Have you ever wondered if some medieval rulers had a mental illness?
Here I share a list of medieval rulers with mental illness and the conditions that scholars believed they had.
Charles VI of France
Lived: 1368–1422
Ruled 1380–1422
Known as Charles le Fou (“Charles the Mad”), he suffered from bouts of psychosis, including glass delusion.
Glass delusion is an external manifestation of people who feared they were made of glass “and therefore likely to shatter into pieces”. He refused to allow people to touch him and wore reinforced clothing to protect himself from accidental “shattering”.
Henry VI of England
Lived 1421–1471
Ruled 1422–1461 and 1470–1471
A breakdown in 1453 caused him to neglect state affairs for more than a year. A Lord Protector was appointed on that and two subsequent occasions to govern the kingdom. The ensuing succession struggles gave rise to the Wars of the Roses.
Joanna of Castile
Lived: 1479–1555
Ruled 1504–1555
Known as Juana la Loca (“Joanna the Mad”), is believed by historians to have suffered from melancholia, psychosis or schizophrenia.
Melancholia is the predecessor of the mental health diagnosis of clinical depression.
Psychosis is an abnormal condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real.
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (often hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking.
Eric XIV of Sweden
Lived:1533–1577
Ruled: 1560–1568
Developed paranoia and irrational, violent streaks later in his life leading to an erratic rule and the brutal murders of several real or perceived political rivals in the Sture Murders. Eric himself stabbed Nils Svantesson Sture to death.
King Philip V of Spain
Lived: 1683–1746
Ruled: 1700–24, 1724–4
Suffered from intense melancholia
Queen Maria I of Portugal
Lived 1734–1816
Ruled 1777–1816
Known as Maria, a Louca (“Mary the Mad”).
Around 1790 Maria’s long-expressed anxieties developed into religiously themed delusions. Her ministers determined that she was insane and appointed her son João to govern the kingdom.
George III of the United Kingdom
Lived 1738–1820
Ruled 1760–1820
He exhibited signs of mental disorder, in the form of logorrhea, as early as 1788. He fell into a profound depression after the death of his beloved Princess Amelia, and Parliament delegated his state duties to George, Prince of Wales.
In psychology, logorrhea, also known as press speech, is a communication disorder that causes excessive wordiness and repetitiveness, which can cause incoherency. They often report this ailment as a symptom of Wernicke’s aphasia, where damage to the language processing center of the brain creates difficulty in self-centered speech.
Christian VII of Denmark
Lived: 1749–1808
Ruled 1767–1808
Although never completely incapacitated, Christian displayed severe emotional and moral instability, and members of his court and personal staff struggled to build a functioning government around him.
Ludwig II of Bavaria
Lived 1845–1886
Ruled 1864–1886
He irritated his ministers with his uncontrolled spending on magnificent castles. With no end in sight, they arranged for a panel of psychiatrists to declare him insane and installed his uncle as regent. Although by political concerns, motivated ministers, scholars have offered medical explanations that include frontotemporal dementia, schizotypal personality disorder and Pick’s disease.
The frontotemporal dementias (FTD) encompass six types of dementia involving the frontal or temporal lobes.
Schizotypal personality disorder (STPD), or schizotypal disorder, is a mental disorder characterized by severe social anxiety, thought disorder, paranoid ideation, derealization, transient psychosis and often unconventional beliefs. People with this disorder feel extreme discomfort with maintaining close relationships with people and avoid forming them, mainly because the subject thinks their peers harbor negative thoughts towards them.
Otto of Bavaria
Lived: 1848–1916
Ruled 1886–1913
Suffered from depression, anxiety and insomnia throughout his life. In 1886, the senior royal medical officer wrote a statement declaring that Otto was severely mentally ill. Scholars believe Otto to have suffered from schizophrenia.
Nebuchadnezzar II
Lived 634 BC–c. 562 BC
Ruled c. 605 BC–c. 562 BC
The Christian Bible describes him as displaying symptoms consistent with boanthropy
Boanthropy ‘still occurs today when a person, in a delusional state, believes themselves to be an ox or cow… and attempts to live and behave accordingly
Majd al-Dawla
Lived: 993–1029, ruled 997–1029
He was suffering from boanthropy until Avicenna cured him, according to Persian traditions.
