this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
310 points (94.3% liked)

Greentext

7648 readers
190 users here now

This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] save_the_humans@leminal.space 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I think the issue is offspring has an increased likelihood of genetic defects. So its kind of probably always been taboo. Like since humanity's inception.

[–] green_copper@kbin.earth 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So its kind of probably always been taboo. Like since humanity's inception.

Medieval royalty enters the chat.

[–] markovs_gun@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Medieval nobles weren't out there fucking their sisters- real life isn't Game of Thrones. The closest relation allowed under medieval law in Western Europe was uncle/niece, and even that wasn't universally accepted and varied by region. Historically there are very few instances of cultures that accept marriage or sexual relationships between nuclear family members, and the exceptions are almost entirely for a small group within that society. The most prominent example in history would be the Egyptian pharaohs, who practiced brother-sister marriage at various times in history because they were believed to be gods on Earth and were expected to keep the divine blood concentrated. A normal person or even a noble in ancient Egypt would not done this- this was exclusive to the pharaohs.

So when we talk about inbreeding of medieval royal families, the main source of this is repeated first cousin marriage and marriage between uncle and niece. Both are taboo in most western societies today but are still not actually illegal in a lot of places. The biggest example of inbreeding among European noble families is Charles II of Spain, who only had 14 great great great great grandparents out of the normal 32, and he still wasn't the product of any brother-sister relationships, only cousins and uncles.