In centuries gone by, it used to be seen as important to keep the succession in the family. That
is why it was really important for royal families to have children. Therefore reproductive
problems couldn’t be a cause in the heredity of the throne. Here are some stories our royal
families with reproductive problems that you may not have known about.
Elizabeth I of EnglandElizabeth became the Queen of England in 1558.
Elizabeth has been called the "Virgin Queen",
because she never married and never had kids.
The English loved Elizabeth because she courted
them but they wanted her to marry and give them a
king and heirs. She was fond of saying England
was her husband. Elizabeth I caught smallpox in
1562. This scared Parliament, because they did not
know who would be the King or Queen after her
asked Elizabeth I to name an heir, but she did not.
The person with the most legitimate claim to follow
Elizabeth to the throne of England was her cousin,
Mary Stuart, who was already Queen of Scotland.
Henry VIII of EnglandHenry was acutely aware of the importance of
securing a male heir during his reign. He was
worried that he had only one surviving child, Mary,
to show for his marriage to Catherine, who was
now in her 40s. So the king asked Cardinal Wolsey
to appeal to Pope Clement VII for an annulment
and it soon became clear he wanted to marry Anne
Boleyn, who had been a lady-in-waiting to his first
wife. But, unwilling to anger Catherine of Aragon's
nephew, the Pope refused. Thomas Wolsey's
ascendancy was cut short by this failure. In 1533,
Henry VIII broke with the church and married the
now pregnant Anne Boleyn in a secret ceremony.
Henry was excommunicated by the Pope.
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI marriage was huge
scandal to the French people because their
marriage was unconsummated for seven years.
There was one thing that stopped the king and
queen's sexual life and that was that the king was
diagnosed of having phimosis which makes having
sexual intercourse very painful. There was a cure
for this condition but it implied a surgery and the
king were negated to this. France citizens were
alarmed and anxious that there was still no heir to
the throne. Later Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
had children; they had 4 children, making the heir
of the throne Louis Joseph.
George VI and Queen Elizabeth The duke of York, Prince Albert was the second
son of King George V, he fall in love with Lady
Elizabeth. In 1921 she proposed to her, but she
denied because of fear. He was convinced that
Lady Elizabeth was the woman whom he wanted to
live with his entire life with, so he proposed her
again for marriage, she refused him once again.
Until the 1923 where everything change, Lady
Elizabeth agreed to marry Prince Albert, they finally
got married on April 26 and Lady Elizabeth turned
on to Queen Elizabeth from the new royal family.
Elizabeth and Margaret were their only kids, it was
used to hereby the throne to a man, that caused
quite a big scandal and polemic in London, but then
accepted that the throne was next to her older child
no matter what.
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