How Incestuous Were The Habsburgs?

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

History Hit

Society, Sex, Scandal, Education, History

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

People will do crazy things to keep hold of power.

The Habsburgs - one of the most powerful families in European history - were a prime example of this. To keep hold of their power, they decided they would keep their gene pool as small as possible.

What were the disastrous consequences of this incest? How common was incest in royal families? And how did it all end for this dynasty, which included Charles II of Spain and Marie Antoinette?

Helping Kate get to know them is historian, Associate Professor in History at Northeastern University London and descendent of the Habsburgs(!), Estelle Paranque.

This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.

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All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone, it's me your host, Kate Lister. I'm just jumping in before the episode to ask you for a little favour.
0:07.6	If you are enjoying betwixt, and I hope that you are, we'd love it if you could vote for us for the
0:12.5	Listeners Choice Awards at the British Podcast Awards. If you follow the link in the show notes,
0:17.9	it should take you to the place you need to go and it would mean the world to us. We were shortlisted last year and the one before that, and the one before that.
0:27.8	We were so close. And it just made us want it even more. I think we can do it this year.
0:34.1	Right on with the show.
0:44.7	Travis fell in love with the perfect woman. She listened. She cared. There was just one catch.
0:51.4	She wasn't human. She was an AI companion. But when her behavior takes a disturbing turn,
0:55.9	Travis finds himself at the center of a much darker story.
1:03.0	This is Flesh and Code, a true story of love, loss, and the temptations of technology.
1:06.3	Listen to Flesh and Code wherever you get your podcasts.
1:16.0	Hello, my lovely betwixta. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Bertwix the Sheets.
1:21.2	And for those of you that don't know, for any newbies that have just wandered in, this is quite a naughty podcast.
1:25.0	Well, we don't mean it to be naughty, but we are looking at the history of naughty things. So we do stray into the occasionally rude. And frankly,
1:28.5	that's why most of you are here anyway. But I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast
1:32.9	spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things and an adulty way covering arranged
1:35.9	adult subjects and you should be an adult too. And I have to tell you that to cover our asses
1:39.7	in case anyone keeps listening and happens to get offended. Have I covered everything? Are we all good to go?
1:45.0	All right, let's do it. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? As you gaze upon
1:55.4	yourself in the morning, you can't help but see the generational traits passed on by your parents and your grandparents.
2:02.8	You have your father's eyes, your mother's smile, your grandparents' hair.
2:07.7	No, that can't be right.
	...

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