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May 21, 1801: Birth of Princess Sophie of Sweden. Conclusion.

23 Saturday May 2020

Posted by liamfoley63 in Featured Royal, Kingdom of Europe, Royal Genealogy, Royal House, Royal Succession, Royal Titles, royal wedding, This Day in Royal History

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Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Grand Duke Friedrich of Baden, Grand Duke Leopold of Baden, Grand Duke Ludwig II of Baden, House of Bernadotte, House of Holstein-Gottorp, Karlsruhe, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway, King Oscar II of Sweden, Prince Sophie of Sweden, Princess Victoria of Baden, Stéphanie de Beauharnais

Marriage

In 1815, Princess Sophie of Sweden was engaged, and on 25 July 1819 in Karlsruhe, Sophie married her half-grand-uncle Prince Leopold of Baden, the son of a morganatic marriage. The marriage with Leopold had been specifically arranged by her uncle, Grand Duke Charles I of Baden, to improve the chances that Leopold would one day succeed him as grand duke because of Sophie’s royal lineage.

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Princess Sophie of Sweden

Since Sophie was a granddaughter of Leopold’s oldest half-brother, Hereditary Prince Charles-Ludwig, this marriage united the descendants of his father’s (Grand Duke Charles-Friedrich) two wives. Sophie’s undoubted royal blood would help to offset the stigma of Leopold’s morganatic birth.

During the reign of Ludwig I, Grand Duke of Baden, they lived a modest life away from court, as Ludwig did not want the heir to the throne at court. In 1830, her husband ascended to the grand ducal throne as Leopold I, and Sophie became Grand Duchess of Baden.

Sophie is described as wise and dutiful but strict. She kept late hours and arose late in the mornings, after which she spent hours writing letters to various relatives around Europe in her négligée. She was interested in science, art and politics, and kept herself well informed on all political events of the day through her correspondence.

Her ties to the Viennese court were particularly tight, and it was to Vienna her sons were sent to complete their education. Sophie retained a certain bitterness over the deposition of her father, and took it very badly when her brother was deprived of his status as a Swedish prince.

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Prince Gustaf, Crown Prince of Sweden

Princess Sophie’s brother, Prince Gustaf, Crown Prince of Sweden and later called Gustaf Gustafsson von Holstein-Gottorp (1799-1877); was not haughty as his younger sister Princess Sophie, but humble. Rather, he seemed too quiet and too careful for his age. When Princess Sophie asked him why their father was no longer King, he told her that it was best not to talk about it.

He asked no questions and did not appear to miss his father. After he was told that his father had been deposed, he acted embarrassed towards his mother. However, when she told him that he too had lost his position as heir, he cried and embraced her without a word. The announcement that he wouldn’t become King of Sweden gave him much relief and happiness.

In 1816, Prince Gustaf assumed the title of Count of Itterburg. Prince Gustaf served as an officer to the Habsburgs of Austria, and in 1829, Emperor Franz I created him Prince of Vasa. During the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) there was some talk of Prince Gustaf becoming its first king, but this never materialized.

The Case of Kaspar Hauser

Kaspar Hauser (c.1812-1833) was a German youth who claimed to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell.

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Kaspar Hauser

According to contemporary rumours, probably current as early as 1829, Kaspar Hauser was the Hereditary Prince of Baden who was born circa September 1812, and who, according to known history, died October 16, 1833. It was alleged that this prince was switched with a dying baby and subsequently surfaced 16 years later as Kaspar Hauser in Nuremberg.

In this case, his parents would have been Grand Duke Charles of Baden and Stéphanie de Beauharnais, cousin by marriage and adopted daughter of Napoleon, Emperor of the French. Because Grand Duke Charles had no surviving male progeny, his successor was his uncle Ludwig, who was later succeeded by his half-brother, Leopold. Leopold’s mother, the Countess of Hochberg, was the alleged culprit of Kaspar Hauser’s captivity. The Countess was supposed to have disguised herself as a ghost, the “White Lady”, when kidnapping the prince. Her motive evidently would have been to secure the succession for her sons.

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Stéphanie de Beauharnais, Grand Duchess of Baden

After Hauser’s death, it was claimed further that he was murdered, again because of his being the prince.

During the tumult caused by the appearance of Kaspar Hauser, Sophie was rumoured to have ordered Hauser’s assassination in 1833. This damaged her relationship to her husband, and Sophie was said to have had an affair. During the revolutions that swept across Europe the summer of 1848, she was forced to flee from Karlsruhe with her family to Strasbourg. They returned in 1849, after the revolt had been subdued by Prussian forces. She became a widow when her husband, Grand Duke Leopold, April 24, 1852 died in Karlsruhe.

Grand Duke Leopold was succeeded by his eldest son with Princess Sophie, as Grand Duke Ludwig II of Baden. His brother Friedrich acted as regent, because Ludwig suffered from mental illness. However, in 1856, Friedrich became Grand Duke as well after the death of Grand Duke Ludwig II.

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Friedrich I, Grand Duke of Baden

While he served as regent for his brother, his mother, Grand Duchess Sophie convinced her son Friedrich to enter an arranged dynastic marriage rather than a marriage to his love, Baroness Stephanie von Gensau. Grand Duke Friedrich I eventually married Princess Louise of Prussia the second child and only daughter of German Emperor Wilhelm I and Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. She was the younger sister of Friedrich III of Germany (“Fritz”) and aunt of Wilhelm II of Germany.

In 1852, the Swedish royal house wished to make peace with the deposed Swedish royal house, and King Oscar I of Sweden and Josephine of Leuchtenberg tried to arrange a meeting, but without success, with resistance coming from Grand Duchess Sophie.

In 1863, however, Sophie met the Swedish heir presumptive Prince Oscar of Sweden, Duke of Östergötland, and future King Oscar II of Sweden and his consort Sophie of Nassau. Prince Oscar was from the House of Bernadotte the dynasty that replaced Princess Sophie’s family. The meeting was a success: Sophie asked him about how the Stockholm of her childhood had changed, and when they left, she presented the couple with a gift to their son prince Gustaf, a medallion with the inscription “G” and the crown of the Swedish Crown Prince, because he had the same name as her brother.

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Grand Duchess Sophie of Baden. Portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

In 1864, Sophie was interviewed by an unnamed Swedish writer, an interview which was published in her biography about famous Swedish women by Wilhelmina Stålberg (who was likely the unnamed writer in question):

She particularly remembered Haga Palace and Stockholm Royal Palace, the latter so well that, if she should ever see it again, she would have the ability to find her way in any part of the palace. I asked, if she should not make a visit to her childhood home. There had been rumours in Sweden that she had the wish to do so, and that she had written about it to King Oscar, who had assured her of a kind welcome. The Grand Duchess disregarded the rumour as “completely unfounded”. She had never had a serious plan to visit Sweden, despite the fact that she often longed for it. Especially during spring she always felt a strange melancholic longing for her childhood home. But to travel there was now too late for her. This she uttered with a tearful glimmer in her big blue eyes. In any case, a true smile seemed uncharacteristic for this not-really-beautiful but very interesting face. As for the latest Swedish literature, she did read it, but all in translation, “Because”, she said, “I can no longer remember the Swedish language well enough to speak or read it in person. I can however understand it spoken, and my prayers are in Swedish!”

Dowager Grand Duchess Sophie, former Princess Sophie died at Karlsruhe Palace on July 6, 1865, aged 64.

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Crown Prince Gustaf of Sweden and Norway and Princess Victoria of Baden

Through Grand Duchess Sophie’s granddaughter, Princess Victoria of Baden, the blood of the Holstein-Gottorp Dynasty returned to the Swedish Royal Family. Princess Victoria’s father was Sophie’s son, Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden, and his wife Princess Louise of Prussia. On September 20, 1881 in Karlsruhe, Princess Victoria married Crown Prince Gustaf of Sweden and Norway, the son of King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway and Sofia of Nassau.

December 8, 1907 King Oscar II of Sweden died and the Crown Prince and Princess of Sweden became King Gustaf V and Queen Victoria of Sweden. This makes the former Princess Sophie of Sweden the great-great-great grandmother of Sweden’s current monarch, King Carl XVI Gustaf.

May 3,1826: Birth of King Carl XV-IV of Sweden and Norway.

03 Sunday May 2020

Posted by liamfoley63 in Featured Monarch, Kingdom of Europe, Royal Bastards, Royal Genealogy, Royal House, royal wedding, This Day in Royal History

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King Carl IV of Norway, King Carl XIV Johan of Sweden and Norway, King Carl XV of Sweden and Norway, King Frederik VIII of Denmark, King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway, King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway, Princess Louise of Sweden, Princess Louise of the Netherlands

Carl XV (Carl Ludvig Eugen) (May 3, 1826 – September 18 1872) was King of Sweden as Carl XV and King of Norway (He was proclaimed as King Carl XV of Norway but in recent times he has been referred to accurately as Carl IV) from 1859 until his death. Though known as King Carl XV in Sweden (and also on contemporary Norwegian coins), he was actually the ninth Swedish king by that name, as his predecessor Carl IX (reigned 1604–1611) had adopted a numeral according to a fictitious history of Sweden. Carl XV was the third Swedish monarch of the House of Bernadotte.

Parents

He was born in Stockholm Palace, Stockholm in 1826 and dubbed Duke of Scania at birth. Born the eldest son of Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden and his wife Crown Princess Josephine of Leuchtenberg, the first of six children of Eugène de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg (1781 – 1824), and his wife, Princess Augusta of Bavaria (1788 – 1851). Her paternal grandmother and namesake was Joséphine Tascher de La Pagerie, the first wife of Napoleon: she was given the name ‘Joséphine’ by Napoleon’s request. Princess Augusta of Bavaria was the second child and eldest daughter of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria and Princess Augusta Wilhelmine of Hesse-Darmstadt.

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King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway

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Princess Josephine of Leuchtenberg

At his birth Prince Carl of Sweden would be second in line to the throne of his grandfather, the ruling King Carl XIV Johan of Sweden. During his childhood he was placed in the care of the royal governess countess Christina Ulrika Taube. When he was just 15, he was given his first officer’s commission in 1841 by his grandfather the king.

Crown Prince

The aging King Carl XIV Johan would suffer a stroke on his 81st birthday in 1844, dying little more than a month later. His successor would be his son, Carl’s father Oscar, who ascended the throne as King Oscar I of Sweden. Upon his father’s accession to the throne in 1844, the young Carl was made a chancellor of the universities of Uppsala and Lund, and in 1853 chancellor of Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. On February 11, 1846 he was made an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

On June 19, 1850 Crown Prince Carl married in Stockholm Princess Louise of the Netherlands, daughter of Prince Frederik of the Netherlands, and his wife Princess Louise of Prussia. Prince Frederik of the Netherlands was the second son of King Willem I of the Netherlands and his wife, Wilhelmine of Prussia. Princess Louise of the Netherlands’ mother, also named Louise, was the eighth child of King Friedrich-Wilhelm III of Prussia and Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

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Princess Louise of the Netherlands

Further, Princess Louise of the Netherlands was a niece of King Willem II of the Netherlands through her father and niece of German Emperor Wilhelm I, through her mother.

The couple were personally quite dissimilar; Louise was a cultured and refined woman, however, she was considered to be quite plain and Crown Prince Carl was disappointed with her appearance. Louise was in love with her husband, whereas he preferred other women, saddening her deeply. His well-known mistresses included the actress Laura Bergnéhr, the countess Josephine Sparre, Wilhelmine Schröder and the actresses Hanna Styrell and Elise Hwasser, and the Crown Prince neglected his shy wife. On the other hand, his relationship to his only daughter, Louise, was warm and close.

In 1872, Carl XV had controversial plans to divorce Queen Louise and enter a non-morganatic marriage with the Polish countess Marya Krasińska through the assistance of Ohan Demirgian, plans that aroused opposition both in the royal house and government and which were interrupted only by his death.

The Crown Prince was Viceroy of Norway briefly in 1856 and 1857. In the 1850s, King Oscar I’s health began to rapidly deteriorate, becoming paralyzed in 1857. Crown Prince Carl became Regent on September 25, 1857, and king on the death of his father at the Royal Palace in Stockholm on July 8, 1859. As grandson of Augusta of Bavaria, he was a descendant of Gustaf I of Sweden and Carl IX of Sweden, whose blood returned to the throne after being lost in 1818 when Carl XIII of Sweden died.

When he was Crown Prince, Carl’s’ brusque manner led many to regard his future accession with some apprehension, yet he proved to be one of the most popular of Scandinavian kings and a constitutional ruler in the best sense of the word. His reign was remarkable for its manifold and far-reaching reforms. Sweden’s existing municipal law (1862), ecclesiastical law (1863) and criminal law (1864) were enacted appropriately enough under the direction of a king whose motto was: Land skall med lag byggas – “With law shall the land be built”. Carl also helped Louis De Geer to carry through his reform of the Parliament of Sweden in 1866. He also declared the freedom of women by passing the law of legal majority for unmarried women in 1858 – his sister Princess Eugenie became the first woman who was declared mature.

Carl XV, like his father Oscar I, was an advocate of Scandinavianism and the political solidarity of the three northern kingdoms, and his friendship with Frederik VII of Denmark, it is said, led him to give half promises of help to Denmark on the eve of the war of 1864, which, in the circumstances, were perhaps misleading and unjustifiable. In view, however, of the unpreparedness of the Swedish army and the difficulties of the situation, Carl XV was forced to observe a strict neutrality.

He died in Malmö on September 18, 1872. aged 46. He was followed on the thrones of both Norway and Sweden by his brother Oscar II.

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King Oscar II of Sweden

Issue

By his wife, Louise of the Netherlands, Carl had two children, a son, Prince Carl Oscar of Sweden, Duke of Södermanland who died in infancy and a daughter, Louise, who married the King Frederik VIII of Denmark. The early death of his only legitimate son meant that he was succeeded on the throne of Sweden by his younger brother Oscar II.

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Prince Carl Oscar of Sweden, Duke of Södermanland

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Princess Louise of the Netherlands, Queen Consort of Denmark

Carl XV also sired an illegitimate son, Carl Johan Bolander, (February 4, 1854 – July 28, 1903) and daughter, Ellen Svensson Hammar (October 28, 1865 – 1931) and it has been widely rumored that he had many more extramarital children.

No subsequent King of Sweden to this day is a descendant of King Carl XV. However, his descendants through his daughter Louise, are, or have been, on the thrones of Denmark, Luxembourg, Greece, Belgium and Norway.

A few weeks before Carl XV’s death, his daughter Louise (then the Crown Princess of Denmark) gave birth to her second son. The young Prince of Denmark became christened as grandfather Carl XV’s namesake. In 1905 this grandson, Prince Carl of Denmark, ascended the throne of Norway, becoming thus his maternal grandfather’s successor in that country, and assumed the reign name Haakon VII. The present king, Harald V of Norway, is Carl XV’s great-great-grandson, through his father and mother.

On this Day…..July 4,

04 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by liamfoley63 in This Day in Royal History

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King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway, Luitpold, Margrave of Bavaria, Otto von Habsburg, Pope Benedict V, Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine, Sigismund II, The 13 American Colonies

Otto von Habsburg 

414 – Emperor Theodosius II, age 13, yields power to his older sister Aelia Pulcheria who reigns as regent and proclaimed herself empress (Augusta) of the Eastern Roman Empire.

1569 – The King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Sigismund II Augustus finally sign the document of union between Poland and Lithuania, creating new country known as Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

1776 – War of American Independence. The 13 American Colonies went insane and declared independence from the British Crown. 

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1799 – King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway (d. 1859)

1937 ~  Sonja Haraldsen. Queen of Norway

1942 ~ Prince Michael of Kent

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907 – Luitpold, Margrave of Bavaria
965 – Pope Benedict V (b. unknown)
1780 – Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine, Austrian military leader (b. 1712)
2011 – Otto von Habsburg, last crown prince of Austria-Hungary and MEP (1979–1999) (b. 1912)

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