Royally Screwed-Up: Difference between revisions

** The very way the royal kids are raised is detrimental to their sanity.

* Environmental - Some X-factor specific to the royal family's home location, diet, or environment.

** Disease. Specifically, syphilis; it's an STD, so it would get passed around the court, it causes madness if untreated, and the treatment wasn't discovered until the 20th century: [[wikipedia:Arsphenamine|Salvarsan]].

** A mysterious food, drink or drug reserved for royal use, with side effects.

* They're Just Nuts: anything not covered by the above.

Note that royal/imperial insanity is [[Truth in Television]] often enough that it can be a bit frightening.

** Serg's son Gregor inherited the throne at age five when Ezar died, and, remarkably, grew up sane and stable thanks mostly to his adoptive parents, [[Cincinnatus|Aral Vorkosigan]] and [[Warrior Therapist|Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan]]. But Gregor became so paranoid about the genetic insanity in his family line that he refused to consider marrying anyone even ''distantly'' related to him. Since that equated to all the nobility on the planet, there was no clear line of succession, and Gregor's death would have caused a massive and probably final civil war...this posed a bit of a problem.

*** Fortunately Barrayar has recently gotten a handle on genetic engineering, eased up on the social stratification, and annexed another planet with its own unrelated set of merchant nobility (one of whom Gregor eventually married), so that nasty strain of ''[[Canis Latinicus|nutjobbus maximus]]'' is likely to be cleansed from the line in the future. Much to the relief of Gregor, Aral, Cordelia, and every planet anywhere near Barrayar.

*** The unlucky king Orico tried to short-circuit this by {{spoiler|trying to get his wife pregnant by his chancellor, as any child of theirs would not be descended of the royal line. It didn't work, partly because Sara was entirely barren,}} but it probably wouldn't have worked anyway as the gods seemed pretty certain that you could not get out of this curse by clever trickery. It took a miracle.

* Present in [[David Eddings]]' ''[[Belgariad]]'', in the form of the royal line of Cthol Murgos, the Urgas family, with its hereditary insanity. In sequel series ''[[The Mallorean]]'', the eventual successor to the throne is more or less sane, which makes sense, given that he's {{spoiler|not actually the son of the crazy late king, but instead the product of a brief affair between one of the king's wives and a foreign diplomat.}} That's one effective way to get the crazy genes out of the royal line.

* The first two of Mervyn Peake's ''[[Gormenghast]]'' books are, among other things, a long examination of this trope - the Groan lineage and their staff are a bunch of depressed lunatics, their spirits both crushed and perversely sustained by the castle and its ancient, messed-up rituals. They are a sympathetic bunch though - the melancholy and bookish Lord [[Meaningful Name|Sepulchrave]] and his unloved, [[Cloudcuckoolander]] daughter [[The Ophelia|Fuchsia]] must surely be among the most tragic literary [[Woobie|woobies]] of the last century.

* Averted in some ''[[Discworld]]'' novels. Arguably, rulers of the city of Ankh-Morpork in the Discworld have had a tendency to be raving psychopaths. This applied when the city was ruled by kings, and was still true afterward when the kings were killed and replaced by the Patricians. By some stroke of astounding good fortune, the city is currently possessed of a Patrician, Vetinari, who is remarkably sane; as insurance, the rightful heir to the line of kings is also hanging around the city, and he too is remarkably sane, for certain values of sanity. How that happened is anyone's guess, as Ankh-Morpork is a thoroughly crazy city and tends to produce various types of craziness in anyone who lives there too long. Most of the citizens get used to it, though.

** Vetinari might seem to be more accurately described as ''effective.'' rather than ''sane,'' but ''The Discworld Companion'' describes Vetinati as "very, very sane". It is worth considering, however, that Jeremy Clockson and Sane Alex are ''also'' sane. Sanity and "normality" are not synonymous, and may be mutually exclusive.

*** In ''[[Discworld/Thief of Time|Thief of Time]]'', someone mentioned sanity was 'defined by the majority'. Given how the majority of ''Ankh-Morpork'' act...

* In the ''[[Tortall Universe|Tortall]]'' books by [[Tamora Pierce]], the Copper Isles royalty tend to have madness crop up now and then, including one Princess Josiane. A character phrases it thus: "There's bad blood in the Copper Isles kings. They birth a mad one every generation. Josiane's uncle is locked in a tower somewhere. It comes from being an island kingdom- too much inbreeding." It turns out in further novels that it may not be just one per generation...

** Two per generation, as of the Trickster books. The old king who dies and prompts the [[Succession Crisis]] and his brother who was mentioned as locked in a tower somewhere, and Josiane and Imajane among the old king's kids.

** Emperor Ozorne of Carthak and that cousin of the Tusaine line who starts the Tusaine-Tortall war in the second Song of the Lioness book both count.

** Duke Roger, nephew to King Roald in the Song of the Lioness quartet, wasn't insane to begin with, but coming back from the dead (or not, precisely, if you believe him) certainly screwed with his head.

* The Civil Government of the planet Bellevue in [[The General]] Series is [[Royally Screwed-Up]] in that both the current governor and his acknowledged heir are borderline clinical paranoids, and becoming less borderline all the time...

* The Ancient and Most Noble House of Black from ''[[Harry Potter]]''. It has a long reputation for its members being insane, lots of inbreeding and are pureblood (what many consider royalty in the Potterverse). This also applies to most pureblood wizarding families in general (with a few exceptions)... who have, incidentally, all probably intermarried with the Blacks.

* The Raiths in ''[[The Dresden Files]]'', the royal family of the [[Emotion Eater|White Court]] of vampires. The White King is a [[Complete Monster]] who [[Moral Event Horizon|rapes his female children into supernatural slavery]] and [[Offing the Offspring|kills off his sons]]. His daughter Lara is a [[Magnificent Bastard]] who lives on the line between [[Heroic Sociopath]] and [[Friendly Enemy]] [[Anti-Villain]]. The only reason his son Thomas lived to adulthood is by playing the [[Rich Idiot With No Day Job]] card for everything it's worth. The only one who doesn't appear to be incredibly messed-up is {{spoiler|Inari Raith, who never became a full-on succubus because she [[The Power of Love|fell in love]] and Lara helped her get away}}.

* In ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', the first king of the Noldor, Finwe, is a good man, but after his death, the crown goes to his eldest son Feanor, who was very paranoid before, and became completely crazy (if still very charismatic) when his father was murdered. Once Feanor is also dead, his son Maedhros should become king...but he averts this trope: knowing how dangerous the Oath he and his brothers have sworn is, he abdicates and lets his uncle rule. It's a wise move: the sons of Feanor do commit some horrendous acts, and the two eldest eventually become insane, but at least they only rule a fraction of the Noldor.

* [[The Bible]] is chock full of lousy or downright ax crazy evil kings of Israel who choose to snub the God who saved their ancestors from Egypt, so much so that the good kings are the exception.

* Averted in the ''[[Heralds of Valdemar]]'' series, in part because Valdemaran law forbids a monarch (or, presumably, heir) from marrying anyone within two degrees of kinship. And the newly-crowned Selenay plays it to the hilt to keep her councilors from forcing her into marriage, too. The requirement that all monarchs must be [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness|Heralds]] is probably more important -- there's nothing saying a Herald can't be a bit nuts (Hi, Lavan and Vanyel!), but at least it's the type of nuts that doesn't result in the abuses seen on the rest of this page.

* King Rodric IV in ''[[The Riftwar Cycle]]''. Hated and abused by his father for being a sickly runt, he proved to be as sick in mind as he was in body. Apart from using openly about how his power would allow him to randomly pick out random people and have them executed for no reason other than he wished to see them die, he squandred much of the tax revenues of The Kingdom Of The Isles on a series of aesthetic public works programs designed merely to make the city of Rillanon look prettier. Worse still, he denied vital military aid to the Western half of his Kingdom, fearing that the soldiers would be used to build an army against him, which helped to drag the first Riftwar out for the better part of a decade.

** But merely because Queen Victoria had been scratched by the werewolf at Torchwood manor and infected by an alien blood parasite that used human bodies as hosts.

* Referenced in the ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' episode ''Rimmerworld''. Kryten explains the problem of having an entire society descended from Rimmer {{spoiler|and his clones}} by drawing comparisons with European monarchies of the 19th and 20th centuries. The actual leader of the planet seems to be an example himself.

** Also, the Steiner dynasty of the Lyran Commonwealth has a genetic predisposition to a few psychological conditions. They never get to the truly batshit level of insanity, but they have been known to do substantial damage to their nation.

** It's applied to each of the five major factions at some point. Perhaps the most notorious version in-universe is Jinjiro Kurita, who ordered his troops to kill 52 million people on a world where his father was killed by a sniper.

** The House of Heterodyne, of which Agatha is the only known living member, deserves special mention. For generations, they were the most insane and dangerous maniacs that the world had ever known, and also some of the strongest Sparks. The previous generation, Agatha's father and uncle, are an exception, having used their brilliant insanity for good; but according to one observer, the [[The Igor|people of her hometown]] would accept a crazy Heterodyne as legitimate:

{{quote|'''Vole''': De pipple of Mechanicsburg would '''not''' ekcept dot [killing Castle Heterodyne] as proof dot she iz a Heterodyne...not unless she danced nekked though de ruins vile trying to shoot down de moon--turned all de tourists into monsters--and den built a very dangerous fountain out of sausages.}}

** Add to this the House Sturmvoraus, apparently affected with an inborn [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]], and a Prince in love with [[Big Bad|The Other]].

* Princess Sara in ''[[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|8-Bit Theater]]'' is smart, sexy, and sane enough to fully realize her father is a [[Cloudcuckoolander]] with genocidal tendencies. Naturally, she doesn't hold much stock in hereditary rule. She's still a rude, shrewish sociopath, though, and engineered her own kidnapping.

** How bad it is: No matter what horrible evils she unleashes on the populace when she comes into power, it will look like a golden age compared to the completely ruinous and unhinged chain of decisions King Steve makes every day, simply because she's not enough of an idiot to be capable of the same levels of casual destruction.

* The Masters Royal Family of [http://chesspiece.smackjeeves.com Chess Piece] are said to be cursed. Luckily, it skipped a generation. Unluckily, the current Prince has seriously planned on ''taking over the world'' since he was ''four''.

== Web Original ==

* Henry VI had some kind of mental illness which left him near-catatonic for long periods. It may have been inherited from the French royals; Henry's French grandfather, Charles VI, was also mentally ill, sometimes claiming to be made of glass. Charles's madness led to a civil war, and a English invasion - Agincourt and Joan of Arc; Henry's madness led to the War of the Roses - two wars which effectively purged the royal lines of madness. This shows that occasionally Real Life can be more sensible than fiction: most medieval kings had to be competent, or they got removed.

** Much later there was George III, of the "talking-to-a-tree-because-he-thought-it-was-the-king-of-Prussia" style of crazy, but that was an isolated incident. His son, George IV, had to rule as regent for years while they waited for him to die. (These are the Georges that turn up in the ''[[Blackadder]] season 3'' finale, incidentally.)

* The Habsburgs were inbred even by the standards of European royalty, which might not have been a problem except that their matriarch (Juana de Trastamara aka "Juana La Loca", known in old-timey English sources as "Joan the Mad") became a total basket case after the death of her husband Philip the Handsome (their marriage, fortunately for them and unfortunately for Spain, was [[Perfectly Arranged Marriage|Perfectly Arranged]]); she ended up incarcerated by her own father Ferdinand and, later, her son Carlos I/Charles V, who had to be told to treat his poor mother better ''as a condition to be elected [[Holy Roman Empire|Holy Roman Emperor]]''<ref>Yes, this is ''that'' Charles V. The one who might have been ruler of all Europe (save England and France) had it not been for the emergence of Protestantism. That one.</ref>. Don Carlos, the rebellious son of Philip II, was insane to the point of being physically dangerous and would take swipes at passing servants with a knife. Ferdinand II's favourite occupation was rolling around in the bin. Even the more mentally stable scions of the dynasty tended to feature a massively disfigured lower jaw, often to the point they could not even close their mouth.

** The trope's picture is a portrait of Charles II of Spain, last Habsburg King of Spain--and the art style of that time tended to gloss over any blemishes someone had (much like fashion magazine photos today) so in all likelihood, his looks were even worse. He was physically ''and'' mentally disabled as well as disfigured (he had the "Hapsburg Lip" to such an extent that he could not close his mouth; that's why his tongue poking out). His subjects nicknamed him "The Bewitched". Unsurprisingly, he closed the Habsburg chapter in Spain by not perpetuating his genetic pool, constituted among many other issues by his grandmother being also his aunt. After all, Charles descended from Juana La Loca just 14 times... twice as a great-great-great grandson, and 12 times further. When ''all'' your ancestors are descended from "Joanna the Mad", you're not off to the best genetic start in life.

*** ... By his enemies. To his supporters he was "Peter the Lawful" and it has been pointed out that he was in fact a rather competent administrator and military leader and tolerant of religious minorities as well (he was in particular loved by the Jews). Naturally, being deposed and decapitated by your bastard half-brother will do [[Historical Villain Upgrade|that]] to your memory, even if you also had a penchant for decapitations.

*** It was not "the Lawful", but "the Justicier", because he liked applying summary justice (i.e. beheading people), mainly because he was surrounded by traitors.

* Whether or not the Imperial Roman lines count is a matter of much discussion; certainly many of them were raving mad by our standards (particularly, well, [[The Caligula|Caligula]]..) For an entertaining view on how insane things got, check out ''[[I, Claudius]]''. How much of that was due to the Emperors being corrupted by absolute power, or due to outside factors such as real organic illness (Roman plumbing was great in theory but may have resulted in lead poisoning issues in practice), or how many Emperors just seemed paranoid and vicious because that was the only way to survive as a Roman Emperor, is both debatable and debated. In any case, much later in the history of the Roman Empire, due to a lack of male heirs, necessity demanded that the Emperors begin choosing their successors and adopting them, rather than letting random genetics decide who should be in charge. The Roman Empire experienced a century-long period of stability and (relatively) peaceful growth as a result.

** Then again, we have so few contemporary histories of 1st century Rome that we can't be absolutely sure that what we do have (Tacitus and Suetonius, who lived a century or so later, are our best resources) is accurate. The Romans weren't above [[You Fail History Forever|exaggerating and lying]] to [[Politically-Correct History|prove a moral point]].

*** It's actually effective for the Mediterranean region in general, which is what Ibn Khaldun knew; while he mostly gave North African examples, you have to bear in mind that the ''Muqaddimah'' (which is where these theories come from) was actually the ''introduction'' to a much larger history of North Africa (''muqaddimah'' [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|just means "introduction"]] in Arabic). With the possible exception of the Roman and Egyptian empires, pretty much all every great empire of the Mediterranean region in the pre-modern era were founded by at best half-civilized conquerors who took over the established civilizations: the Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites, Persians, Macedonians, Germans, Arabs, and Turks (to name only the most obvious examples) all did this. Even the Romans were pretty uncouth when they started taking over Italy; between their militarism, agrarianism, lack of high culture, and piety, <ref>Rome was noted as the most pious city in Italy in that era</ref> the perception among the Etruscans and Greeks of the peninsula was essentially the same perception that American bicoastal elites have of [[Flyover Country]]. Even the Egyptians count to some degree, as their empire was only established after native rulers adopted the technology of foreign barbarians (the "Hyksos", who were probably Canaanite shepherds).

* Ferdinand The Good (AKA Goodinand The Finished). While it's debatable whether or not he was retarded, he ''was'' epileptic.

** After that, his successor, King Otto, spent his entire 'reign' institutionalised.

[[Category:Family Tropes]]

[[Category:Royally Screwed-Up]]