I’m reading about Carlos II of Spain. His Habsburg family had more infant mortality than did peasants in Spanish villages. At conception his DNA was more inbred than the expected average of a brother-sister pairing.

Carlos II couldn’t chew his food, he could barely talk, (worst of all from a dynasty’s perspective) he could not make love. (His first queen apparently loved him anyway - she committed suicide in frustration.) He was by all accounts mentally retarded as well. Under him Portugal broke away (and Brasil). He did draw up a report on the excesses of the Inquisition - which he then demanded burnt, because it upset him.

Somehow he managed to live to the age of 35. The Spanish were desperate to prop up this pathetic mutant, because without an heir the country was doomed. And the Spaniards were right, because his reign was followed by the War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War in New England) when the French tried to horn in.

Democracy seems like an unworkable system some times. Then I compare it to hereditary monarchy…