Why is hemophilia called The Royal Disease?
Hemophilia has often been called ‘The Royal Disease’. This is because Queen Victoria, Queen of England from 1837 to 1901, was a carrier. Her eighth child, Leopold, had hemophilia and suffered from frequent hemorrhages. These were reported in the British Medical Journal in 1868. Leopold died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 31, but not before he had children. His daughter, Alice, was a carrier and her son, Viscount Trematon, also died of a brain hemorrhage in 1928. Even more important to history was the existence of hemophilia in the Russian Royal family. Two of Queen Victoria’s daughters, Alice and Beatrice, were also carriers of hemophilia. They passed the disease on to the Spanish, German and Russian Royal families. Alexandra, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, married Nicholas, the Tsar of Russia in the early 1900’s. Alexandra, the Tsarina, was a carrier of hemophilia and her first son, the Tsarevich Alexei, a hemophiliac. Nicholas and Alexandra were pre-occupied by the health probl
