A Family Tree Without Branches

Charles II was the tragic, inevitable result of the Spanish Habsburgs' obsession with keeping it in the family. Over 16 generations, his ancestors practically used their family tree as a wreath, culminating in a pedigree coefficient higher than that of an offspring between a brother and sister. Born in 1661, Charles suffered from a litany of congenital ailments. He had the most extreme case of the infamous Habsburg jaw—an underbite so pronounced he couldn't properly chew his food or speak without drooling. He didn't learn to talk until he was four, couldn't walk until he was eight, and was kept entirely uneducated to avoid 'taxing' his fragile mind.

'The Bewitched' King

Despite ruling a massive global empire, Charles was plagued by continuous illnesses, epilepsy, and developmental delays. The royal court was so baffled by his agonizing existence that they assumed he was the victim of dark sorcery, earning him the nickname El Hechizado ('The Bewitched'). Royal exorcists were brought in to perform rituals on the bewildered monarch, but no amount of holy water could undo centuries of genetic overlapping.

Some of the strangest facets of his life included:

• He was reportedly breastfed by wet nurses until the age of five or six.
• He was completely impotent, failing to produce an heir across two political marriages.
• His posthumous medical examination famously (and likely apocryphally) reported that his body 'did not contain a single drop of blood,' his heart was the size of a peppercorn, and his head was full of water.

The End of an Era

When Charles died in 1700 just days before his 39th birthday, he looked like a frail, elderly man. His absolute inability to father a successor triggered the catastrophic War of the Spanish Succession, proving that a crumbling genetic line could literally plunge a continent into chaos.