Data on inbred nobles support a leader-driven theory of history

KING CHARLES II of Spain had an underbite so extreme he could not chew, a tongue too big to speak clearly and a body so weak he struggled to support his weight. “The Story of Civilisation”, a history of the West, said he was “always on the verge of death but repeatedly baffling Christendom by continuing to live”. When he died in 1700 aged 38, the coroner found his body “did not contain a single drop of blood; his heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.”