Marriage(s) and Relationships: Married to: Princess d'Orleans Marie Louise 19 NOV 1679
Child: Married to: Countess Palatine von Neuburg Marie Anna 14 MAY 1690, San Diego nr Valladolid
Child:Notes: Source: Paul Thereoff
Due to the incestuous marriages of his ancestors the Habsburg king Carlos
II of Spain was sadly degenerated
with an enormous misshapen head. His Habsburg jaw stood so much out 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 a passage from
prolonged infancy to premature senility.
Carlos' family, who was anxious only to prolong his days, thought little
about his education, so that he could
barely read or write. He had been fed by wet nurses until the age of 5 or
6 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 the psychology of his religious
beliefs helped to create a mentally retarded and hypersensitive monarch.
In 1675 Carlos was presented with a decree to prolong the powers of his
mother on the grounds of his own
incapacity. Carlos refused to sign the document and he secretly wrote a
letter to his bastard half-brother, Don
Juan. Later, he was forced to pay a visit to his mother. After two hours,
he emerged crying from her room. Once and for all Carlos' act of
rebellion had ended.
Charles suffered one further disability, politically more significant
than all the rest: his inability to consummate his marriages was evident
from hisbirth. Nevertheless, he was married twice. His first bride was
Marie Louise of Orléans (1662-1689). It seems that although Carlos
attempted intercourse, he suffered from premature ejaculation, so that he
was unable to achieve penetration. Marie Louise confided in the French
ambassador, that "she was really not a virgin any longer, but that as far
as she could figure things, she believed she would never have children."
The French ambassador even managed to get a pair of the Carlos' drawers
and had them examined by surgeons for traces of sperm, but the doctors
could not agree about their findings. Marie Louise had been raised at the
gay French court and couldn't get used to the rigid Spanish court
etiquette. She became increasingly corpulent and died in 1689 after a
riding accident. Her death made a deep impression on Carlos; he demanded
the opening of the coffins containing the decaying relics of his
predecessors. Nevertheless, he was remarried within three months to Maria
Ana (1667-1740), a daughter of the Elector Palantine. She was exorcised
to promote her fertility, but she couldn't cure Carlos' sexual defects
either.
Carlos' invalidity could have been afflicted by a bone disease,
acromegaly, the result of an inherited endocrine dysfunction. This
illness would explain his strange physical appearance, his over-large
head and his impotence. The illness gave rise to fits of dizziness and
what seem to have been epileptic spasms. The description of the numerous
ailments that afflicted him from birth - suppurating ulcers, diseased
bones and teeth, nervous difficulties - can also suggest congenital
syphilis, the quite probable result of his father's frequent visits to
the brothels of Madrid. A serious attack in 1627 and the syphilitic
symptoms marking his final illness sustain the hypothesis of syphilis.
Over the years Carlos grew steadily worse. He was lame, epileptic and
bald at the age of 35. His hair had fallen out, his teeth were nearly
gone and his eyesight was failing. In 1698 he had three fits and became
deaf. The doctors put freshly-killed pigeons on his head to prevent
dizziness and applied the streaming entrails of mammals to his stomach to
keep him warm, but he died nevertheless. "Many people tell me," Carlos
once said, "I am bewitched and I well believe it; such are the things I
experience and suffer." His death started the War of the Spanish
Succession.
Source: Joan Bos
Another rumour has it that when after a number of years no children were
born Marie Louise of Orleans, they claimed the Queen was at fault and so
poisoned her. Then he married again and when again no children were born,
they blamed the king and they imported a Prince of Hessen as general in
the army, and instructed him to father children by the Queen and then the
king died. We will never know the truth.
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