A Cumbrian law firm warns that employers will suffer in April next year when the Royal Wedding takes place...as the entire country downs tools for several days!
North West Evening Mail | News | Royal marriage a pain for employers
Harry's "Ex" Chelsy Davy coming to the Wedding?
Although they called off their relationship earlier this year, Chelsy Davy is reported to be keen to patch up her relationship with Prince Harry in advance of the royal nuptials in April...watch this space!
Prince Harry to invite Chelsy Davy to William and Kate's wedding?
Bets close on the Wedding Dress designer!
Paddy Power has closed betting on which designer Kate Middleton will choose for her dress - all the money was on Bruce Oldfield so betting has been suspended. His designs were a favourite of Diana, Princess of Wales (shocker) and he has also designed dresses for Cameron Diaz and Jemima Khan.
Has Kate Middleton chosen her wedding dress designer? Bookies close bets as 'all the money was on Bruce Oldfield'
"A Saintly Heroine" - More Of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters
Ever conscious of her health, Louise of Wales, Duchess of Fife escaped each 
summer from the cold British winters to warmer climes. In November 1911, accompanied by her husband, Macduff, and their two daughters, Alexandra and Maud, she boarded the P&O liner, the Delhi bound for Egypt by way of the Bay of Biscay. In spite of her delicate constitution, the rough seas and strong winds did not bother her unduly and, on the night of 12th December, she retired to her cabin untroubled by the rising storm. While the royal party slept, gales forced the ship off course towards Morocco where it ran aground, throwing several crew members overboard and destroying many of the lifeboats.
Awoken by the chaos, Louise and Macduff made their way to the deck where officers urged the princess and her family to hurry into the remaining lifeboats. With remarkable calm, Louise displayed her true nobility and insisted on remaining on board until all the other passengers were safe.
When word of the danger reached the British fleet, boats were immediately dispatched to assist in the rescue and eventually, Louise, Macduff and their daughters, dressed only in their nightclothes covered by coats and life jackets, were able to climb into a boat. Their ordeal was only just beginning. Waves lashed at the vessel, filling it with water and ultimately throwing the family overboard.
“We floated in our belts,” Louise wrote to her brother, “- waves like iron walls tore over us, knocked us under, Admiral Cradock gripped my shoulder & saved me! - Thank God my Macduff & children both on beach but had been under too, it was an awful moment, our clothes so heavy & we were breathless & shivery, we ran to get warm as best we could.”
Drenched and exhausted, the family and sailors found themselves in a forlorn spot and trudged shivering for miles through the darkness of the continuing storm. Eventually they reached Tangier where they finally found warmth and rest.
Although it took several weeks for Louise to regain her strength, she had come through the disaster unscathed and her courage earned the admiration of her rescuers. A month later, the family embarked on a recuperative cruise along the Nile, where it was soon apparent to Louise that the shipwreck had affected her husband more deeply than she had first realised. He contracted a series of chills, which developed into pleurisy and pneumonia and died on the 19th January 1912.
In England, the Royal Family awaited the return of his coffin and, for a second time in three months, the reputedly weak Louise impressed everyone by her composure and strength of character.
“What a saintly heroine our poor darling Louise has become!” wrote a proud Queen Alexandra, “a changed being who can bear every cross now!”
Resigning herself to ‘the will of God’ Louise calmly accepted her widowhood and assumed full responsibility for her daughters and the running of Macduff’s estates. Her eldest daughter, Alexandra, inherited her father’s title and became the first Duchess of Fife in her own right. Two years later she married her mother’s first cousin, Arthur, the brother of Daisy and Patsy Connaught.
Louise was not the only one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters to be regarded as a ‘saintly heroine’ that year. Just as Macduff’s death brought out Louise’s finest qualities, the shock of Serge’s assassination had led to a far more dramatic transformation in the life of her Hessian cousin, Ella. Though heartbroken at her husband’s horrific murder, the forty-year-old Grand Duchess refused to give way to despair. For twenty years, she had been seen as little more than a beautiful appendage to the Grand Duke - a bejewelled ornament who, for all her numerous charitable causes, remained entirely under Serge’s overbearing command.
Beneath her passive exterior, however, Ella had lost none of the intelligence or strength of character she had inherited from her mother. Her decision to convert to Orthodoxy had not been taken lightly and with each passing year she had absorbed herself more deeply in her faith. She may have endured Serge’s accusations of ‘immoderate devotion’ in silence but throughout her difficult marriage she had ‘kept her ears open’ to what was going on around her and had nurtured a secret dream.
Now, relieved of her duties as wife of the Governor General, she withdrew from the ballrooms to adopt a more ascetic existence. Dispensing with the trappings of royalty, she stripped her Kremlin apartments of their expensive furnishings and, adopting a vegetarian diet, divided her time between prayer and charitable works, venturing ever deeper into the heart of Moscow’s slums. The ignorance, poverty and debauchery she encountered revived the longing she had had since childhood ‘to help those who suffer.’
“How,” she asked, “can you expect workmen who toil all day in hot hideous factories or on remote farms with nothing in their lives but work and worry, to have beauty in their souls?”
It was no longer sufficient for her to patronise charities at a distance; like her mother before her, Ella felt drawn to take a more direct approach. After many months of careful planning and consultations with Church elders, she gradually disposed of her possessions and purchased a piece of land in the poorest part of Moscow. There, she built a convent, orphanage, church and hospital where the poor could be treated free of charge. She undertook a course of nurse training and, after two years of wrangling, the Orthodox Church agreed to grant ‘The House of Martha and Mary’ official recognition as a convent. Ella, having taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, was appointed its abbess.
In her desire to create a beautiful haven for the poor, Ella had the white buildings of her foundation surrounded with flowers and trees. She employed the finest artists in Russia to decorate the walls of her church with frescos and paintings and funded a permanent chaplain for her sisters:
“It is a very gentle and delicate experience to stand on the stone flags of the wide church,” wrote a visiting Englishman. “[The sisters’] religion is a religion of good deeds. They visit, clothe, comfort, heal the poor, and all but work miracles, flowers springing in their footsteps where they go.”
Far from the gaudy world of the ballrooms, Ella dedicated herself wholeheartedly to her foundation. Sleeping for only a few hours on a plain wooden bed, she spent the nights trailing through the back streets of Moscow in search of child prostitutes and abandoned children. She personally attended the most abject patients in her hospital, often receiving those whom other hospitals were unable or unwilling to treat. Her young friend, Prince Felix Youssoupov recalled one such case:
“A woman who had overturned a lighted oil stove was brought in; her clothes had caught fire and her body was a mass of burns. Gangrene had set in and the doctors despaired of saving her. With a gentle but obstinate courage, the Grand Duchess nursed her back to life. It took two hours each day to dress her wounds and the stench was such that several of the nurses fainted. The patient recovered within a few weeks and this was considered a miracle at the time.”
As the foundation flourished, she extended the work to establish hostels for students and young workers, and a scheme for employing messenger boys, providing them with accommodation and fair wages. Requests poured in by the thousand and Ella, employing all the administrative talents she had learned in childhood, attempted to deal with them all:
“[Ella] never used the words, ‘I can not’ and there was never anything gloomy in the life of the Martha and Mary Home,” wrote her sister Victoria’s lady-in-waiting, Nona Kerr, “Anyone who had been there took away with him a precious feeling.”
Ella’s saintly reputation soon spread through the country and wherever she went, crowds gathered to kiss the hem of her garments as she passed, but if the poor were convinced that a saint lived among them, the aristocracy were aghast. Many of her former friends considered her lifestyle demeaning to the Imperial Family and rumours spread through the family that she had suffered a nervous breakdown and intended to shut herself off from the world. Only with the staunch support of her sister, Victoria Battenberg, did she manage to convince her relatives in Darmstadt and England that this was no sudden ‘adventure’ but a dream she had nurtured since childhood which ‘grew in me more and more.’ It was a dream which would ultimately lead to death and canonisation.
summer from the cold British winters to warmer climes. In November 1911, accompanied by her husband, Macduff, and their two daughters, Alexandra and Maud, she boarded the P&O liner, the Delhi bound for Egypt by way of the Bay of Biscay. In spite of her delicate constitution, the rough seas and strong winds did not bother her unduly and, on the night of 12th December, she retired to her cabin untroubled by the rising storm. While the royal party slept, gales forced the ship off course towards Morocco where it ran aground, throwing several crew members overboard and destroying many of the lifeboats.
Awoken by the chaos, Louise and Macduff made their way to the deck where officers urged the princess and her family to hurry into the remaining lifeboats. With remarkable calm, Louise displayed her true nobility and insisted on remaining on board until all the other passengers were safe.
When word of the danger reached the British fleet, boats were immediately dispatched to assist in the rescue and eventually, Louise, Macduff and their daughters, dressed only in their nightclothes covered by coats and life jackets, were able to climb into a boat. Their ordeal was only just beginning. Waves lashed at the vessel, filling it with water and ultimately throwing the family overboard.
“We floated in our belts,” Louise wrote to her brother, “- waves like iron walls tore over us, knocked us under, Admiral Cradock gripped my shoulder & saved me! - Thank God my Macduff & children both on beach but had been under too, it was an awful moment, our clothes so heavy & we were breathless & shivery, we ran to get warm as best we could.”
Drenched and exhausted, the family and sailors found themselves in a forlorn spot and trudged shivering for miles through the darkness of the continuing storm. Eventually they reached Tangier where they finally found warmth and rest.
Although it took several weeks for Louise to regain her strength, she had come through the disaster unscathed and her courage earned the admiration of her rescuers. A month later, the family embarked on a recuperative cruise along the Nile, where it was soon apparent to Louise that the shipwreck had affected her husband more deeply than she had first realised. He contracted a series of chills, which developed into pleurisy and pneumonia and died on the 19th January 1912.
In England, the Royal Family awaited the return of his coffin and, for a second time in three months, the reputedly weak Louise impressed everyone by her composure and strength of character.
“What a saintly heroine our poor darling Louise has become!” wrote a proud Queen Alexandra, “a changed being who can bear every cross now!”
Resigning herself to ‘the will of God’ Louise calmly accepted her widowhood and assumed full responsibility for her daughters and the running of Macduff’s estates. Her eldest daughter, Alexandra, inherited her father’s title and became the first Duchess of Fife in her own right. Two years later she married her mother’s first cousin, Arthur, the brother of Daisy and Patsy Connaught.
Louise was not the only one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters to be regarded as a ‘saintly heroine’ that year. Just as Macduff’s death brought out Louise’s finest qualities, the shock of Serge’s assassination had led to a far more dramatic transformation in the life of her Hessian cousin, Ella. Though heartbroken at her husband’s horrific murder, the forty-year-old Grand Duchess refused to give way to despair. For twenty years, she had been seen as little more than a beautiful appendage to the Grand Duke - a bejewelled ornament who, for all her numerous charitable causes, remained entirely under Serge’s overbearing command.
Beneath her passive exterior, however, Ella had lost none of the intelligence or strength of character she had inherited from her mother. Her decision to convert to Orthodoxy had not been taken lightly and with each passing year she had absorbed herself more deeply in her faith. She may have endured Serge’s accusations of ‘immoderate devotion’ in silence but throughout her difficult marriage she had ‘kept her ears open’ to what was going on around her and had nurtured a secret dream.
Now, relieved of her duties as wife of the Governor General, she withdrew from the ballrooms to adopt a more ascetic existence. Dispensing with the trappings of royalty, she stripped her Kremlin apartments of their expensive furnishings and, adopting a vegetarian diet, divided her time between prayer and charitable works, venturing ever deeper into the heart of Moscow’s slums. The ignorance, poverty and debauchery she encountered revived the longing she had had since childhood ‘to help those who suffer.’
“How,” she asked, “can you expect workmen who toil all day in hot hideous factories or on remote farms with nothing in their lives but work and worry, to have beauty in their souls?”
It was no longer sufficient for her to patronise charities at a distance; like her mother before her, Ella felt drawn to take a more direct approach. After many months of careful planning and consultations with Church elders, she gradually disposed of her possessions and purchased a piece of land in the poorest part of Moscow. There, she built a convent, orphanage, church and hospital where the poor could be treated free of charge. She undertook a course of nurse training and, after two years of wrangling, the Orthodox Church agreed to grant ‘The House of Martha and Mary’ official recognition as a convent. Ella, having taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, was appointed its abbess.
In her desire to create a beautiful haven for the poor, Ella had the white buildings of her foundation surrounded with flowers and trees. She employed the finest artists in Russia to decorate the walls of her church with frescos and paintings and funded a permanent chaplain for her sisters:
“It is a very gentle and delicate experience to stand on the stone flags of the wide church,” wrote a visiting Englishman. “[The sisters’] religion is a religion of good deeds. They visit, clothe, comfort, heal the poor, and all but work miracles, flowers springing in their footsteps where they go.”
Far from the gaudy world of the ballrooms, Ella dedicated herself wholeheartedly to her foundation. Sleeping for only a few hours on a plain wooden bed, she spent the nights trailing through the back streets of Moscow in search of child prostitutes and abandoned children. She personally attended the most abject patients in her hospital, often receiving those whom other hospitals were unable or unwilling to treat. Her young friend, Prince Felix Youssoupov recalled one such case:
“A woman who had overturned a lighted oil stove was brought in; her clothes had caught fire and her body was a mass of burns. Gangrene had set in and the doctors despaired of saving her. With a gentle but obstinate courage, the Grand Duchess nursed her back to life. It took two hours each day to dress her wounds and the stench was such that several of the nurses fainted. The patient recovered within a few weeks and this was considered a miracle at the time.”
As the foundation flourished, she extended the work to establish hostels for students and young workers, and a scheme for employing messenger boys, providing them with accommodation and fair wages. Requests poured in by the thousand and Ella, employing all the administrative talents she had learned in childhood, attempted to deal with them all:
“[Ella] never used the words, ‘I can not’ and there was never anything gloomy in the life of the Martha and Mary Home,” wrote her sister Victoria’s lady-in-waiting, Nona Kerr, “Anyone who had been there took away with him a precious feeling.”
Ella’s saintly reputation soon spread through the country and wherever she went, crowds gathered to kiss the hem of her garments as she passed, but if the poor were convinced that a saint lived among them, the aristocracy were aghast. Many of her former friends considered her lifestyle demeaning to the Imperial Family and rumours spread through the family that she had suffered a nervous breakdown and intended to shut herself off from the world. Only with the staunch support of her sister, Victoria Battenberg, did she manage to convince her relatives in Darmstadt and England that this was no sudden ‘adventure’ but a dream she had nurtured since childhood which ‘grew in me more and more.’ It was a dream which would ultimately lead to death and canonisation.
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Kate celebrated engagement with a girlie party!
Kate reportedly celebrated her engagement to Prince William with a slumber party, inviting a dozen of her closest friends and partying into the wee hours of the morning...and who can blame the girl? She has nabbed a prince and is becoming the most famous woman in the world...
Diana's Tiara to be offered to Kate
Kate will be asked if she would like to wear Diana's priceless pearl and diamond Tiara for the wedding...as many will say, let's hope it brings her more luck than Diana. It is clear that William is trying to heal the rifts with the Spencer side of the clan - Diana's ring which Kate is now wearing, the "black sheep" of the family Earl Spencer who has been asked to read at the ceremony despite the fact the last time he stood up in Westminster Abbey he all but accused the Royal Family of murdering his sister...and now the possibility of the Tiara.
It is a very public attempt at reconciliation by a young man who wants to heal the rifts in his family - and who can blame him?
Kate Middleton will be offered Princess Diana's tiara to wear on her wedding day
It is a very public attempt at reconciliation by a young man who wants to heal the rifts in his family - and who can blame him?
Princes Behaving Badly?
Will it be like an episode of "Men Behaving Badly" when Wills and Harry share a pad for one last time before Wills gets hitched to the lovely Kate?
Royal wedding: Prince William and Prince Harry to have lads' pad - mirror.co.uk
Posh and Becks are getting an invite!
Getting close to a real throne this time (rather than the pretend throne at their own wedding!), David and Victoria Beckham are going to be invited to Wills and Kate's Wedding in April 2011...presumably Posh said to Dave, "I'll tell you what I want, what I really, REALLY want..." - an invite!!
David Beckham and Victoria Beckham get invite to Royal wedding - mirror.co.uk
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"A Sensible Girl, Full of Good Intentions" - More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters
In the early months of 1905, while Ella was coming to terms with the 
horrific murder of her husband and Russia was in turmoil, Cousin Maud, youngest daughter of King Edward VII, was enjoying a peaceful existence in the obscurity of Denmark. Though she had never lost her nostalgia for England, she was happy with her sailor prince and delighted to spend several months of each year in the haven of Appleton Lodge. It would have suited Maud to remain forever in untroubled anonymity with her husband and their three-year-old son, Alexander, but life was about to take a strange turn for the shy Princess Carl of Denmark.
For ninety years the Kings of Sweden had ruled neighbouring Norway but by the turn of century, following a series of political upheavals, the Norwegians were pressing for independence with a separate monarchy. Since there was no ruling House in their country they asked King Oskar of Sweden to appoint them a sovereign from his own family but, unwilling to yield to such a revolutionary proposal, he refused. The Norwegians turned instead to the Danish King Frederick VIII who had no such qualms and recognised that his second son, Carl, was the most obvious candidate.
Neither Carl nor Maud had any desire to reign in a foreign country, particularly when they were told that large groups of Norwegians favoured a republic. For several months, in spite of pressure from both his father in Denmark and father-in-law in England, the prince refused the throne until November 1905 when the Norwegians succeeded in convincing him that he truly was the people’s choice.
Carl’s doubts about accepting the crown were soon allayed by the warmth of the reception that greeted the new King and Queen on their arrival in the capital, Christiania (now Oslo). His decision to adopt the ancient Norwegian name of Haakon VII and to change the name of his son from Alexander to Olaf proved popular with his subjects. Maud, too, made a good impression. Her regal yet unassuming manner and her determination to take her responsibilities seriously - already she had begun to master the language - quickly earned the Norwegians’ respect and affection.
In wider Europe, however, Carl’s decision to accept the throne did not win universal acclaim. The Kaiser, opposed to any scheme promoted by Uncle Bertie, had preferred a Swedish contender, though in a typical about-turn he later assured Carl of his support. Other royalties were not so easily appeased. The Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz wrote to her niece, the Duchess of York:
“So Maud is sitting on her very unsafe throne - to say the least of it!...He is making speeches…thanking the Norwegians for having elected him! No, really, it is too odd!”
Nor had Maud entirely succeeded in overcoming her shyness and, as the Coronation Day drew nearer, all her old insecurities returned.
“It haunts me like an awful nightmare this Coronation…” she wrote to her sister-in-law, “Think of me alone on my throne, having a crown to be shoved on my head which is very small and heavy by the aged Bishop, and a Minister and also has to be put on by them before the whole crowd!!! And oil to be put on my head, hands and bosom!!! Gracious, it will be awful!”
Nonetheless, Maud overcame her nerves and rose to the occasion. Even though a recurrence of neuralgia prevented her from walking in the coronation procession, her manner and bearing impressed the enthusiastic crowds that lined the route to Trondheim Cathedral. Throughout the ceremony, she played her part with the finesse that would characterise all her undertakings in Norway. In spite of her delicate health, Queen Maud, like many of her cousins, involved herself in numerous charitable causes including, to the horror of the more prudish, a refuge for unmarried mothers. Whatever the critics may have thought of her ‘revolutionary throne’ she and Carl proved popular monarchs who endured few of the upheavals that were soon to beset their cousins and other European dynasties.
While Maud was accustoming herself to the idea of a foreign throne, her cousin, nineteen-year-old Patsy Connaught - ‘tall beautiful, gifted and a brilliant artist’ - had travelled to Spain with her parents. Wandering through Madrid she was horrified to hear the enthusiastic crowds acclaiming her as their future Queen. The shy young princess had no ambition to become the Queen of anywhere and still less to be the wife of the arrogant philanderer King Alfonso XIII, who only a few months previously had been equally taken with her elder sister, Daisy.
Undaunted by Patsy’s obvious lack of interest, the king was so convinced of his own magnetism that he decided to pursue the match and journeyed to England later that year with a view to making Patsy his bride. His efforts were to no avail. Patsy resisted his advances and would remain unmarried for over a decade. In 1911 she and her parents set sail for Ottawa where her father, Prince Arthur was to take over as Governor of Canada. As her mother’s health declined Patsy assumed much of the responsibility for hosting her father’s receptions and carried out her duties with such finesse that she was rewarded by having several regiments and a mountain range named in her honour.
Patsy’s refusal did not trouble the fickle Spanish King. As soon as he realised that Patsy was unmoved by his approaches he quickly switched his attention to her eighteen-year-old cousin, Victoria Eugenia (‘Ena’) of Battenberg.
Since the death of Queen Victoria, Ena and her mother had been living peacefully in Kensington Palace from where Princess Beatrice kept her eyes open for suitable candidates for Ena’s hand. Unlike her own mother, Princess Beatrice had no qualms about permitting her daughter to marry and had encouraged the suit of the Russian Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich, (brother of Ducky’s husband, Kyril) whose name had once been scandalously linked to Cousin Missy of Roumania. The arrival of the Spanish king put paid to the notion of a Russian match and was about to change the young princess’s life forever.
What attracted Ena to the pompous Spaniard, eleven years her senior, remains unclear. Having acceded to the throne before his first birthday, Alfonso was a self-centred, lecherous chauvinist, and if the Russian throne appeared insecure, Spain’s was positively rocking. During the lifetime of Alfonso’s father, the country had briefly been a republic and even after the restoration of the monarchy, separatist groups were demanding independence. Several attempts had been made on Alfonso’s life and he was so used to anarchists’ attacks that when a car backfired in London his guards assumed it was another assassination attempt and almost shot an innocent bystander. Moreover, Alfonso was a Roman Catholic and, by order of the Spanish parliament, his wife had to be of the same faith.
Perhaps Alfonso’s seductive manner and suave appearance eventually won the heart of the English princess. Throughout the summer he courted her in the fashionable haunt of royalties, Biarritz, and before the onset of autumn, Ena had agreed to convert to Catholicism (after all, her godmother had been the Roman Catholic Empress Eugenie) to become his wife.
The Bishop of Nottingham instructed Ena in the Catholic faith and, in March 1906, she was received into the Church and given the unfortunate confirmation name, ‘Brindle.’ Few members of her family raised any objections to her conversion but, to Ena’s surprise, the British public was outraged. So great was the general disapproval that the Duke of York felt obliged to warn Aunt Beatrice to keep Ena away from London until the resentment died down. [Image]
Nor was the news of her engagement greeted with great rejoicing in Spain. Alfonso’s mother revived the old complaint that the Battenbergs were not ‘of the blood’ and considered Ena unworthy of a Spanish king. In response, Uncle Bertie elevated the princess from a mere ‘Highness’ to a ‘Royal Highness’ and, a month later, in May 1906, amid many tears Ena and her mother set sail for Madrid:
“A trying moment for the poor child,” wrote Princess May. “I do hope Ena will get on well in Spain, I think she is a sensible girl & may do good there, anyhow she is full of good intentions - but I don’t know whether she realises what a difficult future lies before her.”
Within days of her arrival in Spain, Ena would witness a terrible omen of that ‘difficult future.’
On 31st May royalties from Russia, Germany and England mingled in the sweltering heat of Madrid for the wedding. The dusty roads and squalid conditions of the capital gave rise to a good deal of muttering among the foreign guests, but their complaints might have taken on more significance if they had realised how close they were to death. As the company gathered for the Nuptial Mass an uninvited guest armed with a bomb was desperately trying to enter the impressive Cathedral of St. Hieronimo. An anarchist, Mateo Morral, almost succeeded in obtaining a ticket when, at the last minute, access was denied him and the three-hour long Mass proceeded without incident. But Morral was not to be deterred.
Amid cheering crowds, the newly-married couple left the Cathedral and set off in procession for the short drive to the Royal Palace. As their coach wound its way through the streets, Morral, watching from an upstairs balcony, hurled a bomb concealed in a bouquet of flowers onto the street below. Miraculously, at that very moment, the royal coach paused and the bomb missed the carriage, leaving Ena and her husband unharmed. King Alfonso led his bride from the coach only to discover the extent of the horror. Several footmen, soldiers and bystanders had been blown to pieces. Gazing on the terrible scene, Ena, her wedding-dress splattered with blood, remained rigid in shock until she was led to another carriage and hurriedly returned to the palace. There she threw herself into her mother’s arms, weeping in horror while her unperturbed Aunt Marie, Dowager Duchess of Coburg (and sister of the recently assassinated Serge) drifted around telling anyone who would listen, “I’m so used to this sort of thing!”
That afternoon, which should have been spent in joyful celebrations, the new Queen Ena toured the hospitals housing the injured. Later that day, with true Victorian courage, she and Alfonso rode again in an open carriage through the streets of Madrid.
After such a horrific reception, it came as relief for Ena to escape from Spain in August to spend part of her honeymoon in the remote tranquillity of Scotland in the company of Uncle Arthur, Duke of Connaught. The Scots were delighted to welcome the Scottish-born Queen and the reports of her visit were effusive in their praise. She was, they said:
‘So fair and placid and majestic, such a solemn contrast to her boyish nervous looking, energetic husband.’
Sadly, the differences between Ena and Alfonso would become more apparent once they returned to Madrid.
The death of more than thirty people on her wedding day marked only the beginning of the Queen’s unhappiness in Spain. Her plans ‘to do good there’ were thwarted time after time and she soon found herself, like Cousin Sophie in Greece, an outsider in her husband’s country. In the family tradition, she worked hard to improve the medical services but, rather than appreciating her efforts on their behalf, the Spaniards, believed it demeaning for a woman, and still more a princess, to take an interest in nursing. Even the Church objected to her interference, accusing her of usurping the work of established Religious Orders. On a personal level too, her temperament proved ill suited to the Spanish culture; her English reserve earning her ‘a reputation of frigidity. She was suspected of being all things Spaniards least admired: cold aloof insensitive Anglo-Saxon.’
Most wounding of all for Ena was the treatment she received from her blatantly unfaithful husband. When their eldest son was diagnosed with haemophilia•, Alfonso cruelly blamed his wife for the boy’s condition, and carelessly returned to his mistresses.
Three years after her wedding there came a glimmer of hope. One of Ena’s cousins was about to marry into the Spanish Royal Family, and her arrival in Madrid might have eased the young Queen’s loneliness. As it turned out, the appearance of Baby Bee of Edinburgh, merely added to Ena’s woes.
Described by Queen Victoria, as ‘a pretty girl with a very pretty figure’ Baby Bee
had, like her elder sister, Ducky, made the unfortunate mistake of falling in love with a Russian Orthodox first cousin. As histrionic as her sisters when it came to romance, Baby Bee was in her late teens when she began a correspondence with the Tsar’s younger brother, the attractive and charming Grand Duke Mikhail (Misha). For several months, she and Misha poured out their feelings with adolescent fervour:
“My beautiful Sima,” wrote the Grand Duke, “your letters are always so full of love and affection, that I am afraid to think you love me so much. Undoubtedly I love you the same way and that is why we understand each other…I kiss your lips a thousand times.”
But Misha knew very well that there could be no future in their relationship. He need only look at Ducky and Kyril to realise how unbending the Orthodox Church would be when it came to marriage between first cousins. He knew, too, that in his case there was even less chance of obtaining a dispensation than there had been for Kyril, since he was, at the time, the heir to the Russian throne. Baby Bee, however, blinded by love, remained optimistic.
When the Dowager Empress Marie of Russia realised that her son was on the verge of creating a new family scandal she desperately tried to arrange a more suitable marriage and dropped several strong hints that he intended to marry Patsy Connaught. London newspapers went so far as to print announcements of the forthcoming wedding until the distraught and much courted Patsy, who hardly knew the Grand Duke, insisted on an immediate correction.
By the end of 1903, under sustained pressure from his family, Misha conceded defeat and wrote to Baby Bee from Denmark, urging her to break off their correspondence. Beatrice was devastated and, as she cried constantly and refused to eat, her mother packed her off to Egypt to recover. In her absence, Ducky attempted to save face by announcing that her sister had never entertained any thoughts of marrying the Grand Duke and her reaction was due to the shock she had received at being so misunderstood. No one believed the excuse, particularly when Beatrice returned from Egypt appearing sicklier and more lovelorn than ever. To further her recuperation, her mother took her to the villa in Nice where Ducky was staying and from where in January 1904, the Tsar’s sister, Xenia, reported that:
“[Beatrice] was pitiful to look at, she has grown so thin and looks so unwell, poor thing…I could only tell her that Misha cannot marry, for Nicky has told him that definitely, and that he has submitted and looks upon it now as an impossibility…Ducky says that Baby B. was in such a terrible state they feared she would lose her mind.”
Two years’ later, as Misha formed an equally dangerous attachment to his sister’s lady-in-waiting, Beatrice, her sanity intact, accompanied her mother to Madrid for Ena’s wedding. All thoughts of the Grand Duke now banished, she met and fell in love with the Spanish King’s cousin, Infante Alfonso of Bourbon-Lyons, Duke of Galliera.
Baby Bee was eager to marry but, yet again, religious differences threatened to scupper her plans. Those who married into the Spanish ruling family were expected to convert to Catholicism but the Coburg princess was far less obliging in the matter than Cousin Ena had been. When it was clear that Baby Bee could not be persuaded to convert, the King urged the couple to marry in secret, which they did in 1909. What the King had failed to consider, however, was that he was a constitutional monarch who had no right to make such decisions and when the news came out, parliament took a dim view of the Infante’s misdemeanour. Like Baby Bee’s brother-in-law, Kyril, Alfonso was stripped of his commission and banished from the country. The couple settled for three years in Switzerland where two sons, Alvaro and Alonzo, were born. In 1912, the Spanish parliament relented and permitted the couple to return to Spain where, the following year, a third son, Ataulfo, was born.
If Queen Ena was initially pleased to welcome her cousin back to Court she soon discovered that Baby Bee would prove neither an asset nor a friend. Rather than attempting to ease the lonely Queen’s burden, she went out of her way to humiliate her, openly flirting with the King and even procuring new mistresses for him. Her bizarre behaviour became so unpleasant that eventually the King’s mother intervened and persuaded him to order her to leave the country again.
Baby Bee’s departure, however, did nothing to heal the rift between Ena and Alfonso. It was too late. The king could never forgive his wife for introducing ‘the terrible disease of the English family’ into his dynasty.
horrific murder of her husband and Russia was in turmoil, Cousin Maud, youngest daughter of King Edward VII, was enjoying a peaceful existence in the obscurity of Denmark. Though she had never lost her nostalgia for England, she was happy with her sailor prince and delighted to spend several months of each year in the haven of Appleton Lodge. It would have suited Maud to remain forever in untroubled anonymity with her husband and their three-year-old son, Alexander, but life was about to take a strange turn for the shy Princess Carl of Denmark.
For ninety years the Kings of Sweden had ruled neighbouring Norway but by the turn of century, following a series of political upheavals, the Norwegians were pressing for independence with a separate monarchy. Since there was no ruling House in their country they asked King Oskar of Sweden to appoint them a sovereign from his own family but, unwilling to yield to such a revolutionary proposal, he refused. The Norwegians turned instead to the Danish King Frederick VIII who had no such qualms and recognised that his second son, Carl, was the most obvious candidate.
Neither Carl nor Maud had any desire to reign in a foreign country, particularly when they were told that large groups of Norwegians favoured a republic. For several months, in spite of pressure from both his father in Denmark and father-in-law in England, the prince refused the throne until November 1905 when the Norwegians succeeded in convincing him that he truly was the people’s choice.
Carl’s doubts about accepting the crown were soon allayed by the warmth of the reception that greeted the new King and Queen on their arrival in the capital, Christiania (now Oslo). His decision to adopt the ancient Norwegian name of Haakon VII and to change the name of his son from Alexander to Olaf proved popular with his subjects. Maud, too, made a good impression. Her regal yet unassuming manner and her determination to take her responsibilities seriously - already she had begun to master the language - quickly earned the Norwegians’ respect and affection.
In wider Europe, however, Carl’s decision to accept the throne did not win universal acclaim. The Kaiser, opposed to any scheme promoted by Uncle Bertie, had preferred a Swedish contender, though in a typical about-turn he later assured Carl of his support. Other royalties were not so easily appeased. The Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz wrote to her niece, the Duchess of York:
“So Maud is sitting on her very unsafe throne - to say the least of it!...He is making speeches…thanking the Norwegians for having elected him! No, really, it is too odd!”
Nor had Maud entirely succeeded in overcoming her shyness and, as the Coronation Day drew nearer, all her old insecurities returned.
“It haunts me like an awful nightmare this Coronation…” she wrote to her sister-in-law, “Think of me alone on my throne, having a crown to be shoved on my head which is very small and heavy by the aged Bishop, and a Minister and also has to be put on by them before the whole crowd!!! And oil to be put on my head, hands and bosom!!! Gracious, it will be awful!”
Nonetheless, Maud overcame her nerves and rose to the occasion. Even though a recurrence of neuralgia prevented her from walking in the coronation procession, her manner and bearing impressed the enthusiastic crowds that lined the route to Trondheim Cathedral. Throughout the ceremony, she played her part with the finesse that would characterise all her undertakings in Norway. In spite of her delicate health, Queen Maud, like many of her cousins, involved herself in numerous charitable causes including, to the horror of the more prudish, a refuge for unmarried mothers. Whatever the critics may have thought of her ‘revolutionary throne’ she and Carl proved popular monarchs who endured few of the upheavals that were soon to beset their cousins and other European dynasties.
While Maud was accustoming herself to the idea of a foreign throne, her cousin, nineteen-year-old Patsy Connaught - ‘tall beautiful, gifted and a brilliant artist’ - had travelled to Spain with her parents. Wandering through Madrid she was horrified to hear the enthusiastic crowds acclaiming her as their future Queen. The shy young princess had no ambition to become the Queen of anywhere and still less to be the wife of the arrogant philanderer King Alfonso XIII, who only a few months previously had been equally taken with her elder sister, Daisy.
Undaunted by Patsy’s obvious lack of interest, the king was so convinced of his own magnetism that he decided to pursue the match and journeyed to England later that year with a view to making Patsy his bride. His efforts were to no avail. Patsy resisted his advances and would remain unmarried for over a decade. In 1911 she and her parents set sail for Ottawa where her father, Prince Arthur was to take over as Governor of Canada. As her mother’s health declined Patsy assumed much of the responsibility for hosting her father’s receptions and carried out her duties with such finesse that she was rewarded by having several regiments and a mountain range named in her honour.
Patsy’s refusal did not trouble the fickle Spanish King. As soon as he realised that Patsy was unmoved by his approaches he quickly switched his attention to her eighteen-year-old cousin, Victoria Eugenia (‘Ena’) of Battenberg.
Since the death of Queen Victoria, Ena and her mother had been living peacefully in Kensington Palace from where Princess Beatrice kept her eyes open for suitable candidates for Ena’s hand. Unlike her own mother, Princess Beatrice had no qualms about permitting her daughter to marry and had encouraged the suit of the Russian Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich, (brother of Ducky’s husband, Kyril) whose name had once been scandalously linked to Cousin Missy of Roumania. The arrival of the Spanish king put paid to the notion of a Russian match and was about to change the young princess’s life forever.
What attracted Ena to the pompous Spaniard, eleven years her senior, remains unclear. Having acceded to the throne before his first birthday, Alfonso was a self-centred, lecherous chauvinist, and if the Russian throne appeared insecure, Spain’s was positively rocking. During the lifetime of Alfonso’s father, the country had briefly been a republic and even after the restoration of the monarchy, separatist groups were demanding independence. Several attempts had been made on Alfonso’s life and he was so used to anarchists’ attacks that when a car backfired in London his guards assumed it was another assassination attempt and almost shot an innocent bystander. Moreover, Alfonso was a Roman Catholic and, by order of the Spanish parliament, his wife had to be of the same faith.
Perhaps Alfonso’s seductive manner and suave appearance eventually won the heart of the English princess. Throughout the summer he courted her in the fashionable haunt of royalties, Biarritz, and before the onset of autumn, Ena had agreed to convert to Catholicism (after all, her godmother had been the Roman Catholic Empress Eugenie) to become his wife.
The Bishop of Nottingham instructed Ena in the Catholic faith and, in March 1906, she was received into the Church and given the unfortunate confirmation name, ‘Brindle.’ Few members of her family raised any objections to her conversion but, to Ena’s surprise, the British public was outraged. So great was the general disapproval that the Duke of York felt obliged to warn Aunt Beatrice to keep Ena away from London until the resentment died down. [Image]
Nor was the news of her engagement greeted with great rejoicing in Spain. Alfonso’s mother revived the old complaint that the Battenbergs were not ‘of the blood’ and considered Ena unworthy of a Spanish king. In response, Uncle Bertie elevated the princess from a mere ‘Highness’ to a ‘Royal Highness’ and, a month later, in May 1906, amid many tears Ena and her mother set sail for Madrid:
“A trying moment for the poor child,” wrote Princess May. “I do hope Ena will get on well in Spain, I think she is a sensible girl & may do good there, anyhow she is full of good intentions - but I don’t know whether she realises what a difficult future lies before her.”
Within days of her arrival in Spain, Ena would witness a terrible omen of that ‘difficult future.’
On 31st May royalties from Russia, Germany and England mingled in the sweltering heat of Madrid for the wedding. The dusty roads and squalid conditions of the capital gave rise to a good deal of muttering among the foreign guests, but their complaints might have taken on more significance if they had realised how close they were to death. As the company gathered for the Nuptial Mass an uninvited guest armed with a bomb was desperately trying to enter the impressive Cathedral of St. Hieronimo. An anarchist, Mateo Morral, almost succeeded in obtaining a ticket when, at the last minute, access was denied him and the three-hour long Mass proceeded without incident. But Morral was not to be deterred.
Amid cheering crowds, the newly-married couple left the Cathedral and set off in procession for the short drive to the Royal Palace. As their coach wound its way through the streets, Morral, watching from an upstairs balcony, hurled a bomb concealed in a bouquet of flowers onto the street below. Miraculously, at that very moment, the royal coach paused and the bomb missed the carriage, leaving Ena and her husband unharmed. King Alfonso led his bride from the coach only to discover the extent of the horror. Several footmen, soldiers and bystanders had been blown to pieces. Gazing on the terrible scene, Ena, her wedding-dress splattered with blood, remained rigid in shock until she was led to another carriage and hurriedly returned to the palace. There she threw herself into her mother’s arms, weeping in horror while her unperturbed Aunt Marie, Dowager Duchess of Coburg (and sister of the recently assassinated Serge) drifted around telling anyone who would listen, “I’m so used to this sort of thing!”
That afternoon, which should have been spent in joyful celebrations, the new Queen Ena toured the hospitals housing the injured. Later that day, with true Victorian courage, she and Alfonso rode again in an open carriage through the streets of Madrid.
After such a horrific reception, it came as relief for Ena to escape from Spain in August to spend part of her honeymoon in the remote tranquillity of Scotland in the company of Uncle Arthur, Duke of Connaught. The Scots were delighted to welcome the Scottish-born Queen and the reports of her visit were effusive in their praise. She was, they said:
‘So fair and placid and majestic, such a solemn contrast to her boyish nervous looking, energetic husband.’
Sadly, the differences between Ena and Alfonso would become more apparent once they returned to Madrid.
The death of more than thirty people on her wedding day marked only the beginning of the Queen’s unhappiness in Spain. Her plans ‘to do good there’ were thwarted time after time and she soon found herself, like Cousin Sophie in Greece, an outsider in her husband’s country. In the family tradition, she worked hard to improve the medical services but, rather than appreciating her efforts on their behalf, the Spaniards, believed it demeaning for a woman, and still more a princess, to take an interest in nursing. Even the Church objected to her interference, accusing her of usurping the work of established Religious Orders. On a personal level too, her temperament proved ill suited to the Spanish culture; her English reserve earning her ‘a reputation of frigidity. She was suspected of being all things Spaniards least admired: cold aloof insensitive Anglo-Saxon.’
Most wounding of all for Ena was the treatment she received from her blatantly unfaithful husband. When their eldest son was diagnosed with haemophilia•, Alfonso cruelly blamed his wife for the boy’s condition, and carelessly returned to his mistresses.
Three years after her wedding there came a glimmer of hope. One of Ena’s cousins was about to marry into the Spanish Royal Family, and her arrival in Madrid might have eased the young Queen’s loneliness. As it turned out, the appearance of Baby Bee of Edinburgh, merely added to Ena’s woes.
Described by Queen Victoria, as ‘a pretty girl with a very pretty figure’ Baby Bee
had, like her elder sister, Ducky, made the unfortunate mistake of falling in love with a Russian Orthodox first cousin. As histrionic as her sisters when it came to romance, Baby Bee was in her late teens when she began a correspondence with the Tsar’s younger brother, the attractive and charming Grand Duke Mikhail (Misha). For several months, she and Misha poured out their feelings with adolescent fervour:
“My beautiful Sima,” wrote the Grand Duke, “your letters are always so full of love and affection, that I am afraid to think you love me so much. Undoubtedly I love you the same way and that is why we understand each other…I kiss your lips a thousand times.”
But Misha knew very well that there could be no future in their relationship. He need only look at Ducky and Kyril to realise how unbending the Orthodox Church would be when it came to marriage between first cousins. He knew, too, that in his case there was even less chance of obtaining a dispensation than there had been for Kyril, since he was, at the time, the heir to the Russian throne. Baby Bee, however, blinded by love, remained optimistic.
When the Dowager Empress Marie of Russia realised that her son was on the verge of creating a new family scandal she desperately tried to arrange a more suitable marriage and dropped several strong hints that he intended to marry Patsy Connaught. London newspapers went so far as to print announcements of the forthcoming wedding until the distraught and much courted Patsy, who hardly knew the Grand Duke, insisted on an immediate correction.
By the end of 1903, under sustained pressure from his family, Misha conceded defeat and wrote to Baby Bee from Denmark, urging her to break off their correspondence. Beatrice was devastated and, as she cried constantly and refused to eat, her mother packed her off to Egypt to recover. In her absence, Ducky attempted to save face by announcing that her sister had never entertained any thoughts of marrying the Grand Duke and her reaction was due to the shock she had received at being so misunderstood. No one believed the excuse, particularly when Beatrice returned from Egypt appearing sicklier and more lovelorn than ever. To further her recuperation, her mother took her to the villa in Nice where Ducky was staying and from where in January 1904, the Tsar’s sister, Xenia, reported that:
“[Beatrice] was pitiful to look at, she has grown so thin and looks so unwell, poor thing…I could only tell her that Misha cannot marry, for Nicky has told him that definitely, and that he has submitted and looks upon it now as an impossibility…Ducky says that Baby B. was in such a terrible state they feared she would lose her mind.”
Two years’ later, as Misha formed an equally dangerous attachment to his sister’s lady-in-waiting, Beatrice, her sanity intact, accompanied her mother to Madrid for Ena’s wedding. All thoughts of the Grand Duke now banished, she met and fell in love with the Spanish King’s cousin, Infante Alfonso of Bourbon-Lyons, Duke of Galliera.
Baby Bee was eager to marry but, yet again, religious differences threatened to scupper her plans. Those who married into the Spanish ruling family were expected to convert to Catholicism but the Coburg princess was far less obliging in the matter than Cousin Ena had been. When it was clear that Baby Bee could not be persuaded to convert, the King urged the couple to marry in secret, which they did in 1909. What the King had failed to consider, however, was that he was a constitutional monarch who had no right to make such decisions and when the news came out, parliament took a dim view of the Infante’s misdemeanour. Like Baby Bee’s brother-in-law, Kyril, Alfonso was stripped of his commission and banished from the country. The couple settled for three years in Switzerland where two sons, Alvaro and Alonzo, were born. In 1912, the Spanish parliament relented and permitted the couple to return to Spain where, the following year, a third son, Ataulfo, was born.
If Queen Ena was initially pleased to welcome her cousin back to Court she soon discovered that Baby Bee would prove neither an asset nor a friend. Rather than attempting to ease the lonely Queen’s burden, she went out of her way to humiliate her, openly flirting with the King and even procuring new mistresses for him. Her bizarre behaviour became so unpleasant that eventually the King’s mother intervened and persuaded him to order her to leave the country again.
Baby Bee’s departure, however, did nothing to heal the rift between Ena and Alfonso. It was too late. The king could never forgive his wife for introducing ‘the terrible disease of the English family’ into his dynasty.
Kate is "a conservative style icon"
Long before the engagement was announced, all eyes were on Kate's fashion sense...now every thing she wears will be photographed, scrutinised and analysed beyond the comprehension of the average male. The general consensus is classic, stylish and a tad conservative...but not sure I can see Dave Cameron wearing this little number...
Royal wedding: Kate Middleton 'a conservative style icon' - Telegraph
Royal wedding: Kate Middleton 'a conservative style icon' - Telegraph
Dress like a princess for less than £50!
It is the necklace designed for girls who dream of being a princess — by the woman who is soon to become one.
The pendant, featuring a silver bean, rose quartz and a pink pearl, was the work of Kate Middleton and jewellery designer Claudia Bradby, whose television journalist husband Tom bagged the first interview with Wills and Kate. Now the £42 necklace, which was previously sold in Junior Jigsaw shops, is a must-have pressie after being reissued following the proposal.
Marriage will cost economy £5bn
As the country plans on closing down for 11 days next April/May, estimates are that the combination of Royal Wedding, bank holidays, employees taking anuual leave and calling in "sick" will cost the economy some £5 billion....
Royal wedding: marriage will cost economy £5bn - Telegraph
Royal wedding: marriage will cost economy £5bn - Telegraph
Dukan or not Dukan, that is the question
Kate Middleton's mother is using the "controversial" Dukan diet to slim down before the wedding...
French nutritionists brand diet used by Kate Middleton's mother a 'health hazard' | Mail Online
French nutritionists brand diet used by Kate Middleton's mother a 'health hazard' | Mail Online
Kate's Doppleganger goes full-time
It seems only fair, logical and profitable that Kate Bevan make the most of the next 40 years by giving up her full-time job to concentrate on being a Kate Middleton lookalike...maybe MI5 will rope her in to be an official doppleganger, Ã la Saddam Hussein? Handy that she is also called Kate to avoid any unneccessary confusion, but she just needs to perfect the clipped Home Counties accent and she'll be away.
I'm giving up my job to be Kate Middleton's double: Lookalike just has to shed her Midlands accent
Three-Dimensional Wedding?
Dig out those 3D glassess...the Royal wedding could be screened in 3D for your added viewing pleasure!
Prince William and Kate Middleton's royal wedding could be screened in 3D
Prince William and Kate Middleton's royal wedding could be screened in 3D
From Courtesan to Countess
Celeste de Chabrillan led a long and amazing life. She rose from the bottom - a poor, working-class district of Paris - to marry a nobleman. During her youth she suffered abuse at the hands of her mother's boyfriends, became a prostitute, and even spent time in prison. In spite of all this, she managed to educate herself and write novels, memoirs, and plays. She even spent time in Australia because her husband became the French Consul here.
Celeste, the illegitimate daughter of milliners, endured her father's death at only 6 years old. Born in Paris in 1824, she grew up in a very poor area of Paris. Her mother's new lover beat both of them and the mother ended up in hospital at one stage. Advised to flee, she and Celeste walked to Lyon! The boyfriend unfortunately followed them, but he was killed in an attempted robbery.
They returned to Paris and formed a close bond. Young Celeste became apprenticed as a seamstress at 11 and an embroiderer at 14. Unfortunately, her mother couldn't resist bad men and the mother's second boyfriend attempted to rape Celeste. She fled and was given refuge in a brothel. This was raided and Celeste went to prison.
Her mother eventually rescued her but she didn't believe Celeste's story. The relationship became fraught. Celeste wanted to become a prostitute at 16 and register herself as one. The mother refused at first but she eventually relented, which is very odd.
Poor Celeste had a terrible time and found it difficult to leave. The madams of the brothels indebted the girls to keep them in line. Celeste left but life on the streets was, of course, worse.
Celeste and the Count
The beautiful Celeste pulled herself off the streets and became a dancer at La Mobille dance hall. She also learned to be an equestrienne and worked at the Hippodrome. She must have had quite a way with men because she attracted a Dutch baron and a Russian prince.
Unfortunately, she was badly injured at the Hippodrome and feared for her future. She relates that the Count 'rescued' her. She met the handsome playboy at the Cafe des Anglais, a restaurant frequented by the 'demi-monde'. Lacking money, the young courtesan decided to write her memoirs but she was to bitterly regret this.
Count Alexander de Chabrillan was a heavy gambler and needed to 'marry a dowry'. He couldn't find one, however, and fell more and more in love with Celeste. She refused to marry him. His family sent him to Australia to distance him from this unsuitable woman. He wrote loving letters and Celeste relented when he returned. This put his family into a rage so the couple fled to London where they married.
Life in Melbourne
Celeste didn't have a good time in Australia and longed to go back to Paris. She had attempted to have the publication of her memoirs stopped but word had even reached Australia. She found herself ostracised by snobbish colonial ladies who regarded her as a harlot.
The start of her stay here was ominous. After travelling out on the Croesus, she had to walk for two hours, her feet ankle-deep in mud, to reach their wooden hut in St.Kilda. She had to pay a fortune for a simple meal of ham and eggs on the way.
Her husband involved himself in the life of the colony. The couple held balls, attended social events, and Chabrillan presented books to the Public Library. He was well-liked here, but got into trouble for protecting a Frenchman involved in a duel. Celeste turned to writing further memoirs and novels, and educated herself with the help of a dictionary.
Celeste eventually returned but her husband died here. He was given a notable funeral. She bought a country property near Paris and held a Salon attended by such people as Garibaldi and Gambetta. She also acted and even managed a theatre. She even founded a home for poor girls. She also wrote more novels during the 1870's and 1880's. Unfortunately, she fell into poverty again but she was eventually granted a pension. Celeste de Chabrillan died at 85.
"Revolution is Banging on the Door" - More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters
Grand Duke Kyril’s s flouting of the Tsar’s authority was but one in a series of misdemeanours of members of the Russian Imperial Family from the start of the reign of Nicholas II. Each minor misdemeanour – each affair, each morganatic marriage, each disregard of the traditional mores – might have seemed insignificant in itself, but together amounted to a severe blow against the old order and undermined the autocracy.
As Russia struggled from medieval feudalism to industrialisation, the country was
clamouring for reform. For centuries peasants in remote rural communities had accepted the distant Tsar as God’s holy, anointed ruler but now, as they flocked into the overcrowded cities, attitudes were rapidly changing. Workers toiling in appalling conditions; peasants half-starving in the countryside and radicals in the universities, were demanding an end to the ‘tyranny’ of Tsardom. Even the most conservative thinkers were forced to accept the inevitability of a shift to a more democratic form of government.
Conditions at home were fraught and, in foreign affairs, too, the Tsar’s ministers had their share of problems. If Russia were to compete with the rest of the industrialised world, she needed access to the Pacific but even the major port of Vladivostock was ice-bound for several months each year. The ideal solution would be to extend the Trans-Siberian railway eastwards through Korea, but the Japanese, seeking to expand their own empire, were totally opposed to such a plan.
It occurred to some of the Tsar’s advisors that it might be possible to take advantage of the situation in the east, not only to secure Korea and Manchuria, but also to improve the Tsar’s standing. The vast Russian ranks easily outnumbered the small Japanese army and an early victory would restore a sense of national pride and reunite the people behind their Emperor. Heedless of the warnings of the Finance Minister, Count de Witte, the ministers and Nicholas’ uncles painted an image of a glorious Tsar leading his heroic army through a blaze of glory behind the Romanov double-headed eagle.
The dull reality was quite different from that dream. The Japanese had no desire for war and would willingly have settled the matter through negotiation but as Russian troops continued to move through the region, they had no alternative but to take up arms. In January 1904, they struck the first blow, attacking the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and, with self-righteous indignation, the Russians declared war. A tide of patriotic fervour swept the country and crowds gathered to cheer the troops setting out on their long journey east.
Although already in the later stages of her final pregnancy, Alix threw herself wholeheartedly into the war effort. She opened a hospital at Tsarskoe Selo where she paid daily visits to the wounded and arranged for the men to learn various crafts during their recuperation.
“The great salons of the Winter Palace were turned into workrooms and there every day society flocked to sew and knit for our soldiers and sailors fighting such incredible distances away, as well as for the wounded in hospitals at home and abroad…Every day the Empress came to inspect the work, often sitting down at a table and sewing diligently with the others.”
In the Kremlin, her sister, Ella also established workrooms and employed hundreds of women of all classes to arrange packages of icons and gifts to send to the Front. As the wounded returned to the city, she made daily visits to the military hospitals taking the time to talk to each man in turn.
“There is no end of work to be done,” wrote the Tsarina, “but it is a great comfort to be able to help one’s poor sufferers a little…All work hard…We work for the army hospitals (apart from the Red Cross) and for the well who need clothes, tobacco ... and then we furnish military trains...I like following all and not to be a mere doll. Yes, it is a trying time, but one must put all one’s trust in God, who gives strength and courage.”
The Tsarina’s sincere efforts made little impression on the vast majority of her people and as the lists of Russian casualties grew, the enthusiastic cheers turned to cries of anger. Far from being a weak little enemy, the Japanese were well-disciplined, efficient soldiers capable of inflicting terrible losses on the massive Russian army. The ‘short’ war was rapidly turning into a prolonged fiasco.
By autumn, after nine months of fighting, the disillusioned Russians had grown weary of sacrificing their sons in the hopeless campaign. Disturbances broke out in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and the reactionary Minister of the Interior was assassinated. Strikes threatened to bring St. Petersburg to a standstill and the unrest was in danger of spilling into greater violence.
“Revolution is banging on the door,” wrote the Tsar’s cousin, Konstantin Konstantinovich, “A constitution is being almost openly discussed. How shameful and how terrifying.”
For Nicholas and Alix, the suggestion that Tsar should hand over his authority to an elected council (the Duma) was unthinkable. At his Coronation, Nicholas had taken an oath to uphold the autocracy and, regardless of the personal cost, he felt duty-bound by the promise made before God. From the seclusion of Tsarskoe Selo, Alix urged her husband to be strong, dismissing the ministers’ reports of imminent revolution as scare-mongering and assuring him that the ordinary Russians loved their Emperor.
It was true that many thousands of his subjects still revered their Tsar. He was their ‘Little Father’ who loved his people and only permitted the injustices they endured because he was unaware of their sufferings. If they could only reach him and tell him of their plight, he would surely deal kindly with their grievances. Encouraging such thoughts was a socialist priest, Father Gapon, who, in an attempt to prevent bloodshed, offered to lead a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace so that the people could petition the Emperor.
On Saturday 21st January 1905, Gapon, unaware that the Tsar was several miles away in Tsarskoe Selo, informed the Minister of the Interior, Prince Mirsky, that the following day he would lead over one hundred thousand people to the palace. At the thought of so vast a crown, Mirsky panicked. He warned the Tsar that violence may erupt and advised him to stay out of the city, before summoning mounted troops to guard the bridges over the frozen River Neva to prevent the crowds from reaching the palace.
The next day, Sunday 22nd January, thousands of men, women and children walked peacefully through the streets of St. Petersburg with the sole intention of presenting Nicky with their petitions. As the orderly procession neared the Neva bridges, many of the marchers held aloft icons and portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina to demonstrate their fidelity to the Orthodox Church and trust in their ‘Little Father.’
With absolute faith in their anointed Emperor, the crowds ignored the soldiers’ warnings to turn back and as the vast horde continued to advance, the terrified generals ordered the troops to open fire. Within minutes over a thousand of the Tsar’s most devoted subjects were gunned down, dropping their bloodstained icons beside the corpses of little children.
As news of the massacre spread through the country, Moscow exploded in violence. The city had long been a hot bed of sedition and now, as outraged revolutionaries incited the ordinary citizens to take up arms against ‘Bloody Nicholas the Butcher,’ barricades rose in the streets. The entire Romanov family became a symbol of oppression and tyranny and the most obvious target for the revolutionaries’ anger was Ella’s much-maligned husband, Grand Duke Serge.
The one member of the Imperial family to escape the revolutionary wrath was Ella. Before the outbreak of war, her charitable works had earned her a saintly reputation and once the hostilities started, her popularity soared. Even as the barricades rose in the streets, she ignored the police warnings, to make her daily round of the hospital wards. But Ella was not blind to the dangers. Serge had received several death threats while she herself was sent anonymous letters warning her, for her own safety, not to appear with her husband in public.
The strain of such an existence was enormous, and a final blow to reactionary Serge was the realisation that the Tsar was planning to grant limited reforms. Unable to accept the changes and worn down by the stress of his position, Serge finally decided to tender his resignation as Governor General of Moscow.
In the early afternoon February 18th 1905, as her husband left the Kremlin for the Governor General’s residence to clear his papers, Ella was working on her Red Cross projects, when an explosion shattered the silence.
“It’s Serge!” Ella cried, and rushing from the palace summoned a sleigh to speed her to the scene. As she approached Senate Square the gathering crowd tried to hold her back, but it was too late. Before her in the snow lay a tangled mess of flesh and bone - all that was left of her husband. His head, his leg and his arm had been blown off by a terrorist’s bomb. The blast was so great that, days later, his fingers were found on the roof of the Kremlin.
Scrambling through the gore for Serge’s medals and icons, Ella called to the soldiers for a stretcher from one of her Red Cross ambulances, then, with her own hands, placed what was left of her husband on the palette, which she ordered to be covered with soldiers’ coats and taken to a neighbouring monastery. A silent crowd followed her into the chapel where the stretcher was laid on the altar steps while she knelt and prayed.
“Drops of blood fell on the floor, slowly forming a dark pool,” wrote Serge’s niece, Maria Pavlovna. “My aunt was on her knees beside the litter, her bright dress shone forth grotesquely amid the humble garments surrounding her…
…Her face was white, her features terrible in their stricken rigidity. She did not weep…When she perceived us she stretched out her arms to us. We ran to her.
‘He loved you so, he loved you so,’ she repeated endlessly, pressing our heads against her. I noticed that, low on her right arm, the sleeve of her gay blue dress was stained with blood. There was blood on her hand, too, and under the nails of her fingers in which she tightly gripped [Serge’s] medals…”
That evening, though barely recovered from the shock, Ella summoned a carriage to take her to the hospital where Serge’s coachman lay fatally wounded. To avoid causing him further distress, the doctors had told him that his master was only slightly injured, and as Ella neared his bed, he asked for news of the Grand Duke.
She smiled gently, “It was he who sent me to you.”
That night the coachman, passed away in his sleep.
Fearful of further assassinations, the Tsar issued an order forbidding the Imperial family to travel to Moscow for the funeral. Victoria hurried to Russia to be at her sister’s side, and Serge’s sister, Marie, arrived from Coburg with Ella’s young cousin, ‘Baby Bee.’ Constrained in Tsarskoe Selo, Alix could only take comfort from the news that Ella was ‘bearing her terrible grief like a saint.’
Two days later Ella revealed the depths of her sanctity. Carrying a Bible and an icon of Christ, she set out for the prison where her husband’s killer, Ivan Kalyaev, was being held. In a private meeting, she wept as she told him that she had forgiven him and, without least hint of malice or anger, asked what had driven him to commit such a crime. Touched as he was by her sorrow and evident sincerity, Kalyaev had to tell her that he felt no remorse and believed his actions had been entirely justified. As she rose to leave, she told him, “I will pray for you,” and handed him the icon and Bible.
“I will not conceal,” he wrote to his friends, “that we looked at each other with a kind of mystical feeling.”
Newspapers later reported that she had even petitioned the Tsar for a pardon but, since the assassin failed to repent, her request was refused.
Kalyaev’s execution did nothing to still the tide of revolution sweeping through Russia and by August it was clear that there was no point in prolonging the disastrous Japanese War. In the humiliation of defeat, Alix continued her work for the wounded soldiers, organizing schemes to teach the disabled men new trades and providing them and their families with new cottages. But again her efforts passed largely unnoticed and the violence continued unabated. In the Caucasus, rebels attacked and murdered officials, and in Moscow, angry mobs manned barricades in the streets until Nicky realized he had no alternative but to call a Duma, effectively signing away the three-hundred-year-old autocracy.
With the opening of the Duma in October 1905, a semblance of peace was restored. The barricades were dismantled, the strikers returned to work and the revolutionary fervour cooled but the Tsar’s reputation had suffered a blow from which it would never fully recover. While Alix was disgusted at the manner in which he had been forced to accept the Duma, revolutionaries were disappointed that the reforms had not gone far enough. Ella, meanwhile, mourning the loss of a husband she had deeply loved, was about to make a more revolutionary change in her life, than even the most committed Bolsheviks could have imagined.
As Russia struggled from medieval feudalism to industrialisation, the country was
clamouring for reform. For centuries peasants in remote rural communities had accepted the distant Tsar as God’s holy, anointed ruler but now, as they flocked into the overcrowded cities, attitudes were rapidly changing. Workers toiling in appalling conditions; peasants half-starving in the countryside and radicals in the universities, were demanding an end to the ‘tyranny’ of Tsardom. Even the most conservative thinkers were forced to accept the inevitability of a shift to a more democratic form of government.
Conditions at home were fraught and, in foreign affairs, too, the Tsar’s ministers had their share of problems. If Russia were to compete with the rest of the industrialised world, she needed access to the Pacific but even the major port of Vladivostock was ice-bound for several months each year. The ideal solution would be to extend the Trans-Siberian railway eastwards through Korea, but the Japanese, seeking to expand their own empire, were totally opposed to such a plan.
It occurred to some of the Tsar’s advisors that it might be possible to take advantage of the situation in the east, not only to secure Korea and Manchuria, but also to improve the Tsar’s standing. The vast Russian ranks easily outnumbered the small Japanese army and an early victory would restore a sense of national pride and reunite the people behind their Emperor. Heedless of the warnings of the Finance Minister, Count de Witte, the ministers and Nicholas’ uncles painted an image of a glorious Tsar leading his heroic army through a blaze of glory behind the Romanov double-headed eagle.
The dull reality was quite different from that dream. The Japanese had no desire for war and would willingly have settled the matter through negotiation but as Russian troops continued to move through the region, they had no alternative but to take up arms. In January 1904, they struck the first blow, attacking the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and, with self-righteous indignation, the Russians declared war. A tide of patriotic fervour swept the country and crowds gathered to cheer the troops setting out on their long journey east.
Although already in the later stages of her final pregnancy, Alix threw herself wholeheartedly into the war effort. She opened a hospital at Tsarskoe Selo where she paid daily visits to the wounded and arranged for the men to learn various crafts during their recuperation.
“The great salons of the Winter Palace were turned into workrooms and there every day society flocked to sew and knit for our soldiers and sailors fighting such incredible distances away, as well as for the wounded in hospitals at home and abroad…Every day the Empress came to inspect the work, often sitting down at a table and sewing diligently with the others.”
In the Kremlin, her sister, Ella also established workrooms and employed hundreds of women of all classes to arrange packages of icons and gifts to send to the Front. As the wounded returned to the city, she made daily visits to the military hospitals taking the time to talk to each man in turn.
“There is no end of work to be done,” wrote the Tsarina, “but it is a great comfort to be able to help one’s poor sufferers a little…All work hard…We work for the army hospitals (apart from the Red Cross) and for the well who need clothes, tobacco ... and then we furnish military trains...I like following all and not to be a mere doll. Yes, it is a trying time, but one must put all one’s trust in God, who gives strength and courage.”
The Tsarina’s sincere efforts made little impression on the vast majority of her people and as the lists of Russian casualties grew, the enthusiastic cheers turned to cries of anger. Far from being a weak little enemy, the Japanese were well-disciplined, efficient soldiers capable of inflicting terrible losses on the massive Russian army. The ‘short’ war was rapidly turning into a prolonged fiasco.
By autumn, after nine months of fighting, the disillusioned Russians had grown weary of sacrificing their sons in the hopeless campaign. Disturbances broke out in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and the reactionary Minister of the Interior was assassinated. Strikes threatened to bring St. Petersburg to a standstill and the unrest was in danger of spilling into greater violence.
“Revolution is banging on the door,” wrote the Tsar’s cousin, Konstantin Konstantinovich, “A constitution is being almost openly discussed. How shameful and how terrifying.”
For Nicholas and Alix, the suggestion that Tsar should hand over his authority to an elected council (the Duma) was unthinkable. At his Coronation, Nicholas had taken an oath to uphold the autocracy and, regardless of the personal cost, he felt duty-bound by the promise made before God. From the seclusion of Tsarskoe Selo, Alix urged her husband to be strong, dismissing the ministers’ reports of imminent revolution as scare-mongering and assuring him that the ordinary Russians loved their Emperor.
It was true that many thousands of his subjects still revered their Tsar. He was their ‘Little Father’ who loved his people and only permitted the injustices they endured because he was unaware of their sufferings. If they could only reach him and tell him of their plight, he would surely deal kindly with their grievances. Encouraging such thoughts was a socialist priest, Father Gapon, who, in an attempt to prevent bloodshed, offered to lead a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace so that the people could petition the Emperor.
On Saturday 21st January 1905, Gapon, unaware that the Tsar was several miles away in Tsarskoe Selo, informed the Minister of the Interior, Prince Mirsky, that the following day he would lead over one hundred thousand people to the palace. At the thought of so vast a crown, Mirsky panicked. He warned the Tsar that violence may erupt and advised him to stay out of the city, before summoning mounted troops to guard the bridges over the frozen River Neva to prevent the crowds from reaching the palace.
The next day, Sunday 22nd January, thousands of men, women and children walked peacefully through the streets of St. Petersburg with the sole intention of presenting Nicky with their petitions. As the orderly procession neared the Neva bridges, many of the marchers held aloft icons and portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina to demonstrate their fidelity to the Orthodox Church and trust in their ‘Little Father.’
With absolute faith in their anointed Emperor, the crowds ignored the soldiers’ warnings to turn back and as the vast horde continued to advance, the terrified generals ordered the troops to open fire. Within minutes over a thousand of the Tsar’s most devoted subjects were gunned down, dropping their bloodstained icons beside the corpses of little children.
As news of the massacre spread through the country, Moscow exploded in violence. The city had long been a hot bed of sedition and now, as outraged revolutionaries incited the ordinary citizens to take up arms against ‘Bloody Nicholas the Butcher,’ barricades rose in the streets. The entire Romanov family became a symbol of oppression and tyranny and the most obvious target for the revolutionaries’ anger was Ella’s much-maligned husband, Grand Duke Serge.
The one member of the Imperial family to escape the revolutionary wrath was Ella. Before the outbreak of war, her charitable works had earned her a saintly reputation and once the hostilities started, her popularity soared. Even as the barricades rose in the streets, she ignored the police warnings, to make her daily round of the hospital wards. But Ella was not blind to the dangers. Serge had received several death threats while she herself was sent anonymous letters warning her, for her own safety, not to appear with her husband in public.
The strain of such an existence was enormous, and a final blow to reactionary Serge was the realisation that the Tsar was planning to grant limited reforms. Unable to accept the changes and worn down by the stress of his position, Serge finally decided to tender his resignation as Governor General of Moscow.
In the early afternoon February 18th 1905, as her husband left the Kremlin for the Governor General’s residence to clear his papers, Ella was working on her Red Cross projects, when an explosion shattered the silence.
“It’s Serge!” Ella cried, and rushing from the palace summoned a sleigh to speed her to the scene. As she approached Senate Square the gathering crowd tried to hold her back, but it was too late. Before her in the snow lay a tangled mess of flesh and bone - all that was left of her husband. His head, his leg and his arm had been blown off by a terrorist’s bomb. The blast was so great that, days later, his fingers were found on the roof of the Kremlin.
Scrambling through the gore for Serge’s medals and icons, Ella called to the soldiers for a stretcher from one of her Red Cross ambulances, then, with her own hands, placed what was left of her husband on the palette, which she ordered to be covered with soldiers’ coats and taken to a neighbouring monastery. A silent crowd followed her into the chapel where the stretcher was laid on the altar steps while she knelt and prayed.
“Drops of blood fell on the floor, slowly forming a dark pool,” wrote Serge’s niece, Maria Pavlovna. “My aunt was on her knees beside the litter, her bright dress shone forth grotesquely amid the humble garments surrounding her…
…Her face was white, her features terrible in their stricken rigidity. She did not weep…When she perceived us she stretched out her arms to us. We ran to her.
‘He loved you so, he loved you so,’ she repeated endlessly, pressing our heads against her. I noticed that, low on her right arm, the sleeve of her gay blue dress was stained with blood. There was blood on her hand, too, and under the nails of her fingers in which she tightly gripped [Serge’s] medals…”
That evening, though barely recovered from the shock, Ella summoned a carriage to take her to the hospital where Serge’s coachman lay fatally wounded. To avoid causing him further distress, the doctors had told him that his master was only slightly injured, and as Ella neared his bed, he asked for news of the Grand Duke.
She smiled gently, “It was he who sent me to you.”
That night the coachman, passed away in his sleep.
Fearful of further assassinations, the Tsar issued an order forbidding the Imperial family to travel to Moscow for the funeral. Victoria hurried to Russia to be at her sister’s side, and Serge’s sister, Marie, arrived from Coburg with Ella’s young cousin, ‘Baby Bee.’ Constrained in Tsarskoe Selo, Alix could only take comfort from the news that Ella was ‘bearing her terrible grief like a saint.’
Two days later Ella revealed the depths of her sanctity. Carrying a Bible and an icon of Christ, she set out for the prison where her husband’s killer, Ivan Kalyaev, was being held. In a private meeting, she wept as she told him that she had forgiven him and, without least hint of malice or anger, asked what had driven him to commit such a crime. Touched as he was by her sorrow and evident sincerity, Kalyaev had to tell her that he felt no remorse and believed his actions had been entirely justified. As she rose to leave, she told him, “I will pray for you,” and handed him the icon and Bible.
“I will not conceal,” he wrote to his friends, “that we looked at each other with a kind of mystical feeling.”
Newspapers later reported that she had even petitioned the Tsar for a pardon but, since the assassin failed to repent, her request was refused.
Kalyaev’s execution did nothing to still the tide of revolution sweeping through Russia and by August it was clear that there was no point in prolonging the disastrous Japanese War. In the humiliation of defeat, Alix continued her work for the wounded soldiers, organizing schemes to teach the disabled men new trades and providing them and their families with new cottages. But again her efforts passed largely unnoticed and the violence continued unabated. In the Caucasus, rebels attacked and murdered officials, and in Moscow, angry mobs manned barricades in the streets until Nicky realized he had no alternative but to call a Duma, effectively signing away the three-hundred-year-old autocracy.
With the opening of the Duma in October 1905, a semblance of peace was restored. The barricades were dismantled, the strikers returned to work and the revolutionary fervour cooled but the Tsar’s reputation had suffered a blow from which it would never fully recover. While Alix was disgusted at the manner in which he had been forced to accept the Duma, revolutionaries were disappointed that the reforms had not gone far enough. Ella, meanwhile, mourning the loss of a husband she had deeply loved, was about to make a more revolutionary change in her life, than even the most committed Bolsheviks could have imagined.
Marital overload, 1818
If you've already had enough of royal wedding fever, be glad that we are only expecting one wedding next April. In 1818, there was no less than three, as the unmarried sons of George III rushed to the altar in an effort to produce a legitimate heir.
On 1st June the 44-year –old Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge celebrated his nuptials to the 21-year-old Princess Augusta of Hesse. ‘'Immediately after the conclusion of the marriages, the Park and Tower guns were fired, and the evening concluded with other public demonstrations of joy in the metropolis’, reported the London Gazette.
Six weeks later, his elder brothers, the 53-year-old Duke of Clarence and the 51-year-old Duke of Kent shared a double wedding on 11th July. Once again, sighed the London Gazette, ‘the Park and Tower guns were fired, and the evening concluded with other public demonstations of joy in the metropolis.'
In a time of economic crisis, when the government had a war debt of some £800 million and the Corn Laws contributed to large rises in the price of food, national celebration was muted, and even newspaper reporters couldn’t be bothered to appear pleased.
Expat Royal Brides
Not many expat royal brides are as happy as our Princess Mary. You can read about some of them here: Expat Royal Brides.
"Poor Girl, She is Utterly Miserable Now" - More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters
The summer 1902 saw London bustling with preparations for the coronation of King Edward VII. So many years had passed since Queen Victoria’s accession that even the most aged courtiers had no recollection of the protocol of such ceremonies but for Bertie that posed few problems. Unlike his mother, the new king revelled in the limelight and what better way could there be to mark the beginning of a new reign than by the most impressive show of all - a coronation reflecting all the grandeur and pomp of the mighty British Empire. The organisation of the whole event was entrusted to Lord Esher with instructions that this was to be a spectacle to outshine all spectacles. 
By mid-June the preparations were complete - the Abbey prepared and the many visiting royalties who had arrived in London were settling into their palaces. Then suddenly, twelve days before the ceremony, disaster loomed - the King fell seriously ill and, though he determinedly protested that he could not disappoint his guests, his doctors diagnosed appendicitis which required immediate surgery. There was no alternative but to postpone the coronation. Even then, no one could be sure that the King would survive surgery, as one doctor later confessed to Toria, he was sure ‘that His Majesty would die during the operation.’ Overweight, addicted to fine wines, gargantuan meals, fat cigars and pretty women, it seemed that the heir who had waited for so long to come to the throne would in the end be denied his inheritance.
For an anxious forty minutes in an adjoining room, Queen Alexandra waited with her daughters, Toria and Maud, while Mr. Treves performed the surgery. Yet somehow, against the odds, Bertie pulled through. Word of his recovery was greeted with rejoicing throughout the country and made the celebration of his coronation, two months later than planned, even more spectacular.
Behind the scenes came the usual family wrangling about the order of precedence. This time it was not the Kaiser• but his younger brother, Henry, who was most disgruntled at being placed towards the back during the ceremonies. His temper was soothed when his sister-in-law, Victoria Battenberg, now settled with her family in London, agreed to bring her children to spend Christmas with him and Irène at Kiel, providing him with the ideal opportunity to show off his new steam car and boat.
Paradoxically, his sister, Charlotte, who was so used to making mischief, had no complaints about the coronation. Recently recovered from one of her recurring bouts of illness, she thoroughly enjoyed the celebrations and wrote cheerfully from Sandringham:
“There is no place in the world like England, & if possible I’m more English than ever…Have made several trips with my Sailor Brother & other friends, running down to various lovely country houses…”
The accession of the new king, coinciding with the dawn of a new century, seemed to bring a new vitality to the country. The Boer War finally reached its conclusion and a precarious peace reigned in Europe. Queen Victoria’s old world had vanished overnight and the new court seemed suddenly young, modern and alive.
No two monarchs could have differed more starkly than the perpetually mourning widow of Windsor and the portly bon viveur, King Edward VII. From the moment he ascended the throne a great wind of change blew through the English palaces. On the King’s instructions, out went the late Queen’s numerous mementos of her stalwart John Brown; modern styles replaced the old Victorian décor; and the hushed and smoke-free rooms of Buckingham Palace echoed to the sound of cigar-puffing Sybarites. In Windsor, too, the king implemented changes:
“The moving of inanimate objects such as furniture and pictures does not jar,” wrote Alick York, Groom in Waiting to the late Queen, “and I must say the 3 drawing rooms are more comfortably and artistically arranged than in the old days, but still it all seems as if someone was taking a liberty and I should wake up to find things and people restored to their old places.”
More distressing for Bertie’s sisters was his decision to donate the Queen’s beloved Osborne House to the nation. To the princesses it had always been a beautiful holiday home filled with happy memories and the added attraction of having been personally designed by the Prince Consort. To Bertie it symbolised all the pain of his repressed childhood. What was more, he loved Sandringham and London and had no intention of escaping, as his mother had so often done, from the bustle and noise of the city to the peaceful seclusion of the Isle of Wight, which bored him. Notwithstanding his love of the pleasures of life, the King had more in mind than redecorating his palaces. Throughout his sixty years of waiting, he had formed clear and incisive ideas about how to govern the realm. His talents may have been overlooked in Queen Victoria’s lifetime, but now he would bring them to the fore; and nowhere was he more suited to his new role than in his ability to court not only the public, but also foreign governments by his charm, tact and diplomacy. As long as Uncle Bertie lived, peace in Europe seemed secure.
While the King’s cronies revelled in the glamour of Edward VII’s Court, and the new Queen Alexandra basked in the affection of her husband’s subjects, her father’s accession did nothing to ease the burden of unhappy Toria. As her elder sister, Louise - created Princess Royal in 1905 - continued to enjoy her reclusive life with her small family, and Maud and her sailor prince seemed to sink into obscurity in Denmark, Toria was obliged, more frequently than ever, to follow at her parents’ heels on their numerous royal visits. As her illnesses multiplied, her reputation for hypochondria spread; hearing that the princess had slipped and fallen during a ball at the height of the London season in 1903, the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz commented acerbically, “But oh! Poor…Victoria’s fall, truly grievous, she who is already so delicate.” Most of the family shared her sentiments.
It did not ease the unhappy princess’s burden to watch her younger cousins walking to the altar to be married. In February 1905, she attended the wedding of Uncle Leopold’s daughter, Alice of Albany, to Prince Alexander (‘Alge’) of Teck, younger brother of Princess May, the Duchess of York. Although almost ten years older than his bride, there was much to commend the Eton-educated Alge. Handsome and dashing in his cavalry officer’s uniform, he had seen active service during the South African war and had even been mentioned in dispatches during the siege of Mafeking. The wedding, which took place in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor was, according to Princess May ‘a most cheerful’ occasion with ‘no crying & At. Helen [the bride’s mother, the Duchess of Albany] behaved like a brick.’
A colourful gathering of royalties attended the ceremony, including Alice’s cousin, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, and among the bridesmaids were two other cousins, Daisy and Patsy Connaught the elder of whom was soon to marry the sober and scholarly, Prince Gustav of Sweden. Following a honeymoon in Cannes, the newly-weds, at Uncle Bertie’s invitation, settled into apartments at Windsor Castle from where the lively Alice had easy access to all the parties and dances of the capital. The couple travelled frequently, visiting Alice’s brother the Duke of Coburg and representing the king in such distant places as South Africa and the Far East.
In spite of the age difference, it was a remarkably happy marriage that produced three children, May, Rupert and Maurice, the youngest of whom died tragically before his first birthday. The sorrow was made all the greater for his parents as they were away in Coburg at the time, visiting Alice’s brother. Little Maurice, it seemed, had inherited his grandfather’s haemophilia•.
Four months after Alice’s wedding, the royalties returned to Windsor for Daisy Connaught’s wedding. The beautiful Daisy had a choice of several eminently suitable candidates, among them the Crown Prince of Portugal and the arrogant King Alfonso XVIII of Spain, but in 1905, during a visit to Egypt, she met and fell in love with Gustav, heir apparent to the Swedish throne. By the end of the holiday, the couple were engaged and the wedding took place at Windsor on June 15th.
Daisy’s gentle nature and striking beauty soon won the hearts of the Swedish people.
“Daisy was unique:” wrote her cousin Marie Louise, “she possessed the most beautiful character and I can truthfully say was beloved by all who had the privilege of knowing her.”
Two years after her marriage, King Oskar died and she rose to the rank of Crown Princess. Hers too was a happy marriage, resulting in a daughter, Ingrid, and five sons: Gustav, Adolph, Sigvard, Bertil and Carl Johann.
While Alice and Daisy were celebrating their weddings, their cousin, Ducky, was living down the scandal of her recent divorce. For years she had known that her unhappy union with Ernie was irreparable and only respect for her grandmother had prevented her from making the final break. The whole family was well aware that the couple were living apart - Ernie remaining in Darmstadt, while Ducky occupied her mother’s villa in Nice where she frequently entertained her lover, Grand Duke Kyril. Now that Queen Victoria was gone, there was no reason to prolong the intolerable situation and at last on 21st December 1901 the divorce was officially announced on the grounds of ‘invincible mutual apathy.’
The not unexpected news might have come as a relief to the Edinburgh family but to Ernie’s sisters it struck as a double blow. Not only had they been relying on Ducky to provide an heir for the Grand Duchy of Hesse but they dreaded the scandal if, in the course of the divorce proceedings, the allegations of Ernie’s homosexuality should be made public. The Tsarina, mindful that Ducky’s lover was first cousin of the Tsar, feared that she may excuse her behaviour by revealing the reason for her dissatisfaction with Ernie. In an earnest attempt to limit the damage, Alix wrote a carefully worded letter to Nicky’s sister, Xenia, professing to pass no judgement on her cousin, while insinuating that she, not Ernie was to blame:
“It nearly broke my heart when I got the news, it was so quite unexpected, I always hoped that in time things would come right…Only with her character married life thus was impossible to continue…Only one thing I entreat you, darling Xenia, whenever you hear nasty gossip, at once put a stop to it for their sakes and ours. They parted as their characters could impossibly get on together, that is enough for the public…She will not be missed in the country, as she never made herself beloved nor showed any liking for the country, alas! Poor girl she is utterly miserable now without a home, tho’ he leaves her the sweet child.”
Though Ducky kept the ‘sweet child,’ Elizabeth, she had no objection to allowing her
to stay with Ernie for several months each year. Ernie entertained her in Darmstadt or took her with him to visit his numerous relations. In autumn 1903, the Tsar invited them to join the Imperial Family at his hunting lodge in Poland where, within days of their arrival, eight-year-old Elizabeth fell seriously ill with typhoid. Her aunt, the Tsarina, decided that there was no cause for alarm and delayed sending for her mother so that by the time Ducky heard of her illness at the beginning of November, the little girl was already dead. Ernie’s sisters, Victoria and Ella rushed to Darmstadt for the funeral where Ernie and Ducky were briefly reconciled in grief.
Two years later, Ernie found a far more compatible wife in Princess Eleonore (‘Onor’) of Lich - ‘a dignified and gracious lady and gifted with a genuine talent for dress.’ Unlike her predecessor, Onor was happy to take over many of Princess Alice’s charities and proved a very popular Grand Duchess of Hesse. In spite of Ernie’s alleged homosexuality, he found happiness with Onor, by whom he fathered two more children - George Donatus and Ludwig.
For Ducky, life was far less serene. Her ex-husband was free to take a new wife but the Orthodox Church, unable to alter its stance on marriage between first cousins, could not sanction a wedding with Kyril. Even if Kyril was prepared to defy the Church, he, as a member of the Imperial Family, need the Tsar’s permission to marry - permission that Nicky, swayed by Alix, was almost certain to refuse.
While Ducky, morose and despairing, mooched around Nice, the eccentric Queen Elizabeth of Roumania suggested that she should resign herself to a single life and concentrate on serving others, to:
“Go and learn how to nurse, form a sisterhood of her own, wander about the world in search of all the suffering, all the misery, all those that life has treated hardly. Lead a life of continual sacrifice.”
Queen Elizabeth had little idea how accurately she described the kind of life that Ducky’s cousin, Ella, was soon to adopt• but for the Edinburgh princess, such a plan was unthinkable. So deep was Ducky’s unhappiness that even her staunchly Orthodox mother pleaded with Nicky to allow her to marry Kyril in secret but, with Alix vehemently opposed to the scheme, Nicky stood firm.
From Nice, Ducky watched anxiously as Kyril saw active service with the Russian fleet during the Japanese War of 1904-5• escaping death by a whisker when his ship, the Petropavlovsk, was sunk by an enemy mine. Surely, she hoped, his heroic return would persuade the Tsar to lift the ban, but Nicky remained intransigent. Worn out with pleading and waiting, Kyril decided to take matters into his own hands. In autumn 1905, he arranged to meet Ducky at her mother’s home in Tergensee in Bavaria where on Sunday October 8th they were secretly married.
When the news reached Russia Alix was incensed, and Kyril’s arrival at Tsarskoe Selo a few days later did nothing to appease her anger. Denying the Grand Duke access to the Alexander Palace, she ensured that Nicky imposed on him the full penalty for disobeying the Tsar; Kyril was stripped of his titles and banished from the country. Only two years later, when Ducky gave birth to a daughter, Maria, and converted to Orthodoxy, did Nicky agree to endorse the marriage and restore the Grand Duke’s title. Still relations with the Imperial family were so taut that Kyril and Ducky opted to remain in Paris until after the birth of a second daughter, Kira, in 1909.
It was, perhaps, as well that they remained away from St. Petersburg, for their exile coincided with one of the most horrifying and tumultuous periods in the reign of Tsar Nicholas II.
By mid-June the preparations were complete - the Abbey prepared and the many visiting royalties who had arrived in London were settling into their palaces. Then suddenly, twelve days before the ceremony, disaster loomed - the King fell seriously ill and, though he determinedly protested that he could not disappoint his guests, his doctors diagnosed appendicitis which required immediate surgery. There was no alternative but to postpone the coronation. Even then, no one could be sure that the King would survive surgery, as one doctor later confessed to Toria, he was sure ‘that His Majesty would die during the operation.’ Overweight, addicted to fine wines, gargantuan meals, fat cigars and pretty women, it seemed that the heir who had waited for so long to come to the throne would in the end be denied his inheritance.
For an anxious forty minutes in an adjoining room, Queen Alexandra waited with her daughters, Toria and Maud, while Mr. Treves performed the surgery. Yet somehow, against the odds, Bertie pulled through. Word of his recovery was greeted with rejoicing throughout the country and made the celebration of his coronation, two months later than planned, even more spectacular.
Behind the scenes came the usual family wrangling about the order of precedence. This time it was not the Kaiser• but his younger brother, Henry, who was most disgruntled at being placed towards the back during the ceremonies. His temper was soothed when his sister-in-law, Victoria Battenberg, now settled with her family in London, agreed to bring her children to spend Christmas with him and Irène at Kiel, providing him with the ideal opportunity to show off his new steam car and boat.
Paradoxically, his sister, Charlotte, who was so used to making mischief, had no complaints about the coronation. Recently recovered from one of her recurring bouts of illness, she thoroughly enjoyed the celebrations and wrote cheerfully from Sandringham:
“There is no place in the world like England, & if possible I’m more English than ever…Have made several trips with my Sailor Brother & other friends, running down to various lovely country houses…”
The accession of the new king, coinciding with the dawn of a new century, seemed to bring a new vitality to the country. The Boer War finally reached its conclusion and a precarious peace reigned in Europe. Queen Victoria’s old world had vanished overnight and the new court seemed suddenly young, modern and alive.
No two monarchs could have differed more starkly than the perpetually mourning widow of Windsor and the portly bon viveur, King Edward VII. From the moment he ascended the throne a great wind of change blew through the English palaces. On the King’s instructions, out went the late Queen’s numerous mementos of her stalwart John Brown; modern styles replaced the old Victorian décor; and the hushed and smoke-free rooms of Buckingham Palace echoed to the sound of cigar-puffing Sybarites. In Windsor, too, the king implemented changes:
“The moving of inanimate objects such as furniture and pictures does not jar,” wrote Alick York, Groom in Waiting to the late Queen, “and I must say the 3 drawing rooms are more comfortably and artistically arranged than in the old days, but still it all seems as if someone was taking a liberty and I should wake up to find things and people restored to their old places.”
More distressing for Bertie’s sisters was his decision to donate the Queen’s beloved Osborne House to the nation. To the princesses it had always been a beautiful holiday home filled with happy memories and the added attraction of having been personally designed by the Prince Consort. To Bertie it symbolised all the pain of his repressed childhood. What was more, he loved Sandringham and London and had no intention of escaping, as his mother had so often done, from the bustle and noise of the city to the peaceful seclusion of the Isle of Wight, which bored him. Notwithstanding his love of the pleasures of life, the King had more in mind than redecorating his palaces. Throughout his sixty years of waiting, he had formed clear and incisive ideas about how to govern the realm. His talents may have been overlooked in Queen Victoria’s lifetime, but now he would bring them to the fore; and nowhere was he more suited to his new role than in his ability to court not only the public, but also foreign governments by his charm, tact and diplomacy. As long as Uncle Bertie lived, peace in Europe seemed secure.
While the King’s cronies revelled in the glamour of Edward VII’s Court, and the new Queen Alexandra basked in the affection of her husband’s subjects, her father’s accession did nothing to ease the burden of unhappy Toria. As her elder sister, Louise - created Princess Royal in 1905 - continued to enjoy her reclusive life with her small family, and Maud and her sailor prince seemed to sink into obscurity in Denmark, Toria was obliged, more frequently than ever, to follow at her parents’ heels on their numerous royal visits. As her illnesses multiplied, her reputation for hypochondria spread; hearing that the princess had slipped and fallen during a ball at the height of the London season in 1903, the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz commented acerbically, “But oh! Poor…Victoria’s fall, truly grievous, she who is already so delicate.” Most of the family shared her sentiments.
It did not ease the unhappy princess’s burden to watch her younger cousins walking to the altar to be married. In February 1905, she attended the wedding of Uncle Leopold’s daughter, Alice of Albany, to Prince Alexander (‘Alge’) of Teck, younger brother of Princess May, the Duchess of York. Although almost ten years older than his bride, there was much to commend the Eton-educated Alge. Handsome and dashing in his cavalry officer’s uniform, he had seen active service during the South African war and had even been mentioned in dispatches during the siege of Mafeking. The wedding, which took place in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor was, according to Princess May ‘a most cheerful’ occasion with ‘no crying & At. Helen [the bride’s mother, the Duchess of Albany] behaved like a brick.’
A colourful gathering of royalties attended the ceremony, including Alice’s cousin, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, and among the bridesmaids were two other cousins, Daisy and Patsy Connaught the elder of whom was soon to marry the sober and scholarly, Prince Gustav of Sweden. Following a honeymoon in Cannes, the newly-weds, at Uncle Bertie’s invitation, settled into apartments at Windsor Castle from where the lively Alice had easy access to all the parties and dances of the capital. The couple travelled frequently, visiting Alice’s brother the Duke of Coburg and representing the king in such distant places as South Africa and the Far East.
In spite of the age difference, it was a remarkably happy marriage that produced three children, May, Rupert and Maurice, the youngest of whom died tragically before his first birthday. The sorrow was made all the greater for his parents as they were away in Coburg at the time, visiting Alice’s brother. Little Maurice, it seemed, had inherited his grandfather’s haemophilia•.
Four months after Alice’s wedding, the royalties returned to Windsor for Daisy Connaught’s wedding. The beautiful Daisy had a choice of several eminently suitable candidates, among them the Crown Prince of Portugal and the arrogant King Alfonso XVIII of Spain, but in 1905, during a visit to Egypt, she met and fell in love with Gustav, heir apparent to the Swedish throne. By the end of the holiday, the couple were engaged and the wedding took place at Windsor on June 15th.
Daisy’s gentle nature and striking beauty soon won the hearts of the Swedish people.
“Daisy was unique:” wrote her cousin Marie Louise, “she possessed the most beautiful character and I can truthfully say was beloved by all who had the privilege of knowing her.”
Two years after her marriage, King Oskar died and she rose to the rank of Crown Princess. Hers too was a happy marriage, resulting in a daughter, Ingrid, and five sons: Gustav, Adolph, Sigvard, Bertil and Carl Johann.
While Alice and Daisy were celebrating their weddings, their cousin, Ducky, was living down the scandal of her recent divorce. For years she had known that her unhappy union with Ernie was irreparable and only respect for her grandmother had prevented her from making the final break. The whole family was well aware that the couple were living apart - Ernie remaining in Darmstadt, while Ducky occupied her mother’s villa in Nice where she frequently entertained her lover, Grand Duke Kyril. Now that Queen Victoria was gone, there was no reason to prolong the intolerable situation and at last on 21st December 1901 the divorce was officially announced on the grounds of ‘invincible mutual apathy.’
The not unexpected news might have come as a relief to the Edinburgh family but to Ernie’s sisters it struck as a double blow. Not only had they been relying on Ducky to provide an heir for the Grand Duchy of Hesse but they dreaded the scandal if, in the course of the divorce proceedings, the allegations of Ernie’s homosexuality should be made public. The Tsarina, mindful that Ducky’s lover was first cousin of the Tsar, feared that she may excuse her behaviour by revealing the reason for her dissatisfaction with Ernie. In an earnest attempt to limit the damage, Alix wrote a carefully worded letter to Nicky’s sister, Xenia, professing to pass no judgement on her cousin, while insinuating that she, not Ernie was to blame:
“It nearly broke my heart when I got the news, it was so quite unexpected, I always hoped that in time things would come right…Only with her character married life thus was impossible to continue…Only one thing I entreat you, darling Xenia, whenever you hear nasty gossip, at once put a stop to it for their sakes and ours. They parted as their characters could impossibly get on together, that is enough for the public…She will not be missed in the country, as she never made herself beloved nor showed any liking for the country, alas! Poor girl she is utterly miserable now without a home, tho’ he leaves her the sweet child.”
Though Ducky kept the ‘sweet child,’ Elizabeth, she had no objection to allowing her
to stay with Ernie for several months each year. Ernie entertained her in Darmstadt or took her with him to visit his numerous relations. In autumn 1903, the Tsar invited them to join the Imperial Family at his hunting lodge in Poland where, within days of their arrival, eight-year-old Elizabeth fell seriously ill with typhoid. Her aunt, the Tsarina, decided that there was no cause for alarm and delayed sending for her mother so that by the time Ducky heard of her illness at the beginning of November, the little girl was already dead. Ernie’s sisters, Victoria and Ella rushed to Darmstadt for the funeral where Ernie and Ducky were briefly reconciled in grief.
Two years later, Ernie found a far more compatible wife in Princess Eleonore (‘Onor’) of Lich - ‘a dignified and gracious lady and gifted with a genuine talent for dress.’ Unlike her predecessor, Onor was happy to take over many of Princess Alice’s charities and proved a very popular Grand Duchess of Hesse. In spite of Ernie’s alleged homosexuality, he found happiness with Onor, by whom he fathered two more children - George Donatus and Ludwig.
For Ducky, life was far less serene. Her ex-husband was free to take a new wife but the Orthodox Church, unable to alter its stance on marriage between first cousins, could not sanction a wedding with Kyril. Even if Kyril was prepared to defy the Church, he, as a member of the Imperial Family, need the Tsar’s permission to marry - permission that Nicky, swayed by Alix, was almost certain to refuse.
While Ducky, morose and despairing, mooched around Nice, the eccentric Queen Elizabeth of Roumania suggested that she should resign herself to a single life and concentrate on serving others, to:
“Go and learn how to nurse, form a sisterhood of her own, wander about the world in search of all the suffering, all the misery, all those that life has treated hardly. Lead a life of continual sacrifice.”
Queen Elizabeth had little idea how accurately she described the kind of life that Ducky’s cousin, Ella, was soon to adopt• but for the Edinburgh princess, such a plan was unthinkable. So deep was Ducky’s unhappiness that even her staunchly Orthodox mother pleaded with Nicky to allow her to marry Kyril in secret but, with Alix vehemently opposed to the scheme, Nicky stood firm.
From Nice, Ducky watched anxiously as Kyril saw active service with the Russian fleet during the Japanese War of 1904-5• escaping death by a whisker when his ship, the Petropavlovsk, was sunk by an enemy mine. Surely, she hoped, his heroic return would persuade the Tsar to lift the ban, but Nicky remained intransigent. Worn out with pleading and waiting, Kyril decided to take matters into his own hands. In autumn 1905, he arranged to meet Ducky at her mother’s home in Tergensee in Bavaria where on Sunday October 8th they were secretly married.
When the news reached Russia Alix was incensed, and Kyril’s arrival at Tsarskoe Selo a few days later did nothing to appease her anger. Denying the Grand Duke access to the Alexander Palace, she ensured that Nicky imposed on him the full penalty for disobeying the Tsar; Kyril was stripped of his titles and banished from the country. Only two years later, when Ducky gave birth to a daughter, Maria, and converted to Orthodoxy, did Nicky agree to endorse the marriage and restore the Grand Duke’s title. Still relations with the Imperial family were so taut that Kyril and Ducky opted to remain in Paris until after the birth of a second daughter, Kira, in 1909.
It was, perhaps, as well that they remained away from St. Petersburg, for their exile coincided with one of the most horrifying and tumultuous periods in the reign of Tsar Nicholas II.
Who else will be getting pressies on 29/04/11?
We now know Kate and Wills are getting hitched on April 29...but who else might be sharing their special day?
No longer with us but both Duke Ellington and Hirohito were born on April 29...
With a bit more life in them, the following celebrities will also be opening presents on April 29:
David Icke (born 1952)
Kate Mulgrew (born 1955)
Daniel Day Lewis (born 1957)
Michelle Pfeiffer (born 1958)
Phil Tufnell (1966)
Andre Agassi (born 1970)
Something to remember it by?
Surely everyone in the UK - or even overseas - has some memorabilia in their cupboards from 1981, from one of most famous and lavish wedding ceremonies ever seen, when Prince Charles married Diana Spencer. The ink is not yet dry on the formal engagement announcement, and Kate is still getting used to Diana's old ring on her finger, yet the souvenirs are already rolling out for the royal engagement.
Aynsley China in Stoke-on-Trent were one of the first companies to get off the mark, producing prototypes as soon as the day after the engagement. The artwork and production had been put together some 2 months ago in preparation for "the big announcement". They didn't want to make the same mistake as the long-lost Woolworths which had started to stockpile Kate and William souvenirs shortly before the couple split up!
Even the supermarkets are getting in on the act with Asda producing a £5 photo mug for those wanting a souvenir on a budget. At the other end of the spectrum Royal Crown Derby will be producing commerative pieces, but they opt not to use photos of the couple considering them to be "cheap" and instead they stick to heraldry and calligraphy. We are sure there will be something for everyone on the shelves and in the back of the Daily Mail and Daily Express newspaper supplements!
Kate and William at St Andrews University: A Brief History
St Andrews is famous for its' golf course, but will now be as famous for introducing Prince William to Kate Middleton, on the first day that William started at university. Both assigned to St Salvator's Hall of residence, a grand building set in the oldest part of the university, the pair got on from the very first meeting.
It was Kate who hellped William through a terrible bout of homesickness in the first term, with Kate convincing him to stay in Scotland rather than heading back to Highgrove every weekend, and the two subsequently became very close friends and confidants.After William joined the University Water Polo team, William's demeanour picked up and he started socialising and behaving like a normal student (well, maybe he stopped short of rioting at Millbank...).
The local "Dolls House Restaurant", owned by TV presenter Carol Smillie, would see William, Kate and friends whiling away the evenings, with William rarely drinking alcohol and always paying his share of the bill. When Kate, William and a friend shared a Georgian flat in the second year they would pop out for takeaways, with both Kate and William favouring a mild korma!
In the third year they opted to rent somewhere more remote to keep as low a profile as possible, and so lived in a rural farmhouse overlooking the golf course, and stayed there until June 2005 when they started packing up for graduation. Kate describes the period at university with William as "the happiest of times", and not withstanding a short break-up after they left university, it seems that there is a fairytale ending to their time in Scotland.
Kate Middleton's £30 see-through dress could sell for £100,000!
Yes, this is perhaps what Kate was wearing when William fell for her at a fashion show...hardly surprising really as Kate looks amazing sauntering down the catwalk..maybe Britain's Next Top Princess?!
Kate Middleton's £30 see-through dress could sell for £100,000 | Mail Online
Kate Middleton's £30 see-through dress could sell for £100,000 | Mail Online
Copy Kate - how to get THAT look on a budget!
Top Stylists and Buyers advise how to get the Kate Middleton "look" for a fraction of the price, from make-up to dresses...how to get Princess Chic!
Kate Middleton's engagement dress: Copy her look for a quarter of the price | Mail Online
Kate Middleton's engagement dress: Copy her look for a quarter of the price | Mail Online
Referendum vs Wedding?
So in a punch-up between Nick Clegg wanting his referendum on voting reform, and Kate Middleton wanting her wedding day, who would win?
Kate Middleton's Royal wedding: Lib Dems fear April clash with voting referendum | Mail Online
Kate Middleton's Royal wedding: Lib Dems fear April clash with voting referendum | Mail Online
So what do you think you know about Prince William?
What makes a great Royal Wedding?
Click here to find out the BBC's Recipe for a Fairytale Wedding...
Will is a hopeless romantic...who knew?
New Footage: Prince William talks about his romantic proposal to Kate Middleton in this formal interview. Watch now!
BBC News - Prince William on his proposal to Kate Middleton
BBC News - Prince William on his proposal to Kate Middleton
Westminster Abbey emerges as leading venue
As Kate visits Westminster Abbey this week, speculation grows over the venue for the Wedding of the Decade...well, you didn't think they'd just pop down their local Register Office, and then nip to a pub afterwards did you?!
BBC News - Speculation grows over royal wedding venue and date
The best advert for Audi ever?
 |
| Kate dodges the paparazzi in her Silver Audi A3 (Rex) |
What do you reckon the favoured choice of car is for the most talked-about woman on the planet? A solid, reliable, German Audi....Vorsprung Durch Technik!
Kate's family company need to recruit to replace her!
Learn more about Kate Middleton's background and the family business - and how they are now recruiting to replace her as she has been promoted to the future Queen of England!
Royal Wedding: Middletons' money - how was it made? - Telegraph
Royal Wedding: Middletons' money - how was it made? - Telegraph
We're all going on a...bank holiday!
Excellent news, thanks Wills and Kate...we could all do with an extra bank holiday - does that make us level with the French for state holidays?!
William and Kate back bank holiday - UK News - MSN News UK
William and Kate back bank holiday - UK News - MSN News UK
Kate Middleton will be 'oldest bride'
Getting on a bit at just 29....Kate will be one of the oldest women to marry a future king!
Royal wedding: Kate Middleton will be 'oldest bride' - Telegraph
Royal wedding: Kate Middleton will be 'oldest bride' - Telegraph
How the romance blossomed between William and Kate
Prince William and Kate Middleton's relationship began as students at St Andrews University in Fife in 2001...see how their friendship and relationship blossomed over the years
BBC News - In pictures: A royal romance
BBC News - In pictures: A royal romance
Royal Wedding Announcement delights the world
Prince William said Kate would be in "big trouble" if she lost the engagement ring, which belonged to his mother, the late Diana, Princess of Wales
BBC News - Royal wedding: Prince William and Kate congratulated
BBC News - Royal wedding: Prince William and Kate congratulated
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