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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   2565 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Wikipedia has a whole page on the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_of_Queen_Victoria

De novo mutations do happen. Your idea would require her mother (who was in her early 30s at the time) to cheat with a hemophiliac man for whatever reason, but life expectancy for hemophiliac men in the early XIX century was abysmal, and guy she was rumored to have an affair with was quite healthy. If anything, her cheating with a younger guy would actually lower the chances.

It looks like we'd need to compare odds of

  1. Denovo mutation

  2. Cheating with an unknown hemophiliac man

  3. Her mother was a carrier despite no family history (also perhaps the result of a denovo mutation or infidelity herself or in recent generations).

We could plug it all into a Bayes calculator but I think the math gets wonky when comparing 0.0001% on one side vs 0.0001% on the other.

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