A recent paper quantifying the degree of inbreeding among the Spanish Hapsburg dynasty – quite interesting even if you’re not personally into inbreeding – led me to spend some time reading up on insane and retarded rulers . One thing that struck me is how few of these reigns were actually disastrous – it seems that most of the time regents, advisors, queen mothers etc. kept the country running along with the crazy idiot on the throne. It seems that monarchy evolved remarkably robust ways of d
