19 Thursday May 2022
Posted in From the Emperor's Desk, Uncategorized
Hello my wonderful readers! My tablet died on the 8th of May. After having to return one and now my new came today I’m taking a little more time off and will return to blogging on Monday the 23rd!
Thanks for your patience!
Liam
Today is the anniversary of the birth of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, scene here with his first cousin King George V of the United Kingdom
05 Wednesday Jan 2022
Tags
Anastasia of Montenegro, Band Duke Nicholas Nikoleavich of Russia, Borzoi Hunting Dogs, Commander in Chief, Frederick William III of Prussia, Nicholas I of Russia, Nicholas II of Russia
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (November 18, 1856 – January 5, 1929) was a Russian general in World War I (1914–1918). The son of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1831–1891), and a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, he was commander in chief of the Imperial Russian Army units on the main front in the first year of the war, during the reign of his first cousin once removed, Nicholas II.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1831–1891) was named after his paternal grandfather, the Emperor Nicholas I, was born as the eldest son to Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaevich of Russia (1831–1891) and Alexandra of Oldenburg (1838–1900) on November 18, 1856. His father was the sixth child and third son born to Nicholas I of Russia and his Empress consort Alexandra of Prussia (1798–1860) a daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia and Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
Nicholas’s mother, (Alexandra of Oldenburg) was the daughter of his father’s first cousin, Duke Constantine Peter of Oldenburg (1812–1881) and Princess Therese of Nassau (1815–1871). His maternal grandfather was a son of Duke Georg of Oldenburg and Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna of Russia, daughter of Paul I of Russia and Maria Fedorovna of Württemberg. (Catherine Pavlovna of Russia, was later remarried to Wilhelm I of Württemberg.)
His maternal grandmother, Princess Therese of Nassau-Weilburg, was a daughter of Wilhelm, Duke of Nassau (1792–1839) and Princess Luise of Saxe-Hildburghausen. The Duke of Nassau was a son of Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Nassau (1768–1816) and Burgravine Louise Isabelle of Kirchberg. His paternal grandparents were Duke Charles Christian of Nassau-Weilburg (1735–1788) and Carolina of Orange-Nassau. Carolina was a daughter of Willem IV of Orange and Anne, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange. Anne was the eldest daughter of George II of Great Britain and Caroline of Ansbach.
A very tall man (1.98m / 6′ 6″), Grand Duke Nicholas was the first cousin once removed of Emperor Nicholas II. To distinguish between them, the Grand Duke was often known within the Imperial family as “Nikolasha”: the Grand Duke was also known as “Nicholas the Tall” while the Emperor was “Nicholas the Short.
Marriage
On April 29, 1907 Nicholas married Princess Anastasia of Montenegro (1869–1935), the daughter of King Nicholas I of Montenegro and sister of Princess Milica, who had married Nicholas’s brother, Grand Duke Peter. They had no children. She had previously been married to George Maximilianovich, 6th Duke of Leuchtenberg, by whom she had two children, until their divorce in 1906. Since the Montenegrins were a fiercely Slavic, anti-Turkish people from the Balkans, Anastasia reinforced the Pan-Slavic tendencies of Nicholas.
Hunting
Nicholas was a hunter. Ownership of borzoi hounds was restricted to members of the highest nobility, and Nicholas’s packs were well-known. After the revolution, the dogs in his kennel were sold off by the new Soviet government. In his lifetime, Nicholas and his dogs caught hundreds of wolves. A pair of borzoi were used, which caught the wolf, one on each side, while Nicholas dismounted and cut the wolf’s throat with a knife. Hunting was his major recreation, and he traveled in his private train across Russia with his horses and dogs, hunting while on his rounds of inspection.
1870.
Grand Duke Nicholas was educated at the school of military engineers and received his commission in 1873. During the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78, he was on the staff of his father who was commander in chief. He distinguished himself on two occasions in this war. He worked his way up through all the ranks until he was appointed commander of the Guard Hussar Regiment in 1884.
He had a reputation as a tough commander, yet one respected by his troops. His experience was more as a trainer of soldiers than a leader in battle. Nicholas was a very religious man, praying in the morning and at night as well as before and after meals. He was happiest in the country, hunting or caring for his estates.
20 Wednesday Oct 2021
Tags
Abdication, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, Dagmar of Demark, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, Grand Duke Michael of Russia, Grigori Rasputin, King Christian X of Denmark, Nicholas II of Russia, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Prince Michael of Kent, Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark., Russian Revolution, St. Petersburg
In Kiev, Maria engaged in the Red Cross and hospital work, and in September, the 50th anniversary of her arrival in Russia was celebrated with great festivities, during which she was visited by her son, Nicholas II, who came without his wife. Empress Alexandra wrote to the Emperor: “When you see Motherdear, you must rather sharply tell her how pained you are, that she listens to slander and does not stop it, as it makes mischief and others would be delighted, I am sure, to put her against me…” Maria did ask Nicholas II to remove both Rasputin and Alexandra from all political influence, but shortly after, Nicholas and Alexandra broke all contact with the Emperor’s family.
When Rasputin was murdered, part of the Imperial relatives asked Maria to return to the capital and use the moment to replace Alexandra as the Emperor’s political adviser. Maria refused, but she did admit that Alexandra should be removed from influence over state affairs: “Alexandra Feodorovna must be banished. Don’t know how but it must be done. Otherwise she might go completely mad. Let her enter a convent or just disappear”.
Revolution and exile
Revolution came to Russia in 1917, first with the February Revolution, then with Nicholas II’s abdication on March 15. After travelling from Kiev to meet with her deposed son, Nicholas II, in Mogilev, Maria returned to the city, where she quickly realised how Kiev had changed and that her presence was no longer wanted. She was persuaded by her family there to travel to the Crimea by train with a group of other refugee Romanovs.
After a time living in one of the imperial residences in the Crimea, she received reports that her both of her sons, (Emperor Nicholas II and his brother Grand Duke Michael) her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren had been murdered. However, she publicly rejected the report as a rumour. On the day after the murder of the Emperor’s family, Maria received a messenger from Nicky, “a touching man” who told of how difficult life was for her son’s family in Yekaterinburg. “And nobody can help or liberate them – only God! My Lord save my poor, unlucky Nicky, help him in his hard ordeals!”
In her diary she comforted herself: “I am sure they all got out of Russia and now the Bolsheviks are trying to hide the truth.” She firmly held on to this conviction until her death. The truth was too painful for her to admit publicly. Her letters to her son and his family have since almost all been lost; but in one that survives, she wrote to Nicholas: “You know that my thoughts and prayers never leave you. I think of you day and night and sometimes feel so sick at heart that I believe I cannot bear it any longer. But God is merciful. He will give us strength for this terrible ordeal.”
Maria’s daughter Olga Alexandrovna commented further on the matter, “Yet I am sure that deep in her heart my mother had steeled herself to accept the truth some years before her death.”
Despite the overthrow of the monarchy in 1917, the former Empress Dowager Maria at first refused to leave Russia. Only in 1919, at the urging of her sister, Dowager Queen Alexandra, did she begrudgingly depart, fleeing Crimea over the Black Sea to London. King George V sent the warship HMS Marlborough to retrieve his aunt. The party of 17 Romanovs included her daughter the Grand Duchess Xenia and five of Xenia’s sons plus six dogs and a canary.
After a brief stay in the British base in Malta, they travelled to England on the British ship the Lord Nelson, and she stayed with her sister, Alexandra. Although Queen Alexandra never treated her sister badly and they spent time together at Marlborough House in London and at Sandringham House in Norfolk, Maria, as a deposed Dowager Empress , felt that she was now “number two,” in contrast to her sister, a popular queen dowager, and she eventually returned to her native Denmark. After living briefly with her nephew, King Christian X, in a wing of the Amalienborg Palace, she chose her holiday villa Hvidøre near Copenhagen as her new permanent home.
There were many Russian émigrées in Copenhagen who continued to regard her as the Empress and often asked her for help. The All-Russian Monarchical Assembly held in 1921 offered her the locum tenens of the Russian throne but she declined with the evasive answer “Nobody saw Nicky killed” and therefore there was a chance her son was still alive. She rendered financial support to Nikolai Sokolov, who studied the circumstances of the death of the Emperor’s family, but they never met. The Grand Duchess Olga sent a telegram to Paris cancelling an appointment because it would have been too difficult for the old and sick woman to hear the terrible story of murder of her son and his family.
Death and burial
In November 1925, Maria’s favourite sister, Queen Alexandra, died. That was the last loss that she could bear. “She was ready to meet her Creator,” wrote her son-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, about Maria’s last years. On October 13, 1928 at Hvidøre near Copenhagen, in a house she had once shared with her sister Queen Alexandra, Maria died at the age of 80, having outlived four of her six children. Following services in Copenhagen’s Russian Orthodox Alexander Nevsky Church, the Empress was interred at Roskilde Cathedral.
In 2005, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and President Vladimir Putin of Russia and their respective governments agreed that the Empress’s remains should be returned to St. Petersburg in accordance with her wish to be interred next to her husband. A number of ceremonies took place from September 23 to 28, 2006.
The funeral service, attended by high dignitaries, including the Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, did not pass without some turbulence. The crowd around the coffin was so great that a young Danish diplomat fell into the grave before the coffin was interred.
The reburial of Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia in St. Petersburg
On September 26th, 2006, a statue of Maria Feodorovna was unveiled near her favourite Cottage Palace in Peterhof. Following a service at Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, she was interred next to her husband Emperor Alexander III in the Peter and Paul Cathedral on September 28, 2006, 140 years after her first arrival in Russia and almost 78 years after her death.
13 Monday Sep 2021
Tags
Alexander II of Russia, Alice of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, Austro-Prussian War, German Confederation, Ludwig IV of Hesse and by Rhine, Morganatic Marriage, Nicholas II of Russia, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Ludwig IV (September 12, 1837 – March 13, 1892) was the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, reigning from June 13, 1877 until his death. Through his own and his children’s marriages he was connected to the British Royal Family, to the Imperial House of Russia and to other reigning dynasties of Europe.
Early life
Ludwig was born at the Prinz-Karl-Palais in Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine in the German Confederation, the first son and child of Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine (April 23, 1809 – March 20, 1877) and Princess Elisabeth of Prussia (June 18, 1815 – March 21, 1885), granddaughter of King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia.
Prince Charles’ older brother was Ludwig III (1806-1877), the reigning Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, who had been married to his first wife since 1833. Ludwig III’s first wife was Princess Mathilde Caroline of Bavaria, eldest daughter of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen (1792–1854), the daughter of Friedrich, Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Their wedding was the occasion of the first-ever Oktoberfest.
The marriage of Ludwig III of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Mathilde Caroline of Bavaria, produced no children. Princess Mathilde Caroline died in 1862, and in 1868 the Grand Duke remarried, morganatically, to Magdalene Appel who was created Baroness of Hochstädten. This union also did not produce children either. Also, since the union was morganatic any children would not have had succession rights. Without legitimate children Prince Ludwig was from birth second-in-line to the grand ducal throne, after his father.
First marriage
On July 1, 1862, Ludwig married Princess Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. On the day of the wedding, the Queen issued a royal warrant granting her new son-in-law the style of Royal Highness in the United Kingdom. The Queen also subsequently made Prince Ludwig a knight of the Order of the Garter.
Although an arranged marriage orchestrated by the bride’s father Albert, Prince Consort, the couple did have a brief period of courtship before betrothal and they wed willingly, even after the death of the Prince Consort left Queen Victoria in a protracted state of grief that cast a pall over the nuptials.
Becoming parents in less than a year following their marriage, the young royal couple found themselves strapped financially to maintain the lifestyle expected of their rank. Princess Alice’s interest in social services, scientific development, hands-on child-rearing, charity and intellectual stimulation were not shared by Ludwig, although dutiful and benevolent, was bluff in manner and conventional in his pursuits. The death of the younger of their two sons, Friedrich (Frittie), who was afflicted with hemophilia and suffered a fatal fall from a palace window before his third birthday in 1873, combined with the wearying war relief duties Alice had undertaken in 1870, evoked a crisis of spiritual faith for the princess in which her husband does not appear to have shared.
Military career
During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Ludwig the Hessian cavalry in support of the Austrian side. The Austrians were defeated in the War, and the Hessian grand duchy was in jeopardy of being awarded as the spoils of war to victorious Prussia, which annexed some of Austria’s other allies (Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau). Hesse-Darmstadt appears to have been spared this fate only by a cession of territory and the close dynastic kinship between its ruler and the Emperor of Russia (Alexander II’s consort, Empress Maria Alexandrovna, was the sister of Hesse’s Grand Duke Ludwig III and of Prince Charles).
In the Franco-Prussian War provoked by Bismarck’s manipulation of the Ems telegram in 1870, Hesse and by Rhine this time found itself a winning ally of Prussia’s, and Prince Ludwig was credited with courageous military service, especially at the Battle of Gravelotte, which also afforded him the opportunity of mending the previous war’s grievances with the House of Hohenzollern by fighting on the same side as his brother-in-law and future emperor, Prince Friedrich of Prussia. He had good relationship with Prince Friedrich of Prussia and his wife Victoria, the Princess Royal, all of his lifetime. He also visited him on his deathbed in 1888.
Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
In March 1877, Ludwig became heir presumptive to the Hessian throne when his father died and, less than three months later, found himself as the reigning grand duke upon the demise of his uncle, Ludwig III.
A year and a half later, however, Grand Duke Ludwig IV was stricken with diphtheria along with most of his immediate family. He recovered; but his four-year-old daughter Marie succumbed, along with his wife of 16 years. From then on, he reigned and raised his five surviving children alone. His daughter Alix married Emperor Nicholas II of Russia two years after his death in 1894.
Second marriage
The marriage of Princess Beatrice, youngest daughter of Queen Victoria was problematic. The Queen was so set against her youngest daughter marrying that she refused to discuss the possibility. Nevertheless, many suitors were put forward, including Louis Napoléon, Prince Imperial, the son of the exiled Emperor Napoleon III of France, and Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, the widower of Beatrice’s older sister Alice.
Grand Duchess Alice having died in 1878, Ludwig IV contracted a morganatic marriage on April 30, 1884 in Darmstadt (on the eve of the wedding of his eldest daughter, for which Queen Victoria and other relatives of his first wife were gathered in the Hessian capital) with Countess Alexandrine Hutten-Czapska (September 13, 1854 – May 8, 1941), daughter of Count Adam Hutten-Czapski and Countess Marianna Rzewuska.
Countess Alexandrine was the former wife of Aleksander von Kolemin, the Russian chargé d’affaires in Darmstadt. But the couple, facing objections from the Grand Duke’s in-laws, separated within a week and the marriage was annulled within three months. As a compensation, she received the title Countess von Romrod on May 13, 1884 and a financial compensation. Alexandrine later married for the third time to Basil von Bacheracht.
Death
Grand Duke Ludwig IV died on March 13, 1892, of a heart attack in the New Palace in Darmstadt and was succeeded by his son, Ernst Ludwig. After his second marriage, he was largely excluded from his first wife’s British royal family, but his funeral was attended by Victoria, the Empress Dowager of Germany, by the Dowager Duchess of Albany, and by the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, by the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, by the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augusterburg and by the Duke and Duchess of Argyll. It was not attended by his other two surviving in-laws, the Prince and Princess of Wales or by Queen Victoria due to her poor health. His remains are buried at Rosenhöhe, the mausoleum for the Grand Ducal House outside of Darmstadt
03 Friday Sep 2021
Tags
Alexander II of Russia, Alexander III of Russia, Duke of Edinburgh, Felipe VI of Spain, King George I of the Hellenes, Nicholas Constantinovich of Russia, Nicholas II of Russia, Olga Constantinovna of Russia, Philip of Gr÷ce and Denmark, Poland, Queen of the Hellenes, Russian Empire
Olga Constantinovna of Russia (September 3, 1851 – June 18, 1926) was queen consort of the Hellenes as the wife of King George I. She was briefly the regent of Greece in 1920. Olga was the Grandmother of Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh and the great-great-grandmother of Spains current king, Felipe VI.
Family and early life
Olga was born at Pavlovsk Palace near Saint Petersburg and was the second child and elder daughter of Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaievich and his wife, Grand Duchess Alexandra, a former princess of Saxe-Altenburg. Through her father, Olga was a granddaughter of Emperor Nicholas I, a niece of Emperor Alexander II and first cousin of Emperor Alexander III.
Her childhood was spent at her father’s homes, including Pavlovsk Palace and estates in the Crimea. Her father was a younger brother of Alexander II, and her mother was considered one of the most intelligent and elegant women of the court. Olga was particularly close to her older brother, Nicholas, and was one of the few members of the imperial family to keep in touch with him after he was banished to Tashkent.
Grand Duke Nicholas Constantinovich of Russia had an affair with a notorious American woman Fanny Lear. Due to his affair, he stole three valuable diamonds from the revetment of one of the most valuable family icons. He was declared insane and he was banished to Tashkent.
As a child, Olga was described as a simple and chubby little girl with a broad face and big blue eyes. Unlike her younger sister, Vera, she had a calm temperament, but she was also extremely shy. For example, when interrogated by her tutors during lessons, she burst into tears and ran from the classroom.
In 1862, Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaievich was appointed viceroy of Russian Poland by his brother and moved to Warsaw with his wife and children. The stay in Poland proved difficult for the Grand Duke, who was the victim of a nationalist assassination attempt the day after his arrival in the Polish capital. Although Constantine embarked on a program of liberalization and re-instated Polish as an official language, Polish nationalists agitating for reform were not appeased. Finally, an uprising in January 1863 and the radicalization of the separatists pushed the Emperor to recall his brother in August. Olga’s difficult experiences in Poland marked her profoundly.
Engagement and marriage
The 17 year old King George I of Greece visited Russia in 1863 to thank Olga’s uncle Emperor Aexander II for his support during George’s election to the throne of Greece. Whilst there, George met the then twelve-year-old Olga for the first time.
George visited Russia again in 1867 to meet with his sister Dagmar, who had married Tsarevitch Alexander (later Alexander III) the year before. He was determined to find a wife and the idea of an alliance with a Russian grand duchess, born into the Eastern Orthodox Church, appealed to him.
Olga fell in love with George, but she was nevertheless anxious and distraught at the thought of leaving Russia. Her father was initially reluctant to agree to their marriage, thinking that at the age of fifteen she was too young and, being close to his daughter, concerned by the distance between Greece and Russia.
For her part, Grand Duchess Alexandra was much more enthusiastic than her husband and, when some members of the imperial family noted the extreme youth of her daughter, she replied that Olga would not always be as young. Eventually, it was decided that Olga and George would marry when she had reached her sixteenth birthday. Meanwhile, she would continue her schoolwork until her wedding day.
Olga and George married at the chapel of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg on October 27, 1867. After five days of festivities, they spent a brief honeymoon at Ropsha, south-west of Saint Petersburg. Over the following twenty years, they had eight children:
Constantine (August 2, 1868 – January 11, 1923), who was born ten months after the marriage of his parents; he married Princess Sophia of Prussia and succeeded his father as king;
George (June 24, 1869 – November 25, 1957), High Commissioner of Crete from 1898 to 1906, married Princess Marie Bonaparte;
Alexandra (August 30, 1870 – September 24, 1891), married Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia; their children included Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, one of the assassins of Grigori Rasputin;
Nicholas (January 22, 1872 – February 8, 1938), married Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna of Russia;
Marie (March 3, 1876 – December 14, 1940), married firstly Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia and secondly Perikles Ioannidis;
Olga (April 7, 1880 – November 2, 1880);
Andrew (February 2, 1882 – December 3, 1944), he married Princess Alice of Battenberg, their children included Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh; and
Christopher (August 10, 1888 – January 21, 1940), father of Prince Michael of Greece.
29 Friday May 2020
Tags
Grand Duke Ernst-Ludwig of Hesse and by Rhine, Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and By Rhine, Hemophilia, Nicholas II of Russia, Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine, Prince Henry of Prussia, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Princess Alix of Hesse by Rhine, Princess Irene of Hesse and By Rhine, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom
Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine (Friedrich Wilhelm August Victor Leopold Ludwig; October 7, 1870 – May 29, 1873) was the haemophiliac second son of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, one of the daughters of Queen Victoria. He was also a maternal great-uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh through his eldest sister Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine.
Alice, Princess of the United Kingdom, Grand Duchess of Hesse and By Rhine (Mother)
Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and By Rhine (Father)
Life
Friedrich, called “Frittie” in the family, was a cheerful and lively child despite his illness. “Leopold” was added as one of his names in honor of his mother’s hemophiliac brother, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, who was Friedrich’s godfather.
Death
His haemophilia was first diagnosed in February 1873, a few months before his death, when he cut his ear and bled for three days. Bandages could not stanch the flow of blood. In late May 1873, Friedrich and his older brother Ernst-Ludwig were playing together in their mother’s bedroom. Ernst-Ludwig ran to another room, which was set at right angles to Alice’s bedroom and peered through the window at his younger brother.
Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine
Alice ran to get Ernst-Ludwig away from the window. When she was out of the room, Friedrich climbed onto a chair next to an open window in his mother’s bedroom to get a closer look at his brother. The chair tipped over and Friedrich tumbled through the window, falling twenty feet to the balustrade below. Friedrich survived the fall and might have lived had he not been a haemophiliac. He died hours later of a brain hemorrhage.
Aftermath
Following Friedrich’s death, his distraught mother often prayed at his grave and marked anniversaries of small events in his life. His brother Ernst told his mother he wanted all of the family to die together, not alone “like Frittie.” Two of Friedrich’s sisters, Irene, who married her first cousin , Prince Heinrich of Prussia and Alix, who married Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, also had haemophiliac sons.
08 Sunday Dec 2019
Posted in From the Emperor's Desk, Uncategorized
Tags
Carl, Charles, Charles XII of Sweden, Cyrillic Alphabet, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Karl, Nicholas II of Russia
Ever since I began this blog back on Thursday May, 3rd 2012 I have tried to use the names of Royals in their native tongue. The name Philip is a good example. For English Royalty with that name I use Philip. In French I render it as Philippe and in Spanish it’s Felipe and in German it’s Philipp.
Cyrillic Alphabet
The only exceptions where I prefer the English is with the Eastern European Monarchies. For example, Russian is an East Slavic language that uses the Cyrillic script or alphabet. The last Emperor of Russia was named Nicholas in English. In Russian, with the Cyrillic Alphabet Nicholas, is rendered Николай which can also be translated as Nikolai. Nicholas is a name that is derived from the Greek name Νικόλαος (Nikolaos), a compound of νίκη nikē ‘victory’ and λαός; laos ‘people’. Instead of using Nikolai II for the spelling the name of last Russian Emperor, I’ve chosen the common English interpretation, Nicholas. I do this for all Russian, Greek and Polish royals.
Emperor Nicholas II of Russia
In German I prefer Wilhelm to William and Friedrich to Frederick and Ludwig to Louis. However, this is where I want to make a slight adjustment based solely on my personal preference. This change has to do with the name Charles. In German it’s generally rendered as either Karl or Carl. It’s just a preference and no disrespect toward anyone named Karl or Carl, I simply prefer the name Charles.
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, King of Spain.
Therefore from now on in German and Danish royalty I’ll use Charles in replace of Karl or Carl. An exception will be, or in other words, where I’ll continue the usage of Carl is with Sweden to be consistent with the fact that Carl is the name the current of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. It would seem odd, at least for me, to refer to previous kings as Charles, Charles XII or Charles XV for example, then to refer to the current king as Carl XVI Gustaf.
King Carl XII of Sweden
26 Wednesday Jun 2019
Posted in Featured Royal, Happy Birthday, This Day in Royal History
Tags
Emperors of Russia, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, Grand Duchess Maria, Grand Duchess Marie Nikoleavna of Russia, Grand Princess, House of Battenberg, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Nicholas II of Russia, Princess Alix of Hesse by Rhine
Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia, (June 26, 1899 – July 17, 1918) was the third daughter of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna (Princess Alix of Hesse and By Rhine).
Contemporaries sources described Maria as a pretty, flirtatious girl, broadly built woman with light brown hair and large blue eyes that were known in the family as “Marie’s saucers”. Her French tutor Pierre Gilliard said Maria was tall and well-built, with rosy cheeks. Tatiana Botkina thought the expression in Maria’s eyes was “soft and gentle.” As an infant and toddler, her physical appearance was compared to one of Botticelli’s angels. Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia nicknamed her “The Amiable Baby” because of her good nature.
Maria’s siblings were Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia, Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, and Tsarevich Alexei of Russia. Maria’s Russian title (Velikaya Knyazhna Великая Княжна) is most precisely translated as “Grand Princess”, meaning that Maria, as an “Imperial Highness” was higher in rank than other Princesses in Europe who were “Royal Highnesses”. “Grand Duchess” is the most widely used English translation of the title.
However, in keeping with her parents’ desire to raise Maria and her siblings simply, even servants addressed the Grand Duchess by her first name and patronym, Maria Nikolaevna. She was also called by the French version of her name, “Marie,” or by the Russian nicknames “Masha” or “Mashka”.
Maria had a talent for drawing and sketched well, always using her left hand, but was generally uninterested in her schoolwork. She was surprisingly strong and sometimes amused herself by demonstrating how she could lift her tutors off the ground. Though usually sweet-natured, Maria could also be stubborn. Her mother complained in one letter that Maria was grumpy and “bellowed” at the people who irritated her. Maria’s moodiness coincided with her menstrual period, which the Empress and her daughters referred to as a visit from “Madame Becker.”
Lord Louis Mountbatten and Grand Duchess Maria
Young Maria enjoyed innocent flirtations with the young soldiers she encountered at the palace and on family holidays. She particularly loved children and, had she not been a Grand Duchess, would have loved nothing more than to marry a Russian soldier and raise a large family. Until his own assassination in 1979, her first cousin, Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, (born a Prince of the House of Battenberg) kept a photograph of Maria beside his bed in memory of the crush he had upon her. However, because the Russian Orthodox Church has a rule against first cousins marrying, it is highly improbable that approval for the match would have been obtained.
Alexandra’s letters reveal that Maria, the middle child of the family, sometimes felt insecure and left out by her older sisters and feared she wasn’t loved as much as the other children. Alexandra reassured her that she was as dearly loved as her siblings. At age eleven, Maria apparently developed a painful crush on one of the young men she had met. “Try not to let your thoughts dwell too much on him, that’s what our Friend said,” Alexandra wrote to her on 6 December 1910. Alexandra advised her third daughter to keep her feelings hidden because others might say unkind things to her about her crush. “One must not let others see what one feels inside, when one knows it’s considered not proper. I know he likes you as a little sister and would like to help you not to care too much, because he knows you, a little Grand Duchess, must not care for him so.”
03 Friday Feb 2017
Posted in Royal Genealogy
Tags
Alexandra of Denmark, Aragon, Chalres V, Charles I of England, Charles II of England, Elizabeth of York, England, France, Henry VIII of England, Holy Roman Empire, Louis XIV of France, Nicholas II of Russia, Sofia of Spain, Spain, United Kingdom
We often see in fairy tales that a future king, or a king himself, will marry a princess who is the daughter of a king herself. The reality is that this scenario is not always played out in the history of royalty. The last time it happened in the British monarchy was when Prince Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII married Princess Alexandra of Denmark the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark. Well, technically her father wasn’t the king just yet when they married. Albert-Edward and Alexandra were married March 10, 1863 at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle while her father, Christian IX, didn’t become king until November 15, 1863 when King Frederik VII died that same year. Although she missed it by a few months I will count it.
You have to go back to King Charles II of England and Scotland when he married Catherine of Braganza, on May 15, 1662 to find a king (or future king) that married the daughter of a king. Catherine was the daughter of King João IV of Portugal. I guess you could also count Queen Anne of Great Britain who married Prince George of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Cumberland in 1683 for he was the son of King Frederik III of Denmark and Norway. However, for this post I am concentrating on women who were the daughters of kings.
When examining the genealogy of a daughter of a king that married another king this made these woman often connected to many other relatives who wore a crown. Today I want to look at four women who were very royally connected.
Alexandra of Denmark (1844-1925). She was the daughter of a king (Christian IX of Denmark), the sister to two kings (Frederik VIII of Denmark and George I of Greece), the aunt of three kings and an emperor (Christian X of Denmark, Haakon VII of Norway, Constantine I of Greece and Emperor Nicholas II of Russia), the mother of a king (George V of the United Kingdom), mother-in-law of a king (Haakon VII of Norway) and the grandmother two kings (Edward VIII of the United Kingdom and George VI of the United Kingdom).
Sofia of Greece and Denmark (1938-). She is the daughter of a king (Paul of Greece), she is the sister of a king (Constantine II of Greece), the sister-in-law of a queen (Margrethe II of Denmark), she is the wife of a king (Juan-Carlos of Spain) and the mother of a king (Felipe VI of Spain).
Those are some good royal connections! I am certain there are more and I will post more in the future!
Queen Sofia of Spain, princess of Greece and Denmark.
17 Tuesday Jul 2012
Posted in From the Emperor's Desk
Tags
Bolsheviks, Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna, Ipatiev house, Nicholas II of Russia, Russian Imperial Family, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, Yekaterinburg
On this day 94 years ago came the senseless and viciously cruel and evil slaughter of the Russian Imperial Family at the hands of the Bolsheviks in the basement room of the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg, Russian. I didn’t want to say too much about this senseless act instead I thought I would just share photos of the family and remember them at happier times.
Emperor Nicholas II Alexandrovich (b. 1868)
Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna (b. 1872)
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna (b. 1895)
Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna (b. 1897)
Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna (b. 1899)
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna (b. 1901)
Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich (b. 1904)
European Royal History 