Medically Ill Royals Who Could Be Capable Nowadays

The thing about butterflies is the "elasticity" of timelines. If Pierre the peasant decides to have cheese instead of meat for lunch, the odds are the "ripples" from this will fade away. Maybe the colors of Wyoming's license plates will be different in the 20th century, but otherwise not so much. OTOH something like Baldwin's leprosy being arrested early and he living a relatively vigorous and longer life is probably going to stretch the elasticity of things to the breaking point. Even if King X ends up living 5 years longer that may not result in major changes 200 years later, again some smaller things but a world that would be recognizable to us.

There are stories, and some scientific thought, that there is some leakage between close "strands" all the time. In some ways if any of us were transported to a world very close to ours, the differences might not be noticed at all, after all who knows what the most popular soda is in Malaysia if you don't live there. Or perhaps you notice a shop in your city is not the same and wonder "when did that happen?" In 2018 would you notice if Ted Kennedy lived a year longer?

Butterflies do happen with almost anything, but unless they are something that would affect you directly, or a large, they will tend to tamp out...
 
I don't like butterfly conventions. Too many of them here, spread all over time, and the world is now unrecognizable. But I can look on the bright side: because of these butterflies Hitler's mother didn't die from the cancer and he never went into politics until the late 1940s (1948 to be exact, one year after her death) and in Austria, not Germany. Great speaker, but never quite had a plan for making the country better. :openedeyewink:

I'm sure Adolf only went into politics following in the footsteps of his older brother Gustav, that terrible tyrant. WI the diphtheria antitoxin hadn't been as widespread in 1880s Austria and Gustav Hitler had died of the disease as an infant?
 
George III's porphyria and Henry VIII's syphilis (assuming that was his main problem - diabetes is another theory, but that's also treatable with modern medicine) would also be amenable to treatment.
 
George III's porphyria and Henry VIII's syphilis (assuming that was his main problem - diabetes is another theory, but that's also treatable with modern medicine) would also be amenable to treatment.

H8 didn't have syphilis - in his carefully recorded medical treatments, mercury (the go-to cure for it for centuries, and certainly in the 16th century) is not among the medicines he took.
 
Entire Habsburg family would’ve benefited from modern medical knowledge concerning inbreeding. You only have to look at the last Habsburg king of Spain to see how bad it got. I was actually wondering why the Habsburgs bread so much with their cousins even back then that was known to cause problems.
 
Just a knee jerk reaction, but my first impression is that there's more than a little cavalier attitude going on about mental disorders. See a shrink. Pop a pill. You'll be right as rain, or at least good enough. Certainly, modern medicine is light years ahead of days gone by and could have been of benefit, but psychological disorders are still a serious thing for which there often is limited help. I'd guess that rulers with issues severe enough to affect their rule to the extent that it is notable probably fall in the 'not so easy to treat' category.
 
Would modern mental healthcare, both theraphy and medication and all else, be able to help Ludwig II of Bavaria?
when I visited Neuschwanstein Castle (built by Ludwig II, inspiration for the Disney Castle), the tour guide told the tale that Ludwig wasn't mad, so much as he was poisoned, either intentionally or accidentally in treatment of tooth decay. It was this madness that caused his madness. Supposedly, his source of poison was interrupted, and he was in a period of recovery when he drowned (allegedly with a bullet in the back) to death. Alternatively, his madness may have been massively overstated as part of a coup. It's a fascinating case if you're into conspiracy theories which are plausible.
 
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