Hi, I'm Joan Bos
My interests, besides bicycling and photography (castles in particular), are genealogy and peculiar royals in history. I have written biographies on the personal lives of my favourite mad monarchs with an emphasis on lesser known royals throughout history. Genealogy enables me to trace inbreeding and royal hereditary diseases like porphyria and haemophilia, often a cause of their odd behaviour.
I started this website in April, 1996. My aim was to make an unknown part of history freely available to many people. The private lives of mad royals in history proved to be a quite unexplored subject, so it takes a lot of research and time to write additional biographies for the series.
My official name is Jannigje Nelly Willy Bos, I'm generally known as Joan.
I grew up in Cillaarshoek near Strijen in the Hoekse Waard, one of the isles in the south of Holland. For the last 14 years, I have lived in the Utrecht area. Utrecht has very beautiful canals. It was known by the Romans as "Trajectum". In 791 Utrecht became an important bischopric with bishops like Baldwin of Holland (†1196) and David of Burgundy (1425-1496). In 1579 the "Union of Utrecht" was signed here. It was the first union of Dutch provinces.