[WT Sharpe]

.....Somewhat incidentally, another monarch, George III, may have carried a different mutation. The gene responsible for porphyria can lead to mental illness and might have been responsible for his well-known madness. The retrospective diagnosis was made from the notes of the King's physician, who noticed that the royal urine had the purple 'port-wine' colour characteristic of the disease. A distant descendant also showed signs of the illness. One of the King's less successful appointments was that of his Prime Minister, Lord North, who was largely responsible for the loss of the American Colonies. It is odd to reflect that both the Russian and the American Revolutions may in part have resulted from accidents to royal DNA.
..........— Steve Jones (1944 - ), Welsh geneticist, lecturer, author. The Language of the Genes (1993).


What that means for those of us who are U.S. citizens is that had it not been for a simple genetic error, we'd probably all be speaking English today!