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May 26, 1867: Birth of Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, Queen Consort of the United Kingdom, Empress of India

26 Thursday May 2022

Posted by liamfoley63 in Uncategorized

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Albert Victor of Clarence and Avondale, Duke of Teck, Francis, King George V of the United Kingdom, Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Princess Victoria Mary (“May”) of Teck was born on May 26, 1867 at Kensington Palace, London, in the same room where Queen Victoria, her first cousin once removed, had been born 48 years and 2 days earlier. Queen Victoria came to visit the baby, writing that she was “a very fine one, with pretty little features and a quantity of hair”.

Her father was Prince Francis, Duke of Teck, the son of Duke Alexander of Württemberg by his morganatic wife, Countess Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde (created Countess von Hohenstein in the Austrian Empire). Her mother was Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, a granddaughter of King George III and the third child and younger daughter of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, and Princess Augusta of Hesse-Cassel.

She was baptised in the Chapel Royal of Kensington Palace on July 27, 1867 by Charles Thomas Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury. From an early age, she was known to her family, friends and the public by the diminutive name of “May”, after her birth month.

May’s upbringing was “merry but fairly strict”. She was the eldest of four children, and the only daughter, and “learned to exercise her native discretion, firmness, and tact” by resolving her three younger brothers’ petty boyhood squabbles.

They played with their cousins, the children of the Prince of Wales, who were similar in age. She grew up at Kensington Palace and White Lodge, in Richmond Park, which was granted by Queen Victoria on permanent loan.

HRH The Duke of Clarence and Avondale and HSH Princess Victoria Mary of Teck

She was educated at home by her mother and governess (as were her brothers until they were sent to boarding schools). The Duchess of Teck spent an unusually long time with her children for a lady of her time and class, and enlisted May in various charitable endeavours, which included visiting the tenements of the poor.

Although May was a great-grandchild of George III, she was only a minor member of the British royal family. Her father, the Duke of Teck, had no inheritance or wealth and carried the lower royal style of Serene Highness because his parents’ marriage was morganatic.

The Duchess of Teck was granted a parliamentary annuity of £5,000 and received about £4,000 a year from her mother, the Duchess of Cambridge, but she donated lavishly to dozens of charities. Prince Francis was deeply in debt and moved his family abroad with a small staff in 1883, in order to economise. They travelled throughout Europe, visiting their various relations. For a time they stayed in Florence, Italy, where May enjoyed visiting the art galleries, churches, and museums. She was fluent in English, German, and French.

At the age of 24, she was betrothed to her second cousin once removed Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra of Denmark (future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra), but six weeks after the announcement of the engagement, he died unexpectedly during an influenza pandemic.

The following year, she became engaged to Albert Victor’s only surviving brother, George, who subsequently became king. Before her husband’s accession, she was successively Duchess of York, Duchess of Cornwall, and Princess of Wales.

As Queen Consort from 1910, Mary supported her husband through the First World War, his ill health, and major political changes arising from the aftermath of the war. After George’s death in 1936, she became queen mother when her eldest son, Edward VIII, ascended the throne.

To her dismay, he abdicated later the same year in order to marry twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson.She supported her second son, Prince Albert, Duke of York, who assumed the throne as King George VI, in the wake of his brothers Abdication. He was King until his death in 1952.He was succeeded by his eldest daughter and Queen Mary’s granddaughter, Elizabeth II.The death of a third child profoundly affected her.

Mary remarked to Princess Marie Louise: “I have lost three sons through death, but I have never been privileged to be there to say a last farewell to them.”

Other than losing her second son George VI in 1952, she lost Prince John (1905 – 1919) her fifth son and youngest of her six children, when he of died at Sandringham in 1919, following a severe seizure, and was buried at nearby St Mary Magdalene Church.

She was also preceded by Prince George, Duke of Kent (1902 – 1942) her fourth son who was killed in a military air-crash on August 25, 1942.

Mary died on March 24, 1953 in her sleep at the age of 85, ten weeks before her granddaughter’s coronation. She had let it be known that should she die, the coronation should not be postponed. Her remains lay in state at Westminster Hall, where large numbers of mourners filed past her coffin.

She is buried beside her husband in the nave of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. Sir Henry “Chips” Channon, (1897 – 1958), was an American-born British Conservative politician, author and diarist. He wrote about Queen Mary, that she was “above politics … magnificent, humorous, worldly, in fact nearly sublime, though cold and hard. But what a grand Queen.”

The Earl of Athlone: German Ancestry, Conclusion.

24 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by liamfoley63 in Featured Royal, Royal Genealogy

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Alexander of Wurrtemberg, Duke of Tek, Francis, Francis of Teck, Friedrich I of Prussia, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Marie-Adelaide of Cambridge, Morganatic Marriage, Prince of Orange, The Earl of Athlone, Willem I The Silent

Duke Alexander of Württemberg (1804–1885) was the father of Prince Francis, Duke of Teck. In 1835, he married, morganatically, Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde (1812-1841), by whom he fathered three children: Claudine, Francis and Amalie. His wife was created Countess of Hohenstein in her own right and, following the rules of morganatic marriages, the children inherited their mother’s title as Count or Countess of Hohenstein from birth. They had no rights through their father to any royal status or inheritance. In 1841, his wife was killed, run over by horse, and this was such a devastating blow to Alexander that he became mentally unstable, a condition which lasted for the rest of his life. He died in 1885 at the age of 80.

Duke Alexander’s father was Duke Ludwig-Friedrich of Württemberg, brother of King Friedrich I of Württemberg and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia. Duke Alexander’s mother was Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg, a great-granddaughter of King George II of Great Britain through his eldest daughter Anne, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange who married Willem IV, Prince of Orange-Nassau and the first hereditary Stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands.

Duke Ludwig-Friedrich was a general in the cavalry. He was briefly a high ranking commander in the Army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Duke Ludwig-Friedrich was also appointed the commander of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s army. He betrayed the Commonwealth by refusing to fight against Russian troops throughout the Polish–Russian War of 1792, while feinting illness. For his betrayal he was dismissed from his post, but never persecuted. His Polish wife, Maria Wirtemberska, divorced him shortly afterward after his treason became public knowledge.

On 28 January 1797 in Hermitage, near Bayreuth, Louis Frederick was married to Princess Henriette of Nassau-Weilburg (then of Nassau), daughter of Charles Christian, Duke of Nassau-Weilburg and Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau. The couple had five children:

1. Duchess Maria Dorothea Luise Wilhelmine Karoline of Württemberg (1 November 1797 – 30 March 1855); granted the style Royal Highness on 26 December 1805; married in 1819 Archduke Joseph of Austira, Palatine of Hungary (9 March 1776 – 13 January 1847).

2. Duchess Amalie of Württemberg (28 June 1799 – 28 November 1848); granted the style Royal Highness on 26 December 1805; married in 1817 Joseph, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg (27 August 1789 – 25 November 1868).

3. Duchess Pauline of Württemberg (4 September 1800 – 10 March 1873); granted the style Royal Highness on 26 December 1805; married in 1820 her first cousin, Wilhelm I of Wurttemberg.

4. Duchess Elisabeth of Württemberg (27 February 1802 – 5 December 1864); granted the style Royal Highness on 26 December 1805; married in 1830 Prince Wilhelm, Grand-Ducal Prince and Margrave von Baden (8 April 1792 – 11 October 1859).

Duke Alexander of Württemberg (9 September 1804 – 4 July 1885); granted the style Royal Highness on 26 December 1805; married, morganitically, on 2 May 1835, Countess Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde, and had issue (21 September 1812 – 1 October 1841); founded the second branch of the House of Württemberg, known as the Dukes of Teck. The Dukes of Teck settled in the United Kingdom and with the change in titles in 1917, when king George V relinquished all German titles, the Teck family became the Cambridge family.

I mention the siblings of Duke Alexander of Württemberg to show case that the Cambridge family has distant cousins throughout German royal and noble houses. If you follow the family tree through Duke Alexander’s maternal grandmother, Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau, you will find your way into various royal houses such as the Dutch royal house leading to Willem I The Silent, Prince of Orange, considered founder of the modern state of the Netherlands. Other ancestors of Duke Alexander was King George II of Great Britain (a German prince of the House of Hanover and Brunswick) and his wife Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, who was the granddaughter of Albert II, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. If you follow the Brandenburg-Ansbach line you will eventually arrive at King Christian I of Denmark. Another prominent ancestor to the Earl of Athlone is King Friedrich I of Prussia.

Even though the Earl of Athlone’s mother, Princess Mary-Adelaide of Cambridge, was also ethnically German as a member of the House of Hanover, her son was very German through his father’s Württemberg heritage. This does raise the question about nationality verse ethnicity which are both human constructs. The Earl of Athlone was born and raised in the UK and culturally was every inch British despite the fact that his ancestors came from Germany.

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