EUROPEAN MONARCHIES GO THEIR SEPARATE WAYS.
European monarchies go their separate ways.
Jacques Arnold, author of the ROYAL HOUSES OF EUROPE series of genealogical books, notes the developed trend for the European monarchies to marry outside their own ranks.
The marriage in 2004 of the then Spanish Crown Prince, Felipe, Prince of Asturias, now King Felipe VI, to Letizia Ortiz, a divorced commoner and former television presenter, finally brought to an end a centuries-old practice observed by the Heads of the Royal Houses of Europe – to marry within their own rank of European royalty.
The Spanish royal family, the only reigning Bourbon monarchy, was at the heart of this practice. King Felipe himself exclusively counts royals of the first-rank amongst his sixteen great-grandparents – five Bourbons of the Spanish, French and Sicilian branches, a Habsburg, a Romanov, two German Emperors, two British princesses, a Dane, a Greek, a Hanoverian, and a Schleswig-Holstein princess, and a Battenberg (a morganatic son of a Prince of Hesse, married to Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter). That is a pedigree worthy of the requirements of the Order of the Golden Fleece, but the new departure horrified the more staid reaches of the ranks of the Spanish grandees. If Spain, could give up the practice of equal birth marriages, then, it seemed, any dynasty could.
Since then the Heir to the Swedish throne, the Crown Princess Victoria (itself a dynastic name that still reverberates around the web of European royalty), married her personal trainer, and a gym owner, Daniel Wessling, in 2010. Her father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, is the descendant of a panoply of European royalty, in a House of Bernadotte stemming from one of Napoleon’s marshals, and she is the daughter of a commoner mother.
In Luxembourg, Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume, is the son of a Grand Duke descended from European royals of the first rank, with another commoner mother – a Cuban. He has married a Belgian Countess of the highest rank, but not a royal, in 2012.
These marriages have followed on a series of marriages of heirs to European thrones. The week before the Spanish marriage, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark married Mary Donaldson, an Australian former estate agent. Although his mother, Queen Margarethe, is married to Prince Henrik, a minor French aristocrat, her grand-parents were all royals of the first rank.
In February 2002, the Dutch heir, Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, now the King of the Netherlands, married Maxima Zorreguieta, the daughter of an Argentine industrialist and ex-government minister. Again, though his mother Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was married to Prince Claus, a minor German aristocrat, her predecessors as Queen were all married to first-rank, German, princes.
In August 2001, the Norwegian heir, Crown Prince Haakon, caused a sensation by marrying Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby, an unmarried mother of a little boy. In his case, the Norwegian monarchy was already somewhat informal, with his mother, Queen Sonja, being a Norwegian commoner, although his father comes from an ancestry woven deep into northern European royalty.
Two years previously, the Belgian heir, Crown Prince Philippe, also now King of his country, had married a Belgian commoner, Mathilde d’Udekem d’Acoz, whose father was promptly ennobled, but who was descended maternally from a line of Polish princes. His father, King Albert, is descended from another array of first-rank European royalty, and his mother comes from a first-rank Italian noble family.
Paradoxically, the only reigning house to stick rigidly to the previous rules, is that of the tiny principality of Liechtenstein. The sovereign prince, Hans Adam II, counts sixteen princes and princesses as his great-grandparents. He married a daughter of the Bavarian Prince Kinsky. His heir, Hereditary Prince Alois Philipp, married in 1993 to a Bavarian royal princess, grand-daughter of the heir to its royal throne.
The other reigning Princely House in Europe, the Grimaldi dynasty of Monaco, has always been maverick. Possession of Monaco had been held by the Grimaldi family from 1297 right into the twentieth century, with high-level marriages, Albert I, marrying a daughter of the Scottish Duke of Hamilton. Their son, Louis II was a confirmed bachelor, and in 1919, the succession seemed destined for the German Duke of Urach. Postwar, this caused unrest. The solution adopted was to turn to Charlotte, his illegitimate daughter by an Algerian cabaret singer, legitimate her by decree, and marry her off to the French Count Pierre de Polignac. When their son, Rainier, reached his majority in 1944, she was promptly pensioned off. He went on to marry Grace Kelly, the American actress. They in turn produced a son, now Sovereign Prince Albert II, another long-term bachelor with identified illegitimate children. He ignored the precedent, and has married Charlene Wittstock, the South African Olympic swimmer, who is currently expecting their child.
Their marriages seem to have now established a notable trend, practiced by the reigning houses, in tune with public opinion in their respective countries. Interestingly, many of the dispossessed historic royal houses have tried to hang on to the old practice.
Otto von Habsburg, the erstwhile Prince Imperial of Austria and Crown Prince of Hungary, married a first-rank German princess. However, his son and heir, Archduke Karl, now Head of the House of Habsburg, and like his father a former Member of the European Parliament, married a mere Baroness, compensated for by being the daughter of the fabulously rich Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza. Given the relative poverty of the Habsburg main line, this was no doubt a serious consideration. Nevertheless, the marriage caused quite a flurry in the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy, which to a notable degree has maintained its traditional habits of marrying within its own ranks.
The Prussian royal house has been far stricter. Those princes marrying beneath the second rank of royalty have found themselves excluded from the succession. The eldest son of Imperial Crown Prince Wilhelm, himself Prince Wilhelm, was excluded from the succession on his marriage to a commoner in 1933. His brother, Prince Louis Ferdinand, became Head of the Prussian House in 1951, and married a Romanov Grand Duchess. He excluded his two eldest sons for marrying commoners with the memorable comment, “A good horse breeder does not mix thoroughbreds with percherons”, and the succession in turn was focused on his third son, also Louis Ferdinand, who had suitably married, but who died in an accident when on Germany military service in 1977. When Louis Ferdinand senior died in 1995, the succession passed to his grandson, Georg Friedrich, whose succession has been contested unsuccessfully by his dispossessed uncles in the German courts. He has gone on to uphold the practice, by marrying the daughter of a Prince of the long-defunct Holy Roman Empire, Princess Sophie of Ysenburg-Birstein, in 2011. The Principality of Ysenburg was “mediatised” in 1815, and merged into the continuing Sovereign States of Hesse, but its dynasty has continued to maintain its position in the higher ranks of European Royalty.
The Orleans-Bourbon house of France also has to date applied such strict rules, despite being ousted 166 years ago. Their current Head, Henri VI, Count of Paris, boasts fifteen princes of the first rank amongst his quarterings (the sixteenth, a Bohemian countess, caused a rift in the succession of the Brazilian house of Bourbon-Bragança, when she married the eventual heir in 1908). He went on to marry a first-rank princess, a daughter of the heir to the Kingdom of Württemberg.
The remaining European imperial house, Romanov, has suffered serious traumas, given the bloody end to the rule of the dynasty in 1917. When the dust settled after the Russian civil war, the headship of the house fell to Grand Duke Kyril Vladimirovitch, first-cousin of the murdered last Tsar, who became “Curator of the Throne” in 1922. He was married to a Saxe-Coburg granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and his son, Grand Duke Vladimir succeeded in 1938, marrying a princess of the former Georgian royal family. He only had one daughter, Grand Duchess Maria (married to a Prussian prince), and following his death in Miami in 1992, the succession became open to dispute on grounds of sex and marriage (the admissibility of the former Georgian house being open to question), the Imperial regime having been strict on both marriages of “equal-birth” and on male succession. Madrid-based Grand Duchess Maria disputes the succession with the male-line descendant, Swiss-based Prince Nikolai Romanov, who nevertheless is theoretically ruled out because his mother was a mere countess, although his grandmother was a Montenegrin Princess, daughter of the colourful King Nicola).
The Balkan former monarchies have also done their best to adhere to the original rules. King Michael of Roumania married a princess of Bourbon Parma, although none of his five daughters has married a prince, causing succession questions also based on the lack of a prince. His eldest daughter, Margarita, has been nominated Crown Princess, but she married a Roumanian commoner (nominated a Prince by the Head of the House of Hohenzollern, from which the Roumanian royal house stems), and they have no children.
Crown Prince Alexander of the former Yugoslavia, born in a room at Claridge’s in wartime London, deemed for the occasion to be Yugoslav territory, married a Brazilian princess of the house of Bourbon-Bragança, and has three U.S.-born sons. The marriage ended in divorce, and he is now married to a divorcée, a Greek commoner. Since the fall of communism, he has returned to Belgrade, taking possession of the former royal palaces.
King Constantine of Greece married a daughter of the King of Denmark in 1964, and was exiled three years later. His sixteen great-grandparents are all strictly of the highest royal rank. His mother, Queen Friederike, was an enthusiastic proponent of royal inter-marriage, and even organised holiday events for young royals of the first-rank to mingle and no doubt select marriage partners, as many did. Nevertheless his eldest son, Crown Prince Paul, born at the royal palace of Tatoi shortly before the “Colonels’ coup, married a commoner, a daughter of the fabulously wealthy entrepreneur, Robert Miller.
King Simeon II of Bulgaria, who served as his country’s Prime Minister from 2001 to 2005, having returned from exile in Spain after the fall of the communists, and winning an election, also descends from sixteen royals. Spending most of his life in exile in Spain, he married the daughter of a grandee. His four sons, all born in Madrid, have married Spaniards.
The remaining European reigning monarchy is, of course, our own. Whilst adhering to traditional rules in the past, which led to marriages to a succession of protestant German princesses, things began to change with Queen Victoria, who nevertheless married a German prince. She viewed the dilution of blood as beneficial, commenting “that if no fresh blood was infused occasionally the races would degenerate finally – physically and morally – for … all the Protestant Royal Families were related to each other and so were the Catholic ones!” With equanimity she welcomed the marriage of her grandson George, Duke of York, later King George V, to Princess Mary of Teck, daughter of a Württemberg house descended from a morganatic marriage, commenting “that morganatic marriages were unknown in England, and if a King chose to marry a peasant girl she would be Queen just as much as any princess”. She took a similar view of her youngest daughter’s marriage to a Prince of Battenberg, another house descended from a royal morganatic marriage. The First World War brought to an end marriages with continental royalty. Albert, Duke of York, later King George VI, married the daughter of a Scottish Earl. Their daughter, our current Queen, caused a partial reversion by marrying a British Royal Navy officer, who was born a Prince of Greece, and the son of a Battenberg mother. The current Prince of Wales firstly married the daughter of an English Earl. It fell to Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, to take the final step, marrying a commoner, and for love, but no doubt judging that she had the makings of a great Queen Consort in the future.