Why Harry Doesn’t Have Hemophilia

The randy royal Harry has been usurping the news lately, after his infamous interview with Megan on Oprah. But the royal who truly deserves some attention is Prince Phillip, Queen Elizabeth II’s spouse, who died last week at age 99. Hemophilia is known as the “royal disease,” primarily due to Phillip’s and Elizabeth’s joint family tree: Phillip’s great-great-grandmother was Queen Victoria, a known carrier of factor IX deficiency, also called hemophilia B. Let’s look at his family tree, to answer the question, why doesn’t Harry (or William, or Charles, or Phillip) have hemophilia?

Prince Phillip was born a prince (unlike Diana, Camilla, Kate and Megan, who married into the family). His mother, Princess Alice, was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Phillip was descended from the third child of Queen Victoria, also called Alice, who like her mother, was a carrier for factor IX deficiency, or hemophilia B. In fact Queen Victoria had nine children, of whom two were carriers (Alice and Beatrice) and one had hemophilia (Leopold). These are very good odds!

Alice married Louis IV, the Grand Duke of Hesse. Alice introduced hemophilia into the House of Hesse and this German lineage. There were 7 Hesse children, and like their grandmum, one had hemophilia (Frederick) and two were carriers (Victoria, Phillip’s grandmother, and Alix). Alix married the Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and gave birth to Alexis, who had hemophilia. So, Prince Phillip has a long and illustrious side to his family tree regarding hemophilia! It’s been proposed that Nicholas II was so distracted by his son’s suffering due to hemophilia, that eventually he lost his grip on the monarchy at a time when the Bolshevik Revolution was poised to strike. And it did.

Queen Elizabeth? Not so much drama with hemophilia. Why? She is not a carrier of hemophilia. She is a direct descendant of King Edward VII, a son of Queen Victoria who did not have hemophilia. Now, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip are related as third cousins. But since Phillip did not inherit hemophilia from his mother (not a carrier) or grandmother (also not a carrier but with a flip of the genetic coin might have been), and since Queen Elizabeth had no hemophilia in her direct line, neither Charles nor his sons, William and Harry, have hemophilia.

Harry’s got other problems, but hemophilia isn’t one of them, thankfully!