All About Royal Families

23 March 1887 marks the birth of Prince Felix Yusupov. He was born at Moika Palace in Saint Petersburg. Family His father was Count Felix Felixovich Sumarokov-Elston, the son of Count Felix Nikolaievich Sumarokov-Elston. Zinaida Yusupova, his mother, was the last of the Yusupov line, of Tatar origin, and very wealthy.  For the Yusupov name not to die out, his father (1856, Saint Petersburg – 1928, Rome, Italy) was granted the title and the surname of his wife, Princess Zinaida Yusupova, on 11 June 1885, a year after their marriage, but effective after the death of his father-in-law in 1891. The Yusupov family, one of the richest families in Imperial Russia, had acquired their wealth generations earlier. It included four palaces in Saint Petersburg, three palaces in Moscow, 37 estates in different parts of Russia, on the Crimea (at Koreiz, Kökköz and Balaklava), coal and iron-ore mines, plants and factories, flour mills and oil fields on the Caspian Sea.  Youth Felix led a flam...

Victoria, Princess of Sweden, Duchess of Västergötland (Victoria Ingrid Alice Désirée) was born 14 July 1977 at Karolinska Hospital, Solna, Sweden. The Swedish  royal court has released a picture on this link .   Sweden is located in Northern Europe, it borders Norway to the west and the north, Finland in the east and Denmark in the south.  visit from the Indian President to Sweden (2015) Family Victoria is the oldest child of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. She is a member of the House of Bernadotte . Born as a princess of Sweden, she was designated crown princess in 1979 ahead of her younger brother. Her place as first in the line of succession formally went into effect on 1 January 1980 with the parliamentary change to the Act of Succession that introduced absolute primogeniture. 👉  Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden is a great-great-great granddaughter of  Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom through Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught an...

Elizabeth II's first tiara was a wedding present in 1947 from her grandmother, Queen Mary , who received it as a gift from the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland in 1893 on the occasion of her marriage to the Duke of York, later George V. Made by E. Wolfe & Co., it was purchased from Garrard & Co. by a committee organised by Lady Eve Greville. In 1914, Mary adapted the tiara to take 13 diamonds in place of the large oriental pearls surmounting the tiara. Leslie Field, author of The Queen's Jewels, described it as, "a festoon-and-scroll with nine large oriental pearls on diamond spikes and set on a base of alternate round and lozenge collets between two plain bands of diamonds".  At first, Elizabeth wore the tiara without its base and pearls but the base was reattached in 1969.  The Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara is one of Elizabeth's most recognisable pieces of jewellery due to its widespread appearance in portraits of the monarch on British bank...

Margaret Rhodes (née Elphinstone; 9 June 1925 – 25 November 2016) was a British aristocrat and a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. From 1991 to 2002,she served as Woman of the Bedchamber to her aunt Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Childhood Born Margaret Elphinstone in Westminster, London, Rhodes was the youngest daughter of the 16th Lord Elphinstone and his wife, Lady Mary Bowes-Lyon, an elder sister of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Less than a year older than the future queen, she was a frequent playmate of the young Princess Elizabeth. During the Second World War she lived at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, and took a secretarial course. On 20 November 1947, she was a bridesmaid to Princess Elizabeth at her wedding to Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh. Duty During World War II, she worked as a secretary for MI6. She was a Woman of the Bedchamber – a mix of lady-in-waiting and companion – to her aunt, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, from 1991 until the latter'...

During the platinum jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, a lot of new books are issued, which is a delight for us royalty watchers and bloggers. One of the newest is The Queen - 70 Glorious years. About the book This is an official souvenir publication of the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and issued by the Royal Collection Trust.  Through photographs the book illustrates the most memorable events in the reign of Britain's longest serving monarch.  It is like browsing in a beautiful family album. The book is divided in clear chapters as: - early life; - iconic portraits; - the role of the monarch; - traveling in the kingdom and the commonwealth; - the day job; - family; and milestones. The Queen 70 glorious years is issued on 3 February 2022 and it is a wonderful item to have in my royal book collection.  See more at the royal Collection shop on this link . 

On 5 February 1972 , Mary Elisabeth Donaldson was born in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.  Source picture: Hasse Nielsen Family Mary was born the youngest of four children to Scottish parents, Henrietta (née Horne), an executive assistant to the vice-chancellor of the University of Tasmania, and  John Dalgleish Donaldson, a mathematics  professor Her paternal grandfather was Captain Peter Donaldson (1911–1978). Mary was named after her grandmothers, Mary Dalgleish and Elizabeth Gibson Melrose, and was born and raised in Hobart, Australia.  Mary has two older sisters, Jane Stephens and Patricia Bailey, and an older brother, John Stuart Donaldson. Her mother died from complications following heart surgery on 20 November 1997 when Mary was 25. In 2001, her father married the British author and novelist Susan Horwood. Education In 1974, Donaldson started schooling in Clear Lake City Elementary School in Houston, Texas, where her father was working and moved to Sandy Ba...

Abdullah was born on 30 January 1962 at Palestine Hospital in Amman, to King Hussein and Hussein's British-born second wife, Princess Muna Al-Hussein (born Antoinette Avril Gardiner). He is the namesake of his paternal great-grandfather, Abdullah I, who founded modern Jordan. King Hussein and his wife Queen Muna Family Abdullah's dynasty, the Hashemites, ruled Mecca for over 700 years—from the 10th century until the House of Saud conquered Mecca in 1925—and have ruled Jordan since 1921. The Hashemites are the oldest ruling dynasty in the Muslim world.  According to family tradition, Abdullah is the 41st-generation agnatic descendant of Muhammad's daughter Fatimah and her husband, Ali, the fourth Rashidun caliph. As Hussein's eldest son, Abdullah became heir apparent to the Jordanian throne under the 1952 constitution.Political instability caused King Hussein to appoint an adult heir in his place, choosing Abdullah's uncle Prince Hassan in 1965. Abdullah has four bro...

Catherine Elizabeth Middleton was born at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading  on 9 January 1982 into an upper-middle-class family. She was baptised at St Andrew's Bradfield, a local parish church, on 20 June 1982. Here you can see a part of the interior of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's home: Kensington Palace in London Family She is the eldest of three children born to Michael Middleton (b. 1949) and his wife, Carole (née Goldsmith; b. 1955),a former flight dispatcher and flight attendant, respectively, who in 1987 founded Party Pieces, a privately held mail order company that sells party supplies and decorations with an estimated worth of £30 million. By the early 20th century, the Middleton family had married into the British aristocracy and benefited financially from trust funds which they established over 100 years ago. Her Middleton relatives, including her great-grandmother Olive Middleton , played host to members of the British royal family in the 1920s and 1...