Father: Philip IV
Mother: Maria Anna of Austria
King: 1665-1700
Age: 4
Wives: 1. Marie Louise d'Orleans (1679)
2. Maria Anna von Neuburg (1690)
Children: No
Died: 1700
Age: 39
The Habsburg King Carlos II of Spain was sadly degenerated with an enormous misshapen head. His Habsburg jaw stood so much out that his two rows of teeth could not meet; he was unable to chew. His tongue was so large that he was barely able to speak. His intellect was similarly disabled. His brief life consistedchiefly of a passage from prolonged infancy to premature senility. Carlos' family was anxious only to prolong his days and thought little about his education, so that he could barely read or write. He had been fed by wet nurses until the age of 5 or 6 and was not allowed to walk until almost fully grown. Even then he was unable to walk properly, because his legs would not support him and he fell several times. His body remained that of an invalid child. The nature of his upbringing, the inadequacy of his education, the stiff etiquette of his court, his dependence upon his mother and his superstition helped to create a mentally retarded and hypersensitive monarch.
The Habsburg Philip IV had fathered 5 sons in two marriages, but upon his death in 1665 the 3-year-old Carlos was the only one that had survived. He became King of Spain and his Habsburg mother Mariana (to the right) assumed the regency, assisted by her favourite clergyman. In 1675 Carlos was presented with a decree to prolong the powers of his mother on the grounds of his own incapacity. Carlos refused to sign the document and he secretly wrote a letter to his bastard half-brother, Don Juan. Later, he was forced to pay a visit to his mother. After two hours, he emerged crying from her room. Once and for all Carlos' act of rebellion had ended.
Carlos II suffered one further disability, politically more significant than all the rest: his inability to consummate his marriages was evident from his birth. Nevertheless, he was married twice. His first bride was Marie Louise of Orléans (1662-1689). When the Sun King informed her of the proposed marriage and added that he could not have done more for his own daughter, Marie Louise replied: "But you could have done more for your niece!". Poor Marie Louise was distraught.
For 10 years the couple struggled in vain to beget a child. It seems that although Carlos attempted intercourse, he suffered from premature ejaculation, so that he was unable to achieve penetration. Marie Louise confided in the French ambassador, that "she was really not a virgin any longer, but that as far as she could figure things, she believed she would never have children". The French ambassador even managed to get a pair of Carlos' drawers and had them examined by surgeons for traces of sperm, but the doctors could not agree about their findings. Raised in the gaiety of the French court but married to an imbecile and suffocated by the gloomy Spanish Court, Marie Louise gave in to gluttony. She became increasingly corpulent and died in 1689 after two days of agony. Her death made a deep impression on Carlos; he demanded the opening of the coffins containing the decaying relics of his predecessors. Nevertheless, he was remarried within three months to Maria Ana (1667-1740, to the right), a daughter of the Elector Palatine. She was exorcised to promote her fertility, but she couldn't cure Carlos' sexual defects either.
Carlos' invalidity could have been caused by a bone disease, acromegaly, the result of an inherited endocrine dysfunction. This illness would explain his strange physical appearance, his over-large head and his impotence. The illness gave rise to fits of dizziness and what seem to have been epileptic spasms. The description of the numerous ailments that afflicted him from birth - suppurating ulcers, diseased bones and teeth, nervous difficulties - can also suggest congenital syphilis, the quite probable result of his father's frequent visits to the brothels of Madrid. A serious attack in 1627 and the syphilitic symptoms marking his final illness sustain the hypothesis of syphilis. An additional cause of his mental and physical defects can be found in he fact that his father and mother were uncle and niece and that their immediate ancestors were closely related, too.
Over the years Carlos grew steadily worse. He was lame, epileptic and bald at the age of 35. His hair had fallen out, his teeth were nearly gone and his eyesight was failing. In 1698 he had three fits and became deaf. The doctors put freshly-killed pigeons on his head to prevent dizziness and applied the steaming entrails of mammals to his stomach to keep him warm, but he died nevertheless. "Many people tell me," Carlos once said, "I am bewitched and I well believe it; such are the things I experience and suffer." His death started the War of the Spanish Succession.
Copyright © 1996, 1998, 2000 by J.N.W. Bos. All rights reserved
Source: http://www.xs4all.nl/~kvenjb/madmonarchs/carlos2/carlos2_bio.htm