Bill Cowher, eat your heart out

Here we have King Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire - and also Charles I of Spain - son of Philip I and Joanna of Aragon.  Who is not interesting to me as such...I'm more interested in his jaw.  Yes, today is Habsburg lip day.

The portrait above is apparently "idealized", but you can still make out the jutting lower jaw a la Kiera Knightley (or, if you prefer, Jay Leno).  Not to mention the creepy baby hand.  I don't know about that freaky pinky finger, but the jaw at least can be blamed on a case of history and science getting a little too close for comfort.  This is mandibular prognathism, a condition where the lower jaw grows more rapidly than the upper, and was especially notable in all of the Habsburgs from about 1400 onwards.  Exacerbated by their nasty habit of intermarrying, prognathism, or the Habsburg jaw, became so monstrous that by Charles II (three or four greats- back from Charles I, depending on which side of the family you count from), Spain quite literally had a dribbling idiot on the throne.

Hmm okay well I suppose that's a bit misleading - a whole host of recessive genetic nightmares were caught up in all that inbreeding, and so we can't blame idiocy on the jaw, but CharlieToo is a complete wreck: has a tongue so large it falls out of his mouth, can't chew, doesn't speak at all until age four, doesn't walk until eight, lisps and slurs, has severe mental deficiencies, has seizures, is impotent, and dies at 39 (sparking a war of succession).  To his people, he was fondly known as Charles the Hexed.

Anyway.  The jaw.  It was supposedly introduced into the dynasty by Cymburgis of Masovia, but (according to Wikipedia at least) doesn't really become a problem until Maximilian I.  And then those crazy Romans/Spaniards start shuffling around family members like a deck of cards until people can't eat anything but soup. 

Well, I think I've just about covered it all, but if you want, you can read about all the gory details here (bonus: fun family tree!).

And don't marry your cousins!