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November 25, 1876: Birth of HRH Victoria Melita of Edinburgh, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Grand Duchess of Russia.

25 Thursday Nov 2021

Posted by liamfoley63 in Duchy/Dukedom of Europe, Empire of Europe, Featured Royal, Grand Duke/Grand Duchy of Europe, Kingdom of Europe, Royal Divorce, Royal Genealogy, Royal Succession, Royal Titles, This Day in Royal History

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Alfred of Edinburgh, Emperor Alexander II of Russia, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, Grand Duchess of Russia, Grand Duke Ernst-Ludwig of Hesse and by Rhine, Grand Duke Kirill Alexandrovich of Russia Russian Orthodox Christianity, King Edward VII of United Kingdom, Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Victoria Melita of Edinburgh

Today, November 25th, is the 145th anniversary of the birth of HRH Victoria Melita of Edinburgh, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Grand Duchess of Russia. (November 25, 1876 – March 2, 1936) Victoria Melita was the third child and second daughter of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia. She was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and also of Emperor Alexander II of Russia.

Born a British princess, Victoria spent her early life in England and lived for three years in Malta, where her father served in the Royal Navy. In 1889 the family moved to Coburg, where Victoria’s father became the reigning duke in 1893.

In her teens Victoria fell in love with her first cousin Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia (the son of her mother’s brother, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia) but his faith, Rusian Orthodox Christianity, discouraged marriage between first cousins. Bowing to family pressure, Victoria married her paternal first cousin, Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine in 1894, following the wishes of their grandmother, Queen Victoria.

The marriage failed – Victoria Melita scandalized the royal families of Europe when she divorced her husband in 1901. The couple’s only child, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, who they nicknamed Ella, died of typhoid fever in 1903 at the age of 8.

In 1905, Victoria married Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia. They wed without the formal approval of Britain’s King Edward VII (as the Royal Marriages Act 1772 would have required), and in defiance of Russia’s Emperor Nicholas II. In retaliation, the Emperor stripped Kirill of his offices and honours, also initially banishing the couple from Russia.

They had two daughters and settled in Paris before being allowed to visit Russia in 1909. In 1910 they moved to Russia, where Nicholas recognized Victoria Melita as Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna. After the fall of the Russian monarchy in 1917 they escaped to Finland (then still part of the Russian Republic) where she gave birth to her only son, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich of Russia in August 1917.

In exile they lived for some years among her relatives in Germany, and from the late 1920s on an estate they bought in Saint-Briac in Brittany. In 1926 Kirill proclaimed himself Russian Emperor in Exile, and Victoria supported her husband’s claims. Victoria died after suffering a stroke while visiting her daughter Maria in Amorbach (Lower Franconia).

HIH Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia

She is the grandmother of Grand Duchess Maria of Russia, claimant to the Russian Throne, and the great-grandmother of Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia, claimant to the German Imperial Throne.

HI & RH Prince Georg Friedrich, The Prince of Prussia

Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Part III. Conclusion.

10 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by liamfoley63 in Duchy/Dukedom of Europe, Featured Monarch, Royal Genealogy, Royal House, Royal Succession, Royal Titles

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Alfred Duke of Edinburgh, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Ernst II, Grand Duchess Maria, Malta, Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Royal Navy, Victoria Melita of Edinburgh

Flag rank

Alfred was stationed in Malta for several years and his third child, Victoria-Melita, was born there in 1876. Promoted rear-admiral on December 30, 1878, he became admiral superintendent of naval reserves, with his flag in the corvette HMS Penelope in November 1879.

Promoted to vice-admiral on November 10, 1882, he became Commander-in-Chief, Channel Fleet, with his flag in the armoured ship HMS Minotaur, in December 1883. He became Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the armoured ship HMS Alexandra, in March 1886, and having been promoted to admiral on October 18, 1887, he went on to be Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth in August 1890. He was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet on June 3, 1893.

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The Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Percy Scott wrote in his memoirs that “as a Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Edinburgh had, in my humble opinion, no equal. He handled a fleet magnificently, and introduced many improvement in signals and manoeuvring.” He “took a great interest in gunnery.” “The prettiest ship I have ever seen was the [Duke of Edinburgh’s flagship] HMS Alexandra. I was informed that £2,000 had been spent by the officers on her decoration.”

Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

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Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

On the death of his uncle, Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on August 22, 1893, the duchy fell to the Duke of Edinburgh, since his elder brother (the Prince of Wales) had renounced his right to the succession before he married. Alfred thereupon surrendered his British allowance of £15,000 a year and his seats in the House of Lords and the Privy Council, but he retained the £10,000 granted on his marriage to maintain Clarence House as his London residence. At first regarded with some coldness as a “foreigner”, he gradually gained popularity. By the time of his death in 1900, he had generally won the good opinion of his subjects.

Alfred was exceedingly fond of music and took a prominent part in establishing the Royal College of Music. He was a keen violinist, but had little skill. At a dinner party given by his brother, he was persuaded to play. Sir Henry Ponsonby wrote: ‘Fiddle out of tune and noise abominable.’

He was also a keen collector of glass and ceramic ware, and his collection, valued at half a million marks, was presented by his widow to the Veste Coburg, the enormous fortress on a hill top above Coburg.

Later life

Alfred and Maria’s only son, Alfred, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, became involved in a scandal involving his mistress and apparently shot himself in January 1899, in the midst of his parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebrations at the Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha. He survived, but his embarrassed mother sent him off to Meran to recover, where he died two weeks later, on February 6, His father was devastated.

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The Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

The Duke of Saxe-Coburg died of throat cancer on July 30, 1900 in a lodge adjacent to Schloss Rosenau, the ducal summer residence just north of Coburg. He was 55 years old and was buried at the ducal family’s mausoleum in the Friedhof am Glockenberg in Coburg.

He was succeeded as the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha by his nephew, Prince Charles-Edward, Duke of Albany, the posthumous son of his youngest brother, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany.

He was survived by his mother, Queen Victoria, who had already outlived two of her children, Alice and Leopold. She died six months later.

The life of Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine (1895–1903)

04 Monday May 2020

Posted by liamfoley63 in Duchy/Dukedom of Europe, Featured Royal, Royal Genealogy, Royal Titles

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Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, Grand Duke Ernst-Ludwig of Hesse and by Rhine, Princess Alix of Hesse by Rhine, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and By Rhine, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Typhoid, Victoria Melita of Edinburgh

Her Grand Ducal Highness Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine (Elisabeth Marie Alice Viktoria; March 11 1895 – November 16, 1903) was a German Hessian and Rhenish princess, the only daughter of Ernst-Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and his first wife, Princess Victoria-Melita of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

She was named after her paternal great-grandmother, who was born Princess Elisabeth of Prussia, the second daughter of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and Landgravine Marie Anna of Hesse-Homburg and a granddaughter of King Friedrich-Wilhelm II of Prussia. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is her great-great-grandson.

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Birth

Princess Elisabeth’s parents, nicknamed ‘Ernie’ and ‘Ducky,’ were first cousins who married at the instigation of their common grandmother, Queen Victoria. The marriage was an unhappy one from the start. Princess Victoria-Melita was eighteen at the time of Elisabeth’s birth. She was fond of Elisabeth, but found it hard to compete with Ernst’s devotion to their daughter.

Ernst was convinced even before Elisabeth could speak that he alone could understand her. At the age of six months, she was scheduled to move to a new nursery and her father ‘consulted’ her on her color preferences. He claimed that she made ‘happy little squeals’ when he showed her a particular shade of lilac material. Ernst then decorated her nursery in shades of lilac. He later had a playhouse built for his daughter that stood in its own garden. Adults were forbidden to enter “much to the frustration of royal nurses and tutors, who could be seen pacing up and down impatiently outside as they waited for their high-spirited young charges to stop their games and emerge.”

Childhood

Margaretta Eagar, a governess for the daughters of Emperor Nicholas II, described Elisabeth as “a sweet and pretty child, with wide blue-grey eyes and a profusion of dark hair. She was much like her mother, not only in face, but also in manner.” The four-year-old Elisabeth wanted a baby sister and tried to persuade her aunt and uncle to let her parents adopt one of her paternal first cousins, Tatiana or Maria (daughters of Nicholas II). Her parents had only one other child together, a stillborn son, in 1900.

She was a favorite with her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, who called the little girl “my precious.” Queen Victoria refused to permit the unhappily married Victoria and Ernst to divorce for the sake of Elisabeth. It was Elisabeth whom Queen Victoria asked to see first and to receive eightieth birthday greetings from in 1899. When the child heard Queen Victoria’s pony cart approaching on the road below Windsor Castle, the four-year-old Elisabeth ran out on the balcony, waving and calling, “Granny Gran, I’m here!” Elisabeth’s playfulness made the queen laugh out loud.

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Princess Elisabeth with her great-grandmother Queen Victoria

Elisabeth’s grandmother, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, the Duchess of Edinburgh, (married to Queen Victoria’s second son, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) brought five-year-old Elisabeth to see Queen Victoria on her death bed on January 22, 1901. After the queen died, the child was taken in to see her body and told that her great-grandmother had gone to be with the angels. “But I don’t see the wings,” Elisabeth whispered.

Elisabeth sat next to her second cousin, Prince Edward of York (called David by family and friends, later to become King Edward VIII) during Queen Victoria’s funeral. “Sweet little David behaved so well during the service,” wrote his aunt Maud, “and was supported by the little Hesse girl who took him under her protection and held him most of the time round his neck. They looked such a delightful little couple.

In his memoirs, written more than thirty years after her death, her father wrote of Elisabeth’s “deep sensitivity” and “very large heart.” He wrote that “I never knew a child who had so much influence on adults. Her inner personality was very strong, and she had a natural quality that protected her from being spoiled.”

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Grand Duchess Victoria-Melita and her daughter Princess Elisabeth

In October 1901, after the death of Queen Victoria, Elisabeth’s parents finally divorced. Her mother had rekindled a previous romance with another cousin, her future husband, Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich of Russia. Her father, according to letters written by her mother, had been caught cavorting with domestic servants.

Her parents’ divorce meant that Elisabeth divided her year between Darmstadt and her mother’s new home in Coburg. Elisabeth was at first mistrustful of her mother and resented the divorce, although Victoria-Melita did her best to mend her relationship with her daughter during her visit with Elisabeth in the spring of 1902. She was only partially successful, though Victoria enjoyed turning her daughter into an outstanding horsewoman.

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In his memoirs, Ernst said he had difficulty persuading Elisabeth to visit her mother. Before one visit, he found the child “whimpering under a sofa, full of despair.” He assured Elisabeth that her mother loved her too. “Mama says she loves me, but you do love me,” Elisabeth replied. Margaret Eagar thought the child’s eyes were the saddest she had ever seen. “Looking at her I used to wonder what those wide blue-grey eyes saw, to bring such a look of sadness to the childish face,” she wrote.

On October 6, 1903, Ernst hosted a large family gathering at Darmstadt for the wedding of his niece, Princess Alice of Battenberg, to Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, (parents of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh).

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A few weeks later he took Elisabeth to stay with his younger sister, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, her husband, Emperor Nicholas II, and their family. At the imperial family’s hunting lodge in Skierniewice, Poland, Elisabeth went on long walks and had picnics in the forest with her cousins.

Her nanny, who called Elisabeth “my baby,” woke Elisabeth in the middle of the night and settled her in a window seat of the nursery so that she might look out on the game spread out upon the grounds below.

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Grand Duke Ernst with his daughter Princess Elisabeth

One morning, the eight-year-old awoke with a sore throat and pains in her chest, which the Russian Court doctor put down to too much excitement with her cousins the previous day. Her fever rose to 104 degrees. The imperial party didn’t believe her illness was a serious one and went ahead with their plans for the day and attended the theater as planned. By the evening Elisabeth was in even more severe pain and had started gasping for breath. A specialist was summoned from Warsaw. The specialist gave her injections of caffeine and camphor to stimulate her slowing heart, but without success.

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“Suddenly she sat up in her bed and looked from one to the other of us with wide, frightened eyes,” wrote Eagar. “She cried out suddenly, ‘I’m dying! I’m dying!’ She was coaxed to lie down again, but remained agitated. “The child turned to me, and said anxiously, ‘Send a telegram to mama.'” Eagar promised it would be done. “She added, ‘immediately.’ … We continued to fan the feeble spark of life, but moment by moment it declined.

She began to talk to her cousins, and seemed to imagine she was playing with them. She asked for little Anastasie and I brought the wee thing into the room. The dying eyes rested on her for a moment, and Anastasie said, ‘Poor cousin Ella! Poor Princess Elizabeth!’ I took the baby out of the room.” Doctors told Alexandra that the child’s mother should be notified, but the telegram did not arrive until the following morning, when Elisabeth had already died. An autopsy following her death confirmed that she had died of virulent typhoid, although it was rumored she had eaten from a poisoned dish intended for the Emperor.

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Grand Duke Ernst with his daughter Princess Elisabeth

Elisabeth’s body was placed in a silver casket, a gift from Nicholas II, for the journey back to Darmstadt. Her father arranged a white funeral, with white instead of black for the funeral trappings, white flowers, and white horses for the procession. The Hessian people came out by the thousands to view the funeral procession and “sobbed in unison so that I could hear it,” Ernst wrote.

A cousin, German Emperor Wilhelm II, expressed shock at the child’s death in a letter to Emperor Nicholas II on the day after. “How joyous and merry she was that day at Wolfsgarten, when I was there, so full of life and fun and health … What a terrible heartrending blow for poor Ernie, who doted and adored that little enchantress!”

Elisabeth was buried in the Rosenhöhe with other members of the Hessian Grand Ducal family. A marble angel was later installed to watch over her grave. In a final gesture to Elisabeth and Ernst, Victoria Melita placed her badge of the Order of Hesse, granted to her upon her marriage, into Elisabeth’s coffin.

Ernst was still devastated by the memory of his daughter’s death thirty years later. “My little Elisabeth,” he wrote in his memoirs, “was the sunshine of my life.”

April 19-21, 1894: Royal Celebrations in Coburg, Germany.

21 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by liamfoley63 in Empire of Europe, Featured Royal, Royal Genealogy, royal wedding, This Day in Royal History

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Coburg Germany, Dagmar of Denmark, Emperor Alexander III of Russia, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, Grand Duke Ernst-Ludwig of Hesse and by Rhine, Princess Alix of Hesse by Rhine, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Royal Engagement, royal wedding, Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich of Russia, Victoria Melita of Edinburgh, Victoria Princess Royal

In April 1894, Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich of Russia joined his Uncle Sergei and Aunt Elisabeth (born a Princess of Hesse and By Rhine) on a journey to Coburg, Germany, for the wedding of Elisabeth’s and Alix’s brother, Ernst-Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and By Rhine to their mutual first cousin Princess Victoria-Melita of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

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Ernst-Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and By Rhine and Princess Victoria-Melita of Edinburgh

The wedding took place on April 19, 1894, at Schloss Ehrenburg. The match was actively encouraged by their mutual grandmother, Queen Victoria, who attended the wedding.

Other guests attended the wedding including Emperor Wilhelm II, the Empress Friedrich (Emperor Wilhelm’s mother and Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter), Nicholas’s uncle, the Prince of Wales, (future King Edward VII) and the bride’s parents, Prince Alfred and his wife Maria (daughter of Emperor Alexander II of Russia) the reigning Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Also at the wedding At the wedding, Ernst-Ludwig’s surviving sister, Princess Alix.

Once in Coburg Nicholas proposed to Alix, but she rejected his proposal, being reluctant to convert to Orthodoxy. But Emperor Wilhelm II later told her she had a duty to marry Nicholas and to convert, as her sister Elisabeth had voluntarily done in 1892.

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Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich of Russia and Princess Alix of Hesse and By Rhine

Thus Nicholas and Alix became officially engaged on April 20, 1894. Nicholas’s parents Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark) initially hesitated to give the engagement their blessing, as Alix had made poor impressions during her visits to Russia. However, they gave their consent only when they saw Emperor Alexander III’s health deteriorating.

On April 21, 1894 this famous picture of Queen Victoria and many royals was taken at Edinburgh Palais in Coburg during the wedding festivities. Despite this being the wedding of Ernst-Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and By Rhine and Princess Victoria-Melita of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the excitement of imminent match between Tsarevich Nicholas and Alix of Hesse and By Rhine threw those nuptial celebrations into the shade.

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Russian Connections: Part II.

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by liamfoley63 in Royal Genealogy

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Alfred Duke of Edinburgh, Emperors of Russia, Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, Queen Victoria, Russia, Victoria Melita of Edinburgh

In this post of examining the connections depicted in the book The Camera and the Tsars by Charlotte Zeepvat, I will look at how the Romanovs and the British Royal Family are connected. As I stated last week the only survivng daughter of Tsar Alexander II, Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia, married HRH Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Britain’s Queen Victoria.

HRH The Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha & Duke of Edinburg

Grand Duchess Marie at the time of her wedding, 1874.

The marriage between the two was not a happy one. I think you had two very strong personalities involved. The new Duchess of Edinburgh was not popular in Britain. She was seen as rather arrogant. The squabble with her mother-in-law on how she should be address may be evidence of that haughtiness. From her birth she was an Imperial Highness as the daughter of an Emperor. However, once she married her husband she was only entitled to the style Her Royal Highness. Her father was not helpful in this instance for he also supported that his daughter should be continued to be styled as an Imperial Highness and that she should have precedence over the Princess of Wales. This attitude outraged Queen Victoria. Marie, Duchess of Edinburgh had a difficult time accepting the fact that Princess of Wales had precedence over her, even though the Princess of Wales was the daughter of a mere King (Christian IX of Denmark) while she was the daughter of an Emperor of Russia. Marie seems to have been most content when in 1893 her husband succeeded his uncle, Ernst II, as the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Marie was eager to be out of England and as the daughter of a sovereign duke she would now outrank her sister-in-law.

Marie and Alfred had five children, one boy and four daughters (there was a still born son in 1879). I will briefly discuss the three eldest.

Hereditary Prince Alfred of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

The eldest son, Alfred (1874-1899), became the Hereditary Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha upon his father’s accession to the Ducal throne. He does not seem to have had a happy life. In 1995 his engagement to HRH Princess Elsa Matilda Marie of Württemberg, elder twin daughter of the late Duke Wilhelm Eugene of Württemberg and his wife Grand Duchess Vera Constantinovna of Russia. Vera was a first cousin to Marie and the grand daughter of Tsar Nicolas I of Russia. The marriage between young Alfred (called Affie) and Princess Elsa never happened and in 1899 suffering from syphilis and sever depression Alfred shot himself on his parents silver wedding anniversary. He survived the initial gun shot but died three days later at the Martinnsbrunn Sanatorium in Gratsch near Meran in the South Tyrol. He was only 24 years old.

HRH Princess Marie of Edinburgh, Princess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

The next child was Marie (1875-1938) who at one point was thought of being a suitable candidate to marry the future King George V of Great Britain. The fathers of the prospective couple favored the match, Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh and Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, while the mothers, Alexandra, Princess of Wales and Marie, the Duchess of Edinburgh did not. Marie did not care for the British Royal Family and Alexandra hated Germans because of how they defeated Denmark in an unjust war in 1864. Marie eventually married Ferdinand, King of Romania a member of the Catholic branch of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen line.

HRH Princess Victoria Melita of Edinburgh, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine with her daughter, Elizabeth

The next daughter, Victoria-Melita, called Ducky within the family, was first married to her paternal first cousin, Ernst-Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. They had one daughter Elizabeth, who died in 1903 from typhoid after drinking from a contaminated stream two years after her parents divorce. They were only able to divorce after the death of Queen Victoria who did not support their divorce. Ducky had known her second husband, her maternal first cousin, Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich of Russia, for a long time but Kirill’s mother did not support the match. After a close call where Grand Duke Cyril almost lost his life in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 decided to marry Ducky. The couple were married on 8 October 1905 in Tegernsee with few family members in attendance. The marriage outraged Tsar Nicolas II and Tsarina Alexandra of Russia. The primary issues with the marriage was that Cyril and Ducky were first cousins and the Russian Orthodox Church forbade marriages between first cousins.

However the real reason the marriage was controversial and angered the Tsar and Tsarina was that Ducky’s first husband was the brother of Tsarina Alexandra of Russia. The Tsarina did not like her former sister-in-law and first cousin and she greatly disapproved of the marriage. For his behavior Nicholas II had his cousin Cyril stripped of his title of Grand Duke and his style His Imperial Highness and all other royal orders and his position in the Russian Navy and was banished from Russia. In 1908 when his Cyril’s uncle, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia died he became third in line to the Russian throne behind the Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, eldest son of Nicholas II, and Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, the Tsar’s brother. Cyril was restored to all his former titles and styles and welcomed back to Russia. His wife was given the title Grand Duchess of Russia and was styled as Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Viktoria Feodorovna. 

HRH Dowager Grand Duchess Maire of Saxe-Coburgh-Gotha & Dowager Duchess of Edinburgh shortly before her death. 

Now back to Marie. Her husband died July 30, 1900 from throat cancer. Since their younger son Affie had died the previous year this left a vacancy for the throne of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The Duke’s older brother was the Prince of Wales and he had already renounced his place in the succession in order for Alfred to succeed. After Alfred came his next brother, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and his son, also called Prince Arthur, and both of these individuals renounced their claims. The succession finally went to Charles Edward, Duke of Albany the son of Queen Victoria’s youngest son, Prince Leopold who died from hemophilia in 1884.

Marie remained in Coburg even during the first World War in which she became increasingly pro-German. She did not live long past the war. Even though she was pro-German and the wife of a German sovereign she was still treated with contempt. At one point on her way home from a meeting with the Red Cross her car, containing her and her two young daughters, was stopped when a mob recognized her and despised her for her Russian heritage. It took the police over an hour to extricate her safely from the situation. After that incident she went to live in exile in Switzerland where she died on October 24 at the age of 67.

I do feel bad for Marie despite her poor reputation. I have read that was not all of who she could be. It is said that she truly had a kind heart and George V was said to have been fond of her. She lost her German titles at the end of the war and with the revolution in Russia she lost her Imperial titles as well. The only titles she held was that of HRH The Dowager Duchess of Edinburgh from a country that she never considered home.

Pretenders ~ Russia Part II

29 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by liamfoley63 in From the Emperor's Desk

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Czar Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra, Grand Duke Cyril, Grand Duke Valadimir, Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, Pretenders, Queen Victoria, Russian, Victoria Melita of Edinburgh

Nicholas II of Russia in the uniform of the Life-Guards 4th The

Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich of Russia was son of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, the third son of Czar Alexander II and Maria Alexandrovna of Hesse-Darmstadt, and his wife, Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In the summer of 1922 Grand Duke Cyril declared himself “Curator of the Russian Throne,” a made up title to represent his claim to the Russian throne. In 1924 Cyril finally assumed the title Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias. Though he was the heir by primogeniture his claim to the throne was met with opposition because at his birth his mother was a Lutheran and not yet a member of the Russian Orthodox Church and this was a violation of the Pauline House Laws which stated all those in order of succession had to marry members of the Russian Orthodox Church. Since Russia followed suit of nearly every European royal family during the 18th and 19th centuries of selecting brides from the vast array of German royalty and upper nobility this issue was usually resolved with the perspective bride converting to Russian Orthodoxy prior to their marriage.

The controversy and the actions that questioned Cyril’s right to claim the throne came with his controversial marriage in 1905 to his first cousin, HRH Princes Victoria Melita of Edinburgh, Princess of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. She was a grand daughter of Queen Victoria through her second son, HRH Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1892-1900) and his wife HIH Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, daughter of Czar Alexander II and Maria Alexandrovna of Hesse-Darmstadt.

One of the primary issues with the marriage was that Cyril and Victoria Melita were first cousins and the Russian Orthodox Church forbade marriages between first cousins. But what made the marriage more controversial is that prior to her marriage to Grand Duke Cyril, Victoria Melita was married, and then divorced, from HRH Grand Duke Ernst August of Hesse and by Rhine, who also was the brother of Czarina Alexandra of Russia, wife of Czar Nicholas II. The Czarina did not like her former sister-in-law and first cousin and she greatly disapproved of the marriage. For his behavior Czar Nicholas II had his cousin Cyril stripped of his title of Grand Duke and his style His Imperial Highness and all other royal orders and his position in the Russian Navy and was banished from Russia.

Cyril’s position changed in 1908 when his uncle, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia died and he became third in line to the Russian throne behind the Czarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, eldest son of Nicholas II, and Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, the Czar’s brother. Cyril was restored to all his former titles and styles and welcomed back to Russia. His wife was given the title Grand Duchess of Russia and was styled as Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Viktoria Feodorovna. Those that did not recognize the marriage as legal, although the Czar eventually did, accepted another of the Czar’s cousins, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, as the true claimant to the throne after the downfall of the monarchy.

Grand Duke Cyril and his wife had three children: Grand Duchess Maria Kirillovna of Russia (1907-1951) who married, Prince Friedrich Karl of Leiningen, Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna (1909-1967) who married, HIH Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, heir to the thrones of Imperial Germany and Prussia. Their last child was Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich of Russia (1917-1992). In 1938 Grand Duke Cyril died at the age of 62 and his son took over the claims to the throne of Russia.

Part III will discuss the challenges to Grand Duke Vladimir claims to the throne and the emergence of other pretenders.

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