It is characteristic of human beings that if they grow up feeling in some way different from their peers, don’t feel loved, or look entirely different from their parents, they construct sometimes fantastical scenarios about their birth. Who are my real parents? Was I swapped at birth by a careless nurse? Or am I the lovechild of a famous person?
The story that has come down about my own family is that a forebear was the illegitimate child of the Holy Roman Emperor (supposedly Frederick III, a Hapsburg, who died in 1493). Aside from what looks like a Hapsburg chin, there isn’t a shred of evidence to support this, although it didn’t stop a long-dead ancestor from purloining what looks like a Hapsburg family crest. But it makes a good story, not to be taken seriously. When I have blood drawn for a test, I (tongue in cheek) draw the attention of the nurse to the blueness of the blood and explain my Holy, Roman, Emperor-like status, and, please nurse, be gentle with me. All good fun. They always laugh. For other people it is not a joke. It is a fantasy that reassures and may offer them a more pleasant life. Nothing wrong with that. If it makes living more pleasant it is Epicurean.
Allerta! as we say in opera-talk. Hapsburg interbred DNA became such a family affair that one would want to stay far, far away from that gene pool.
The Hapsburgs churned out baby boys, womped lots of people, and inherited acres of real estate. Their DNA should have come with an OSHA-like warning: “PROPAGATE AT YOUR OWN RISK.”
I totally disagree. Descendants of the Hapsburgs mostly live in Washington DC and secretly still run the world. They just don’t know who they are descending from, that’s all. Of course, I exclude myself from the above comment in the cause of modesty.