On the Spanish side, Philip II – a religious fanatic who sent the ill-fated Armada against Elizabeth I of England – married his cousin, Maria of Portugal, and produced Don Carlos, one of the jewels of the Hapsburg crown. Hunchbacked and pigeon breasted, with his entire right side less developed than his left, Don Carlos’s twisted frame mirrored his unbalanced mind. Tales of his cruelty and bizarre behavior were legion.
As a child, Don Carlos enjoyed watching rabbits roasted alive and, for kicks, once blinded all the horses in the royal stable. Things got even worse when doctors removed part of his skull to drain built-up fluids after a head injury Don Carlos sustained when he was sixteen. Half-lobotomized, he took to roaming the streets of Madrid, assaulting young girls and hurling obscenities at respectable women. That conk on the head also made him even more ornery than he was before. Once, when a bootmaker delivered the wrong size, Don Carlos ordered the footwear cut into pieces, stewed, and then force-fed to the unfortunate man.
All of this became too much for King Philip, who in 1568 finally had his only son and heir locked away. “I would like to talk in all frankness about the life and conduct of the prince,” Philip wrote his sister, “the degree to which he carried on with licentiousness and confusion, and the means I used to induce him to change his behavior.” All was for naught, the king concluded, thus justifying his son’s imprisonment.
Source:
Farquhar, Michael. “Strange Reins.” A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories of History's Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors. Penguin Books, 2001. 176-77. Print.
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