of the gods. He was called divine, akua, and was considered to be a god himself, or at least divine. The most perfect and revered union was that of a brother and sister of the highest rank.

Now, from centuries of doing this, you would expect many horror stories of genetic mutations and diseases, but no, that doesn't actually appear to have been the case. Generally, in the histories and legends, the children of these incestuous unions were actually regarded as having even stronger bodies and being more intelligent rather than weak or deformed.

Of course, historically, this could be harder to track as Hawaiians had no written language prior to Western contact, but that is what the legend said and that was part of the belief. Which brings up the very interesting example for this case, that of King Kamehameha III and his sister, Nahi Nena. Nahi Nena was born in 1850. Her parents were King Kamehameha I and Keopulani, the Queen Consort.

Her grandparents on her mother's side were, as it were, half-siblings.

She had two older brothers, Liolihó and Kaoikeoli. Oh, dear God, I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of this. But either way, these are the guys who would later become kings, Kamehameha II and III, respectively. And that is who I'm going to refer to them as because it's way easier for me to say in the first place. Nahienena was the sacred Muli Loa, the last born child. And she was trained specifically from birth for the immense privileges and responsibility that would

that would specifically accompany that kind of station in society. It was very important for her. She was going to have to do everything properly as a true princess. But this is where things get interesting, because this is right around the time that Christianity is really beginning to propagate itself quite a bit on the island with different missionaries. And Nahinina's mother brought her up with Christian teachings, or mixed teachings, we should say.

With the conflict of interest that occurred between the Hawaiian chiefs and the Christian missionaries, Princess Nahienena became a kind of object caught up in a tug-of-war between different factions on the island.

And the reason this even happened is because Nahina was in love with her brother, Kamehameha III. And the chiefs really wanted their marriage to go through. It seemed like a good thing, just as part of their cultural traditions. But the missionaries were strongly opposed to the union, calling it incest. And from that, of course, you know, it was a sin.

Now the missionary culture on the island at the time meant that many people, including Nahiena, practiced both Hawaiian and Christian beliefs. So she practiced cultural traditions such as hula, but she also drank rum like missionaries did and participated in church services. She did a lot more, but she never fully converted to Christianity, which gave a kind of degree of ambiguity. Despite her relations with her brother,

They were actually apparently lovers. That is literally one of the details of this. She was eventually betrothed to William Pitt Lilioku I, the son of William Pitt Kalinamoku, the prime minister of Hawaii. Kamehameha III tried to delay the wedding by insisting that Lilioku be educated first, but no, they would get married on November 25th, 1835. At this point, though, she appears to already have been pregnant.

On September 17th, 1836, she would give birth to a child. When this happened, Kamehameha III immediately announced that that child would be the heir to the throne because he believed that it was his. But that child actually only ended up living for a few hours. With the passing of her child, Nahe and Ena never actually recovered, physically or emotionally.

Doctors examined her and were unable to determine what exactly her illness was. And from there, she died three and a half months later after giving birth near the home of her brother, Kamehameha III. What's crazy about all this is that despite having dozens of children, I mean dozens, the official bloodline of Kamehameha I died out within 100 years. Now, illegitimate lines remain, but the official male line is gone.

This is the fate of most inbred royal families. They die out. Now, usually not as suddenly as the Hawaiians did, but usually within a century or two of consistent inbreeding, things go south. More distant relatives from healthier branches have to be brought in in order to continue the lineage, and this happened with the Habsburgs with the collapse of the Spanish line when the other, the Austrian branch, would take over.

Generally, when we talk about this, inbreeding does not allow a line to last. But ironically enough, here in the end, there is one thing that I do want to mention, and it is a side note here that I find hilarious. The Habsburgs are still around.

Yeah, I'm not even kidding. For those who are listening to this right now, when their rule came to an end after World War I, the Habsburgs' lineage continued, with many being scattered across Europe to this very day, which in turn brings us to Edward Carl Josef Michael Marcus Coleman Volkhold Maria Habsburg-Lothringen. Hell of a name. A.K.A. Archduke Edward of Austria. He is a 50-something-year-old social media influencer,

Yes, you heard me right. Social media influencer who is Hungary's ambassador to the Vatican. Yeah, I swear. Go check this guy out. I may even leave a link down in the description of this episode here so you all can see what I'm talking about. His Twitter feed is filled with historical anecdotes about his family and a lot of his day-to-day life as a diplomat and memes. So many memes. If somehow, somewhere,

In some way, if he sees and shares this, whether as a podcast or as a video, since I'm eventually going to turn this into a YouTube video, I swear that could be one of the funniest things to ever happen to me since Ben Shapiro reacted to an early video that my wife and I made about the 1683 siege of Vienna. And he unblocked me on Twitter. He unblocked you on Twitter. I still don't know why he had blocked you. I don't know either.

Anyway, my friends, that is the end of today's episode. I hope you all enjoyed it. And I hope you all enjoyed some more of the weird history that we can get back into here. Thank you all for listening. And I will see you all here next time. Goodbye, my friends. Bye.