strongly that she was not a carrier. True, one of her daughters was
childless and another had an only daughter who was also childless. But the
other 2 daughters' large and healthy families, plus four healthy sons (2
died in childhood--one of meningitis, the other of diphtheria) sets the bar
rather high here. For a potential carrier to have 8 children, none of whom
can be shown to have been hemophiliac or a carrier, is to beat odds that are
truly astronomical.
As we have seen, Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Louise was childless so
there is no way to know whether she was or was not a carrier.
The queen's daughter Princess Helena was possibly a carrier, but proof would
be forbiddingly difficult to find. She had 6 children, of whom one son died
within weeks of birth and another was stillborn. One or both could have
been hemophiliac, but neither lived long enough to be diagnosed. Her 2
surviving sons were not hemophiliac and both her daughters died childless.
Regards
John P.
From: "Todd A. Farmerie" <farmerie@interfold.com
To: GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: Queen Victoria
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:34:48 -0600
John Steele Gordon wrote:
John Parsons informs me that Princess Victoria, the Princess Royal, in
fact was NOT a carrier of the hemophilia gene. My information came from
Elizabeth Longford's great biography of Queen Victoria and this seems to
be one of her few errors.
So, while chance would call for half of the Queen's children inheriting
the faulty gene, only a third did--two daughters and a son--so she beat
the odds.
In fact, short of DNA testing, we can't know. Perhaps it has been done,
but it is possible that a daughter was a carrier, but because she "beat the
odds" none of her children revealed her genotype.
taf