Showing posts with label obituaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obituaries. Show all posts

Thursday, 15 November 2018

At the road's end: Count Oscar Bernadotte af Wisborg (1921-2018)

The second oldest member of the extended Swedish royal family, Count Oscar Bernadotte af Wisborg, died on 3 November, aged 97.
Generally known as "Oscis", Count Oscar Carl Emanuel Bernadotte af Wisborg was the third child born to Count Carl Bernadotte af Wisborg in his first marriage to Baroness Marianne de Geer af Leufsta, and thus a grandson of Prince Oscar Bernadotte, the second son of King Oscar II of Sweden and of Norway, who lost his rights of succession when he married his sister-in-law's former lady-in-waiting in 1888. Count Oscar was thereby a second cousin of King Carl XVI Gustaf's father as well as of King Harald V of Norway, Kings Baudouin I and Albert II of the Belgians and the late Queen Ingrid of Denmark.
His mother was the heir to the de Geers' estate, Frötuna near Norrtälje, but after she divorced Count Carl and married Marcus Wallenberg, one of Sweden's richest men, Carl ran the estate on Oscar's behalf. This was where Crown Princess Märtha of Norway and her three children were in hiding for nearly two weeks after the German invasion of Norway in April 1940.
Count Oscar Bernadotte served in the Swedish navy, but later took over the running of Frötuna, which is now run by his only son, Carl. In 1944, Count Oscar married Baroness Ebba Gyllenkrook, with whom he had a daughter, but the marriage ended in divorce. He later married the dentist Gertrud Ollén, who died in 1999, who bore him a son and two daughters. In his eighties Oscar Bernadotte found love again in the person of the art historian Margot Ekelund, who had first been his girlfriend when they were both twenty. They remained a couple until her death in October last year.
I had the pleasure of meeting Count Oscar Bernadotte af Wisborg on three occasions and remember him as a very friendly and rather straight-forward old gentleman with a keen interest in his family's history. Like many Bernadottes (including his older sister, Dagmar von Arbin, who is now 102), he remained sprightly and active into old age and he had just returned from a trip to France when he fell ill and was taken to the Academic Hospital in Uppsala, where he died. His funeral will take place in Rasbo Church on 2 December.

Monday, 16 July 2018

At the road’s end: Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma (1926-2018), war hero and businessman

Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma, who died on 7 July, aged 92, was a close relative of many of Europe’s royal families and a decorated hero of the Second World War.
Born in Paris on 4 March 1926, he was the son of Prince René of Bourbon-Parma (son of the last reigning Duke of Parma) and Princess Margrethe of Denmark (daughter of Prince Valdemar). His mother was a first cousin of Kings Christian X of Denmark, Haakon VII of Norway, George V of Britain and Konstantinos I of the Hellenes, while his father’s 23 (!) siblings included Empress Zita of Austria-Hungary and Félix, the consort of Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg. His sister, Anne, married ex-King Mihai I of Romania, while his second wife, Maria Pia, was the daughter of the last King of Italy, Umberto II.
During the Second World War, the family fled to the USA, where Princess Margrethe ran a hat store in New York (and was a close friend and companion of the exiled Crown Princess Märtha of Norway). Aged 17, Prince Michel joined the US army and trained to become a paratrooper. He took part in the allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944 and thereafter in the Pacific war, where he was taken captive by the Vietcong and held for a year before escaping. He detailed his wartime deeds in the memoir Faldskærmsjæger: Fra den franske maquis til Indo-Kinas jungle, which was published in Danish and Norwegian in 1949. (A French edition, Un prince dans la tourmente, appeared in 2001).
In recognition of his wartime service, France awarded Prince Michel the Legion of Honour and the War Cross, as well as a funeral with military honours, which was held at Les Invalides in Paris last Friday. The Grand Duke of Luxembourg was among the mourners.
In 1951, Prince Michel married Princess Yolande de Broglie-Revel, who bore him five children. The couple divorced in 1999, and five years later, Prince Michel married his long-time partner, Princess Maria Pia of Savoy.

Wednesday, 20 June 2018

At the road's end: Princess Elisabeth of Denmark (1935-2018)

The Danish royal court has announced that Princess Elisabeth, a first cousin of Queen Margrethe II, passed away at 6.15 p.m. yesterday, at the age of 83.
Her Highness Princess Elisabeth Caroline-Mathilde Alexandrine Helena Olga Thyra Feodora Estrid Margrethe Désirée of Denmark was born on 8 May 1935 as the first-born child of Hereditary Prince Knud (the youngest son of King Christian X) and Hereditary Princess Caroline-Mathilde (a first cousin of her husband). She later had two brothers, Ingolf and Christian, but this line of the family was "disinherited" in 1953, when a new Act of Succession introduced female succession and Princess Margrethe replaced her uncle Knud as heir to the throne, causing some bitterness within the family. At the time of her death, Princess Elisabeth was twelfth in the order of succession.
The Princess made a career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she worked from 1956 until her retirement in 2001. For twenty years she lived with the film director Claus Hermansen, but the ever outspoken Princess explained that they never married as she did not want to lose her royal title and did not want children anyway.
The Princess' funeral will take place in Lyngby Church (the date has not yet been announced) and her ashes will be buried next to Claus Hermansen, who died in 1997.
I will write a longer obituary of the Princess in a forthcoming issue of Majesty.

Tuesday, 5 December 2017

At the road's end: Ex-King Mihai I of Romania (1921-2017)

The last King of Romania, Mihai I, died in his home in Aubonne, Switzerland at noon Central European Time today, aged 96.
Born on 25 October 1921, ex-King Mihai was the longest living king in history and the last surviving adult head of state from the Second World War.
Mihai I became King as far back as in 1927, following the death of his grandfather, Ferdinand I. He was deposed by his father, Carol II, in 1930, but again became King after Carol's abdication in 1940. Romania at first sided with the Axis powers, but King Mihai played a key role in toppling the Fascist dictator Antonescu and switching to the Allied side in 1944. In December 1947, he was forced to abdicate while being held at gunpoint by the Communists.
My obituary of the former King will appear in the next issue of Majesty.

Tuesday, 11 April 2017

At the road's end: Baron Niclas Silfverschiöld (1934-2017), landowner and royal brother-in-law

The court of Stockholm has announced the death of King Carl Gustaf's brother-in-law, Baron Niclas Silfverschiöld, the husband of Princess Désirée, at the age of 82. Princess Désirée was at his side.
The son of Baron Carl-Otto Silfverschiöld and his wife Madeleine Bennich, Baron Nils-August Otto Carl Niclas Silfverschiöld was born on 31 May 1934. He married Princess Désirée, the third of the present King's four elder sisters, in the Cathedral of Stockholm on 5 June 1964 and had three children: Carl, Christina and Hélène.
The couple kept a very low profile and rarely figured in the press. In recent years Niclas Silfverschiöld suffered from cancer and therefore missed several royal family events. The couple lived at Koberg Palace near Sollebrunn in Västergötland, a 40-room-palace surrounded by 20 000 acres of land which had come into the noble Silfverschiöld family through female inheritance in 1776. King Carl Gustaf as well as the King of Norway have been regular visitors to Koberg during the shooting season.
In a statement released by the royal court, King Carl Gustaf says that he and the rest of the royal family have received the news of Niclas Silfverschiöld's passing with deep grief and their thoughts are with Princess Désirée and her family.
Niclas Silfverschiöld's death comes thirteen months after the death of Princess Birgitta's husband, Prince Johann Georg of Hohenzollern, while Princess Margaretha's estranged husband, John Ambler, passed away in 2008. The fourth sister, Princess Christina, who is battling leukemia, remains married to Tord Magnuson.

Sunday, 16 October 2016

At the road's end: Haakon Haraldsen (1921-2016), businessman and the Queen's brother

After much ado, the foundation stone of the new Munch Museum in Oslo was finally laid on Friday by the Crown Princess, assisted by the Mayor of Oslo, Marianne Borgen. The ceremony was originally scheduled to be performed by the King, but the Crown Princess stepped in as the King was attending the funeral of his brother-in-law Haakon Haraldsen, who died on 4 October at the age of 95.
Haakon Haraldsen was born on 22 September 1921 as the first of the four children of businessman Karl A. Haraldsen and his wife Dagny, née Ulrichsen. His brother Karl Herman disappeared in a boating accident in 1936, while his sister Gry commited suicide in 1970, meaning that the Queen is now the only survivor of the siblings.
In 1957, Haakon Haraldsen married a Dane, Lis Elder, with whom he had three children, Karl-Otto, Lis and Marianne. He earned his living as a businessman and like the rest of his family (except his former step-granddaughter Pia) he kept a very low profile although he was of course present as most royal family events until a few years ago. He was one of the godparents of his niece Princess Märtha Louise, who was born on his fiftieth birthday.
His funeral took place at Holmenkollen Chapel in Oslo and was attended by the King and Queen, the Crown Prince, Princess Märtha Louise and Princess Astrid.

Tuesday, 13 September 2016

At the road's end: Countess Gunnila Bernadotte af Wisborg (1923-2016)

The Swedish royal court has just announced that the King's aunt by marriage, Countess Gunnila Bernadotte af Wisborg, widow of the late former Prince Carl Johan, died yesterday. She was 93.
She was born Countess Gunnila Märta Louise Wachtmeister af Johannishus on 12 May 1923, the daughter of Count Nils Wachtmeister af Johannishus, who was Master of the Horse at the royal court, and his wife Märtha, née Baroness de Geer af Leufsta. Her paternal grandfather, Count Fredrik Wachtmeister, had a distinguished public career and was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the autumn of 1905, which gave him a crucial role in the dissolution of the personal union between Sweden and Norway. Her mother's sister Marianne was the first wife of Count Carl Bernadotte af Wisborg, the eldest son of Prince Oscar Bernadotte.
On 31 October 1942, Gunnila married Carl-Herman "Bibo" Bussler, who became managing director of the Swedish branch of British Petroleum. They had four children: Louise (1943-1986), Catharina (1946-1946), Madeleine (born 1948) and Carl-Fredrik, always known as Fred (born 1951). Bussler died on 29 June 1981, but some years later Gunnila found a new love in Count Carl Johan Bernadotte, the youngest son of King Gustaf VI Adolf, who had forfeited his royal rights and titles when he married the journalist Kerstin Wijkmark in 1946. Gunnila and Carl Johan had known each other practically all their lives, he told me when I interviewed him in 2004 and related how he had found his own signature in the guest book at Tistad Palace from 1930, when he was at boarding school with her eldest brother Claes. During their first marriages they moved in the same social circles and the two couples were good friends. He described Gunnila's first husband as "a very charming man".
Gunnila Bussler and Carl Johan Bernadotte married on 29 September 1988 in Copenhagen, a wedding hosted by his sister Queen Ingrid. It was by all accounts a very happy marriage and although they married late in life they almost made it to their silver wedding. In a statement today, King Carl Gustaf says that Gunnila was "much appreciated, [a] close and loyal friend in our family and will be greatly missed by us".
Carl Johan and Gunnila Bernadotte lived in a small villa in the hills above Båstad in Skåne, on Sweden's southwest coast, but after his death on 5 May 2012 she moved to an apartment downtown (as she could not drive a car she found it impossible to keep living outside town). In recent years she had health troubles and lived in a nursing home in Båstad. I believe she was last seen at a royal event when Princess Leonore was christened in June 2014.
On a personal note I found Countess Gunnila Bernadotte a friendly lady with a quiet dignity and discretion. In an undemonstrative way, hers and Carl Johan Bernadotte's love for each other was obvious.

Wednesday, 2 March 2016

At the road's end: Prince Johann Georg of Hohenzollern (1932-2016), art historian

The Swedish royal court today announced that Prince Johann Georg of Hohenzollern, the husband of King Carl Gustaf's second oldest sister, Princess Birgitta, died in a hospital in Munich today. Prince Johann Georg, who was himself a renowned art historian, was 83 and had apparently been suffering from cancer for some years.
Born on 31 July 1932, Johann Georg Carl Leopold Eitel-Friedrich Meinrad Maria Hubertus Michael Prinz von Hohenzollern was the sixth child of Prince (Fürst) Friedrich of Hohenzollern and Princess Margarete of Saxony, a daughter of that country's last King. Prince Johann Georg, who was known as "Hansi", studied art history and gained a doctorate on a dissertation on the royal galleries on the facades of French cathedrals in 1964.
From 1986 to 1991 he served as director general of the Bavarian National Museum before becoming head of the Bavarian State Collection of Paintings, a post he held until his retirement in 1998.
On 25 May 1961, Prince Johann Georg married Princess Birgitta of Sweden in a civil ceremony at the Royal Palace in Stockholm. A religious blessing took place in his hometown Sigmaringen five days later. The Vatican had opposed a Protestant ceremony in Stockholm and the bride had to sign a promise to raise the children as Catholics, which she has never ceased resenting.
Three children were born of the marriage - Carl Christian in 1962, Désirée in 1963 and Hubertus in 1966, but when the children moved out, the parents realised they had little in common, and in 1990 Princess Birgitta moved to Majorca, while Prince Johann Georg remained in Munich. However, the couple never formally separated and the Princess used to visit her husband in Munich once a month and vented his anger in public when he appeared in the press with another partner.

Saturday, 16 January 2016

At the road’s end: Princess Ashraf of Iran (1919-2016)

On Thursday, the funeral of a now mostly forgotten but once highly visible royal took place in Monaco. Princess Ashraf of Iran, who died on 7 January, was the twin sister of the last Shah, is thought to have wielded great influence during his reign, was a prominent advocate of women’s right and made a career at the UN.
Born five hours after her twin brother Mohammed Reza on 26 October 1919, Princess Ashraf considered their bond ‘the strongest sense of family that I would ever know’. The two of them ‘were like faces in a mirror’, she wrote in her autobiography, which was titled just that: Faces in a Mirror: Memoirs from Exile (1980).
When their father, Reza Shah, was forced to abdicate and sent into exile in Johannesburg in 1941, Princess Ashraf was the only family member who stayed behind in Teheran with the new young Shah. The Princess would play an important political role throughout his reign. In 1946, she was sent to Russia to negotiate with Stalin, who allegedly told her that is her brother “had ten like you, he would have no worries at all”. She also played a role in the downfall of one prime minister and the appointment of at least another.
However, she saw an enemy in the charismatic left-wing politician Mohammad Mosaddegh, who ordered her into exile on the very day he became Prime Minister in 1951. Two years later, the Princess was approached by agents of Britain and the USA, who had decided to remove Mosaddegh, and played a key role in convincing her brother to go along with the coup which removed Mosaddegh and restored the Shah’s power.
Princess Ashraf was closely involved in social issues and in particular in women’s rights. She headed the Women’s Organisation of Iran, whose greatest success was a 1975 act which ‘gave Iran’s women the most sweeping civil rights in the Islamic Middle East’. For seven years she headed Iran’s delegation to the UN general assembly and also served on several UN committees, including the preparatory committee for the International Women Year’s Conference in Mexico in 1975.
The Princess’s high profile made her a controversial figure and the subject of many rumours about her financial and romantic affairs. Having been forced by her father at the age of seventeen to marry Ali Qavam, to whom she claimed to have taken an instant dislike, she divorced him after her father’s abdication. They had one son, Shahram. Her second husband was the Egyptian businessman Ahmad Shafiq, with whom she had a son, Shahriar, and a daughter, Azadeh. The marriage was dissolved in 1960, and Princess Ashraf married Mehdi Bushehri. The Princess and her third husband would eventually lead separate lives but it seems they never formally divorced.
In 1977, Princess Ashraf survived an assassination attempt, but the following year the Shah advised her to leave Iran. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Princess Ashraf was included in the Khomeini regime’s death list and her son Shahriar was assassinated while carrying groceries into his sister’s apartment in Paris in December 1979. Her only daughter died from leukemia in 2001.
Princess Ashraf eventually faded from public view, but always remained fiercely protective of her twin brother’s regime and an apologist for its crimes.
A longer obituary by my hand will appear in the March issue of Majesty, which will be on sale in a month.

Wednesday, 30 September 2015

At the road's end: Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia (1939-2015), historian

A spokeswoman for the former royal house of Prussia has announced that the historian Prince Friedrich Wilhelm died yesterday, following a lengthy illness. The eldest uncle of the head of the dynasty was 76 years old.
The eldest son of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia and his wife, née Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia, Louis Ferdinand Friedrich Wilhelm Hubertus Michael Kyrill Prinz von Preussen was born on 9 February 1939. At that time his great-grandfather, ex-Emperor Wilhelm II, was still living in exile in the Netherlands, but the headship of the royal house eventually passed to Friedrich Wilhelm's father. As the eldest son, Friedrich Wilhelm was first in line to succeed to the headship, but he forfeited his rights when he made an unapproved marriage with the commoner Waltraut Freydag in 1967. As his next brother, Michael, who died last year, also lost his rights through marriage, the headship of the royal house passed to their nephew Prince Georg Friedrich, son of the third brother, who had been killed in an accident in 1977. The issue of inheritance caused a protracted legal battle.
Prince Friedrich Wilhelm studied at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and obtained a doctorate in history in 1971. He was however accused of having plagiarised a substantial part of his dissertation and was stripped of the doctorate in 1973. Eventually he obtained a new doctorate from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, this time on the topic of the Hohenzollern dynasty's relations to Nazism.
His first marriage was dissolved in 1971, and in 1976 he married Ehrengard von eden. That marraige was also dissolved in 2004, and later that year he married his third wife, Sibylle Kretschmer. He had one son from his first marriage and two sons and a daughter from the second.
For Prince Georg Friedrich, this is the second death in the family in little more than three weeks, following the death of his mother, Duchess Donata of Oldenburg, on 5 September.

Saturday, 24 January 2015

At the road's end: Johan Martin Ferner (1927-2015), businessman and royal husband

The business man Johan Martin Ferner, Princess Astrid's husband, passed away at the age of 87 at the National Hospital in Oslo at 5.25 this morning, the royal court has announced. Ferner was the most anonymous member of the royal family and during his 54 years as the Princess's husband he was the very essence of discretion and loyalty.
Born in Oslo on 22 July 1927, Johan Martin Jacobsen was the third and youngest child of Ferner Jacobsen and his wife Ragnhild Olsen. In November of the same year, the children adopted their father's first name as their last name. His father ran a men's clothing store, Ferner Jacobsen A/S, founded in 1926 and still in existence in Parliament Street in Oslo. Johan Martin studied at London Polytechnic Institute, Bradford Technical College and the University of Lyon and worked at Harrods and Austin Reed in London before joining his father's company, where he worked his way up through the ranks until taking over the company jointly with his older brother Finn Christian on their father's death in 1964.
Johan Martin Ferner was a keen yachtsman and won a silver medal at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952. The previous year he had for the first time gone sailing with Princesses Ragnhild and Astrid, and they remained part of each other's social circle. In 1953, Ferner married a friend of the princesses, Ingeborg "Bitte" Hesselberg-Meyer (1931-1997), but the marriage was dissolved in 1956. Ferner's and Princess Astrid's friendship gradually evolved into love, but it would be several years before King Olav gave his permission for them to marry. When writing my biography of her, Princess Astrid told me that after her elder sister had married a commoner she was convinced that it would not be possible for her too to do the same, and the fact that Ferner was a divorcé obviously complicated the matters (this was about the same time as Princess Margaret of Britain had to give up her relationship with the divorcé Peter Townsend). Attempts were made to stop the relationship, but eventually the King gave in.
The storm that broke out when the engagement was announced on 13 November 1960 was considered the worst the royal family had so far experienced and contained many of the same arguments that would come up again when the Princess's nephew married a single mother in 2001. Two members of Parliament's presidium boycotted the congratulatory visit to the Palace, while the Christian newspaper Vårt Land declared itself in mourning and thundered against the Princess and her choice of husband. The wedding was set for Asker Church, the parish church near the royal estate Skaugum, but the parish council refused to allow the marriage to be celebrated there. It was only after the King had appealed to the Church Ministry that the decision was overturned. The Bishop of Oslo was unwilling to marry divorces, but the more liberal Bishop of Nidaros, Arne Fjellbu, agreed to do so. The couple were eventually married on 12 January 1961 in the presence of royal guests from Denmark, Sweden, Luxembourg and Britain.
Johan Martin Ferner and Princess Astrid, Mrs Ferner, as she was now styled, settled in a villa on Oslo's west side and had five children between 1962 and 1972: Cathrine, Benedikte, Alexander, Elisabeth and Carl-Christian. Until 1968 the Princess, despite ill health, combined her role as wife and mother with that of first lady of the realm and she had continued to take on many royal duties also after her brother's marriage meant that her sister-in-law Sonja tok over as first lady. Johan Martin Ferner kept a very low profile and did not carry out any public engagements, only occasionally accompanying his wife to major events. I believe the interview he gave to Aftenposten on the occasion of his seventieth birthday in 1997 was the only interview he ever gave. Instead he focused his attention on the family business, which was eventually taken over by his son Carl-Christian and his nephew Christian, but until recently Johan Martin Ferner still paid regular visits to the store.
King Harald made his brother-in-law a Commander of the Order of St Olav shortly after the couple's golden wedding anniversary in 2011. By then the 84-year-old Johan Martin Ferner had given up on attending evening events and was only occasionally seen at royal events. His last public appearance was the wedding of his youngest son to Anna-Stina Slattum Karlsen on 4 October 2014.

Friday, 23 January 2015

At the road's end: King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (1924?-2015)

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was hospitalised with pneumonia several weeks ago, died at 1 a.m. local time today, it has been announced. The King was believed to be 90 years old. Under the Saudi succession rules, which means that the crown passes between the many sons of the country's founder, King Abdul Aziz (Ibn Saud), King Abdullah is succeeded by his half-brother Salman, who is believed to be 79 years old and in indifferent health.
King Abdullah came to the throne upon the death of his older half-brother King Fahd in August 2005, but had by then already been the country's actual ruler since King Fahd suffered a serious stroke ten years previously. In a Saudi context, King Abdullah, who was very popular with his people, was seen as a moderate and a reformer, who gave for instance the media and women more freedom, but as an absolute monarch he presided over one of the world's most barbaric regimes.
King Abdullah outlived two crown princes, Sultan, who died in 2011, and Nayef, who passed away in 2012, before appointing Salman Crown Prince. For good measure, he appointed another half brother, Muqrin, Deputy Crown Prince last year.
Muqrin, now Crown Prince, is a mere 69, but the youngest son of Ibn Saud, meaning that the shift to the next generations - the grandsons - will probably occur after him.
The death of King Abdullah makes Queen Elizabeth II of Britain the world's oldest monarch.

Thursday, 1 January 2015

At the road's end: The 8th Duke of Wellington (1915-2014)

Ever since the 1st Duke of Wellington was one of the victors in the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815 it has been a tradition that the current Duke of Wellington goes to Windsor Castle on the anniversary of the battle to present the British monarch with a French flag as a token rent for the estate the 1st Duke was granted by the nation in recognition of his victory over Emperor Napoléon I of the French. It would have been wonderful if the 8th Duke of Wellington, who was born two weeks after the centenary of the battle, had been able to present the flag to Queen Elizabeth II on the bicentenary this year, but sadly he died on the last day of 2014, aged 99.
The son of the diplomat and architect Lord Gerald Wellesley, Arthur Valerian Wellesley was born in Rome on 2 July 1915 and was quite naturally named for his great ancestor. However, he was at that time not expected to succeed to the dukedom, but the death of his childless cousin Henry, the 6th Duke, from wounds received in action in Italy in 1943, made his father the 7th Duke and himself the heir apparent to the dukedom, which he inherited - together with a number of other British, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese titles, including Prince of Waterloo, on the death of his father in 1972.
The 8th Duke was a career soldier, who served in the Middle East and Italy during the Second World War and was awarded the Military Cross in 1941. He retired from the British army in 1968 with the rank of brigadier. He was made a Knight of the Garter in 1990.
During the war he married Diana McConnel, who worked in military intelligence, in Jerusalem on 28 January 1944. The Duchess died in 2010. The couple had five children, of whom the eldest, Charles, a former MEP who is married to Princess Antonia of Prussia, succeeds to his father's titles (although it is customary in Britain that the heir to a title does not start using it until after the funeral of the previous holder). Their only daughter, Lady Jane Wellesley, is a TV producer, was at one stage advocated by Lord Mountbatten as a possible bride for King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, but a certain Silvia Sommerlath came in the way of what might have been a grand alliance between the descendants of two of the victors of the Napoleonic Wars.
The 8th Duke of Wellington was last seen in public when he and Lady Jane attended the memorial service for Lady Soames, Winston Churchill's daughter, in Westminster Abbey on 20 November 2014.

Saturday, 6 December 2014

At the road's end: Queen Fabiola of the Belgians (1928-2014)

Queen Fabiola of the Belgians has, as previously mentioned, died in her home in Brussels on Friday evening. The 86-year-old widow of King Baudouin I was known for her diligent work for the benefit of the less fortunate, but recently came under heavy fire for her inheritance arrangements.
Born Fabiola Fernanda María de las Victorias Antonia Adelaida de Mora y Aragón in Madrid on 11 June 1928, was the sixth of the seven children of Gonzalo de Mora y Fernández, Marquess of Casa Riera and Count of Mora and Blanca de Aragón y Carrillo de Albornoz, who were of fairly recent nobility but owned significant estates and were closely connected to the Spanish court. Indeed Queen Victoria Eugenia was Fabiola's godmother.
Fabiola spent parts of her childhood in exile, as her parents in 1931 chose to follow King Alfonso XIII's example and flee the country after the republican election victory. The family lived in France and Switzerland for two years before returning to Spain, but fled again when the Civil War broke out. It was only after Franco's victory in 1939 that the family settled permanently in Spain.
Fabiola trained as a nurse and worked in a poorhouse in Madrid. She also wrote twelve children's stories, which obviously sold very well in Belgium when they were translated and published there after she became Queen.
That happened on 15 December 1960, when Fabiola wed King Baudouin I in Brussels's Cathedral and put a smile on the face of the man who had until then been known as "the sad king".
As Queen, Fabiola was particularly involved with social issues, physical disabilities, mental health, education and children with learning difficulties. Sadly the couple proved unable to have any children of their own, but the marriage was by all accounts a very happy one.
King Baudouin, whose health was not strong, died suddenly from a heart attack while holidaying in Spain on 31 July 1993, and many will recall the dignity shown by Queen Fabiola as she, dressed entirely in white, followed his coffin to his last resting place.
Queen Fabiola was only 65 when she was widowed and she continued to play an active part for many years and remained a fixture at royal events. In 2013 she was heavily criticised for setting up a private foundation which would allow her to bequeath money to her Spanish relatives and charities without paying inheritance tax. Although this was perfectly legal it did not sit will with the public at a time of financial trouble.
In recent years Queen Fabiola was increasingly weakend by osteoporosis and by the autumn of 2012 she was in a wheelchair. She attended the inauguration of her nephew Philippe as King on 21 July 2013, but the memorial service for King Baudouin on the twentieth anniversary of his death ten days later turned out to be her last public appearance.
In recent months she had suffered from respiratory problems and been confined to her home, Stuyvenberg Palace, where she died on Friday at the age of 86.
A more detailed obituary by me will appear in the February issue of the British monthly magazine Majesty, which will be on sale at the end of January, as the announcement of her death came just after the January issue had been sent to the printers.

Saturday, 8 November 2014

At the road's end: Princess Kristine Bernadotte (1932-2014)

At 3 p.m. today a memorial service will take place in the Norwegian Sailors' Church in Calahonda in Spain for the King's aunt, Princess Kristine Bernadotte, who died suddenly in her home in Benalmádena on Tuesday, aged 82. The Princess rarely missed out on a family event in Norway and was in Oslo as a guest at the wedding of Princess Astrid's son Carl-Christian Ferner as recently as last month.
Kristine Rivelsrud was born in Eidsfoss in Vestfold, south of Oslo, on 22 April 1932. In 1960 she was hired as a secretary by Prince Carl Bernadotte, who had moved to Spain following his aquittal for his involvement in the so-called Huseby scandal two years previously. After he divorced his second wife in 1962, Kristine Rivelsrud was promoted to life partner, but it was not until 8 June 1978 that the couple married at the Swedish Embassy in Rabat in Morocco.
Prince Carl Bernadotte, né His Royal Highness Prince Carl (Junior) of Sweden, Duke of Ostrogothia was the only son of Prince Carl and Princess Ingeborg of Sweden, and as such the younger brother of Crown Princess Märtha of Norway, Queen Astrid of the Belgians and Princess Margaretha of Denmark. He forfeited his rights to the Swedish throne when he married a commoner, Countess Elsa von Rosen, in 1937, but received the title Prince Bernadotte (of the Belgian nobility) by his brother-in-law, King Léopold III of the Belgians. Thus Kristine Rivelsrud became a princess by marriage, and she was also listed last among the members of the Swedish royal family on the Swedish royal website.
However, she did not have much contact with the Swedish royal family, although King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia attended Prince Carl Bernadotte's 90th birthday in Oslo in January 2001 and his funeral in Danderyd in July 2003 and she was invited to the opening of an exhibition on the life of her sister-in-law Queen Astrid at the Royal Palace in Stockholm in 2005.
On the other hand she had a very close relationship with the Norwegian royal family, perhaps in particular with Princess Astrid (her exact contemporary). Prince Carl and Princess Kristine Bernadotte always spent Christmas with the Norwegian royal family until Prince Carl's declining health made the journey from Spain impossible, but after his death in June 2003 Princess Kristine returned as an annual Christmas guest. She was also very close to her brother, the hotelier Jan E. Rivelsrud, and his family, and enjoyed a good relationship with her stepdaughter Madeleine Kogevinas.
Princess Kristine Bernadotte looked rather grand, but she was in fact a very nice and likeable down-to-earth lady with a well-developed sense of humour.
Princess Kristine Bernadotte's funeral will take place (the date is yet to be announced) in the small Palace Church at Drottningholm Palace outside Stockholm, which was recently the venue for Princess Leonore's christening. She will be laid to rest in the Royal Burial Ground at Haga in the same grave as her husband and his parents.

Tuesday, 16 September 2014

At the road's end: Prince Nicholas Romanov (1922-2014), head of the Romanov Family Assocation

It has been reported that Prince Nicholas Romanov, the head of the Romanov Family Assocation, died on Monday, shortly before his 92nd birthday. A great-great-grandson of Emperor Nikolay I of Russia, Nicholas Romanov was the eldest son of Prince Roman Petrovich of Russia and Countess Praskovia Sheremeteva.
Born on 26 September 1922, he grew up in France and Italy, where he actively opposed the Fascist regime during the Second World War. He eventually acquired Italian citizenship and married an Italian, Countess Sveva della Gherardesca, in 1951. The couple had three daughters.
Nicholas Romanov worked as a businessman and farmer, eventually settling in Switzerland. He paid his first visit to Russia in 1992, the year after the fall of the Soviet Union.
In 1979 he was co-founder of the Romanov Family Assocation, which organises male-line descendants of the House of Romanov. Nicholas Romanov was vice president from its founding until he succeeded Prince Vasili Alexandrovich in 1989.
Under the rules in force when Russia was a monarchy Nicholas Romanov, being born of an unequal marriage, would have had no succession rights. However, the Romanov Family Assocation has, if I understand it correctly, claimed that these rules have been so to speak suspended since the execution of the last Emperor in 1918, claiming that the rights of the princes who contracted unequal marriages were not renounced as there was no emperor to demand their renuncations.
Nicholas Romanov's claim to head the Romanovs was disputed by Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who assumed the headship of the imperial family upon the death of her father Vladimir Kirillovich in 1992, claiming that there were no male dynasts left.

Monday, 24 March 2014

At the road’s end: Adolfo Suárez (1932-2014), Spain’s first democratically elected PM

“My grief is great. My gratitude is ever-lasting”, said King Juan Carlos I of Spain in a televised speech last night after the death at the age of 81 of Adolfo Suárez, the country’s first democractically elected Prime Minister, who partnered the King in the transition of Spain into a democracy following the end of the Franco dicatorship.
Born on 25 September 1932, Adolfo Suárez González studied law and came to hold several high posts in the Francoist government and the Francoist party, the National Movement. He came to know Prince Juan Carlos while he worked in the state broadcasting company TVE, whose general director he became in 1969, the same year as the Prince was appointed Franco’s successor.
Following Franco’s death and Juan Carlos’s accession to the throne in November 1975, the King made the bold move of appointing Suárez Prime Minister in July 1976. The appointment of a moderate member of the Francoist party caused anger both to the left and the right of the political spectre, but Suárez managed to find a way that made room for reforms without provoking a military reaction from Francoist hardliners.
A democratic general election in June 1977 was won by his centrist alliance, the Union of the Democratic Centre. The transition continued with the introduction of a democractic Constitution, passed by both houses of parliament in October 1978 and in a referendum the following December.
Suárez won another general election in March 1979, but in the ordinary circumstances that now reigned Suárez distanced himself from everyday politics and rarely appeared in Parliament.
He was, however, present in Parliament on 23 February 1981, a month after his resignation as Prime Minister, when the chamber was stormed by armed soldiers in a military coup that failed, and drew admiration as one of only three MPs who refused to obey the putschists’ order to lie down on the floor and remained in his seat.
The year after his resignation, Suárez formed a new parti, the Democractic and Social Centre, but won only two seats in Parliament in the next election. He retired from politics in 1991. During the past decade he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and was, according to his son, unable to remember that he had been Prime Minister.
King Juan Carlos showered honours over the man who led Spain’s transition to a democracy. He received the Grand Cross of the Order of Carlos III in 1978 and was created Duke of Suárez and a Grandee of Spain upon his resignation in 1981. In 2007 he was made a Knight of the ancient Order of the Golden Fleece and was posthumously awareded the Grand Cross Collar of the Order of Carlos III when King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofía and Princess Elena paid their respects at his lying-in-state in the Parliament building in Madrid earlier today.

Sunday, 9 March 2014

Three deaths in the British royal cousinage

It is quite rare for Queen Elizabeth II of Britain to attend funerals, but on Friday she was present at the funeral of her cousin, Lady Mary Clayton. She was one of three relatives of the British royal family who have died recently.
Lady Mary Cecilia Clayton, who died on 13 February at the age of 96, was the daughter of the late Queen Mother's elder sister, Rose, and her husband William Spencer Leveson-Gower, 4th Earl Granville. She was born on 12 December 1917. In 1956 she married Samuel Clayton, with whom she had a son, Gilbert, and a daughter, Rose. Lady Mary Clayton was one of the trusted relatives who were authorised to give interviews to authors and documentary makers, but had by the time of her death not been seen in several years. Her funeral was held in the Royal Chapel of All Saints in Windsor Great Park, near the Royal Lodge, on Friday 7 March. Among the mourners were Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the Countess of Wessex and Princess Beatrice.
Another first cousin of Queen Elizabeth, Katharine Bowes-Lyon, died on 23 February at the age of 87. Born on 4 July 1926, Katharine Juliet Bowes-Lyon was the fifth and youngest daughter of the Queen Mother's elder brother, Hon John Bowes-Lyon, and his wife Fenella, née Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis. Like her sister Nerissa, who died in 1986, Katharine was mentally disabled and was eventually confined to a mental hospital. In 1963 their mother listed both sisters as dead in Burke's Peerage, which caused some headlines when it was revealed that they were still alive. Their sister, Princess Anne of Denmark, would visit them occasionally, but other relatives seem to have genuinely believed that they were indeed dead.
The concert pianist Marion Thorpe, who died on 6 March at the age of 87, was first married to Queen Elizabeth's first cousin, the late 7th Earl of Harewood, and secondly to Jeremy Thorpe, leader of the Liberal Party. Born Maria Donata Nanetta Paulina Gustava Erwina Wilhelmine Stein on 18 October 1926, she was an Austrian Jew who fled to Britain after the German takeover in 1938. In 1949 she married George Lascelles, Earl of Harewood, the eldest son of Princess Mary of Britain and then eleventh in line to the British throne, with whom she had three sons before divorcing in 1967. Lord and Lady Harewood were both lovers of classical music and the Countess was co-founder of the Leeds International Piano Competition, which was first held in 1963, and co-authored a successful series of piano tutor books. In 1973 she married the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe, but rarely appeared in public after the 1979 trial in which Thorpe was charged with, but acquitted of conspiring to murder an alleged lover.

Friday, 3 January 2014

At the road’s end: Countess Anne Dorte of Rosenborg (1947-2014)

It was announced today that Countess Anne Dorte of Rosenborg, the widow of the former Prince Christian of Denmark, passed away last night at the age of 66. The Countess, who had been suffering from cancer for a long time, died at Gentofte Hospital outside Copenhagen at 8 p.m.
The daughter of Villy Maltoft-Nielsen and Bodil Jakobsen, Anne Dorte Maltoft-Nielsen was born in Copenhagen on 3 October 1947. On 27 February 1971 she married Prince Christian of Denmark, the second son of Hereditary Prince Knud (the younger brother of King Frederik IX), who had been heir presumptive to the Danish throne until a change to the Act of Succession in 1953 deprived him of that position and gave it to the current Queen Margrethe II, causing bad blood between the two family branches until the death of the Hereditary Prince in 1976.
As King Frederik IX did not give his consent to his nephew’s marriage to Anne Dorte Maltoft-Nielsen, Prince Christian forfeited his place in the order of succession and was stripped of his royal title. Instead, King Frederik created Christian and Anne Dorte Count and Countess of Rosenborg, a title which, since 1914, had traditionally been given to princes who lost their rights of succession through marriage.
In 1972 Count Christian and Countess Anne Dorte became the parents of twin daughters, Camilla and Josephine. A third daughter, Feodora, completed the family in 1975.
The family lived in ordinary houses in Frederikssund and Holte, but in later years the Count and Countess lived in a house adjacent to Sorgenfri Palace in Kongens Lyngby just outside Copenhagen, a palace which has been uninhabited since the death of Christian’s mother, Hereditary Princess Caroline-Mathilde, in 1995. By her own account the Countess enjoyed a happy marriage, and Count Christian would teasingly tell the press that he referred to his wife as “Stampemor” (roughly, “Stompie”) because of her habit of stomping her foot when she was angry with him.
Although they did not belong to the royal house, Count Christian and Countess Anne Dorte were usually on the guest list for all major Danish royal occasions. Their open and friendly attitude to the media also meant that they were well-known to the Danish public and generally well-liked by the press.
Some years ago, Count Christian and Countess Anne Dorte, both life-long smokers, were both diagnosed with cancer of the throat, but while the Count was believed to have recovered, other health issues added to the Countess’s plight. Last spring Countess Anne Dorte was expected to have only a short time left to live, but it came as a surprise to everyone when Count Christian, who had hidden the fact that his cancer had returned, passed away on 21 May.
Recently the Countess’s condition was said to have improved and she was able to celebrate Christmas with her family at Sorgenfri, but after Christmas her condition deteriorated and she was admitted to the nearby Gentofte Hospital. Yesterday the family, including her sister-in-law, Princess Elisabeth, was summoned to the hospital, where Countess Anne Dorte calmly bid them farewell and made the final arrangements for her funeral.
The funeral will take place in Lyngby Church in Kongens Lyngby on Thursday 9 January at 10.30 a.m. Following cremation, her ashes will be buried next to her husband in the cemetery adjacent to Lyngby Church.

Monday, 12 August 2013

At the road’s end: Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau (1968-2013), by birth Prince of the Netherlands

The Dutch court has just announced the death of Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau, King Willem-Alexander’s younger brother, at the age of 44. The Prince had been in a coma since he suffered severe brain damage after being buried by an avalanche while skiing off piste in Lech, Austria in February 2012.
Prince Johan Friso Bernhard Christiaan David of the Netherlands, as he then was, was born in Utrecht on 25 September 1968. He was the second of the three sons born to the then Princess Beatrix and Prince Claus within two and a half years. His mother ascended the throne in 1980, but abdicated on 30 April this year.
Prince Johan Friso studied mechanical engineering at Berkeley and in Utrecht, and obtained a MSc in economics from Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He thereafter embarked on a career in business, working for in Amsterdam and London. He did not carry out official engagements on behalf of the royal family.
On 30 June 2003 Prince Johan Friso announced his engagement to Mabel Wisse Smit. They married in Delft on 24 April 2004, which cost the groom the title of Prince of the Netherlands and his rights of succession to the throne as it had emerged that Mabel Wisse Smit had lied to the government about her relationship with a drugs baron. The government therefore decided not to seek Parliament’s approval for the marriage, which was necessary for the groom to maintain his position. However, Queen Beatrix allowed him to retain the subsidary, dynastic title of Prince of Orange-Nassau and he was still ranked as the second son of the monarch. At the same time he dropped the name Johan, choosing to be known as Prince Friso.
Prince Friso and Princess Mabel had two daughters, countesses Luana and Zaria of Orange-Nassau, born in 2005 and 2006 respectively. The family lived in London, and it was to the Wellington Hospital in that city that Prince Friso was flown after his accident. In November of that year it was announced that he was showing signs of minimal awareness and in July this year he was moved to his mother’s home, the Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague, as he was no longer needed hospital care. It was there that he passed away this morning.