Tudor Princes

Edward VI, Henry Fitzroy, and Arthur Tudor all died about the same age. Was this just a coincidence or was some sort of illness or genetic factor involved?
 

Kaze

Banned
It was a little of all of the above. You might be able to blame part of it on Henry being inbred. But child mortality was quite high during the period - there was good reason that many monarchs have been recorded to have between 4 and over 20 children (cough - Queen Victoria - cough), it is good chance that only half would survive to 13 years old. Hell, Edward barely made it past his teen years. If you made it past your teenage years, expect to live a good and long life up to age 50 to 60 years, 70 and 80 was reserved for royals and people who are darn lucky to live that venerable age.
 
I believe they are all thought to have died of pulmonary weaknesses such as TB, which you could see as genetic. The tendency to have such an illness might well be, for all I know...
 
TB is very plausible but to be honest there doesn't seem to be a ton of consensus on what killed each of them other than it was a generally pulmonary related disease.

I don't know whether you'd call that a coincidence though since they were hanging out with all the same people. It's entirely possible it just cycled through the staff over the years and they caught it indirectly from each other. And who knows, maybe the palace chef was an asymptomatic carrier of whatever killed them.
 
Top