I saw a video about the inbred Hapsburgs.

[malthaussen]

6. They certainly knew, but didn't care.

Dynastic marriages are made to augment the power of a House, and the Hapsburgs were particularly good at it. By the eve of WWI, all the major royal families of Europe were closely related, which meant that a royal would end up marrying a cousin no matter what he did.

Besides, you're forgetting the superiority of Royal blood. Who cares if the kid has a club foot or the brains of a turnip? He has that Royal blood going for him, which makes him automatically superior to those horrible commoners grovelling in the earth. You know, when Edward VIII of Britain decided to marry a commoner in 1936, it created such an outrage he had to abdicate the throne. That's less than 100 years ago. (Yes, there were other objections, but Wallis Simpson's common birth was a major part of the outrage). If you find it hard to believe that actual people actually thought some bloodlines were "superior" despite the plain evidence that inbreeding could cause terrible problems, then you should take another look at the White Supremacist movement, which believes exactly the same thing today. When you know you're superior, nothing is going to change your mind.

-- Mal