Did you know?

Did you know that many kings were mad?

Caligula of Rome had his father, mother and two brothers killed to
become emperor. Nero had his mother and first wife killed. These two
emperors were hated so much by the people that all references to them
were deleted from official Roman documentation.

The first French king, Clovis II, went mad after steeling the arm of
a martyr. His great-grandson, Childeric III was known as "the idiot".
The mother of Louis IX complained that he was "not sound of mind".
And his younger son, Robert of Clermont went mad after being hit on
the head with a sledge hammer.

Charles VI, called Charles the mad, ruled France from 1380 to 1415.
At stages, he believed that he was made of glass and inserted iron
rods into his clothing to prevent him from breaking.

The Habsburg Kings of Spain descended from Queen Juana The Mad of
Castile, who was mentally unstable. Her ancestors increased her
inheritance by inbreeding. These incestuous marriages resulted in the
mentally and physically handicapped King Carlos II of Spain, who had
an enormous, misshapen head, and a chin exaggerated to almost
caricature-like proportions rendering him unable to chew and barely
able to speak.

Several British kings went mad as a result of a blood disorder that
causes gout and mental derangement. The most famous was Mad George
III, who ruled England in the 18th Century. George was afflicted with
porphyria, a maddening disease which disrupted his reign as early as
1765. Several attacks strained his grip on reality and debilitated
him in the last years of his reign. He died blind, deaf and mad at
Windsor Castle on 29 January 29 1820. In those years, the British
Princess Caroline Mathilda married, at age 15, the deranged Christian
VII of Denmark.

The United States briefly enjoyed the services of a monarch, Emperor
Norton I, who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States and
Protector of Mexico in 1859. He had all his "state proclamations"
published in San Francisco's newspapers and wrote letters that were
seriously considered by Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria.