I Tracked the Habsburg Jaw for 300 More Years (You Can't Unsee It)

Someone in the comments of the last video called it a silly question. They actually typed those words out—"silly question to ask if Habsburgs still exist"—as if a dynasty that ruled half of Europe for six centuries simply evaporated into mist when their most deformed king finally stopped breathing in 1700. Like they just... poof. Gone. The answer to that allegedly silly question involves faces you can photograph today. And I'm going to show you exactly what happened to that famous jaw across three hundred years of portraits, paintings, and eventually photographs of people who are very much alive right now. Every image you're about to see is a real historical portrait or a real photograph. No AI generation. No artistic interpretation. Just actual faces from actual Habsburgs, tracked generation by generation. But first, we need to establish our baseline. We need to stare directly at the worst of it. Charles II of Spain was born on November 6, 1661, and the court physicians knew immediately that something had gone terribly wrong. He didn't walk until he was nearly four. He couldn't speak intelligibly until around age six. The famous Habsburg jaw—that distinctive mandibular prognathism that had been accumulating for generations—had reached such severity in Charles that he could barely chew his own food. His tongue was reportedly so large for his mouth that people struggled to understand his speech. His lower jaw jutted so far forward that his upper and lower teeth couldn't meet. Eating was laborious. Painful. A daily struggle for his entire thirty-eight years of life. And here's what the portraits don't show you.