The King Whose DNA Destroyed the Mightiest Empire

[00:00:00]Did you know one man's DNA brought down the most powerful empire on earth and it took over a century to do it? The Spanish Habsburgs had a rule. Marry family. Keep the power in the bloodline.

[00:00:11]Cousins married cousins. Uncles married nieces. Generation after generation. The same genes folding back on themselves like a piece of paper being folded in half, then in half again, then again. By the time Charles 2 was born in 1661, there was almost nothing left to fold.

[00:00:29]His inbreeding coefficient was higher than a child born to two full siblings.

[00:00:34]His jaw was so deformed he could not chew his own food. He could barely walk.

[00:00:38]He could not produce an air. When doctors performed his autopsy in 1700, they found a body that had essentially rotted from the inside out. One man, one bloodline, one century of compounding biological damage written directly into his bones. The Habsburgs never stopped.

[00:00:56]They never read the warning signs. And when Charles died, their empire died with him. Who from history should we break down next?