All About Royal Families

9 February 1846 marks the birth of Prince Leopold of Bavaria. This took place in Munich.  Family Prince Leopold of Bavaria was the son of Prince Regent Luitipold of Bavaria  and Archduchess Auguste Ferdinande of Austria. In the army Prince Leopold entered the Bavarian Army at the age of 15, and received his patent as a lieutenant dated 28 November 1861. He saw first combat during the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, where he commanded an artillery battery at Kissingen and Rossbrunn. In 1870, King Ludwig II of Bavaria sent Leopold to the battlefields of France, where the Bavarian Army was fighting alongside the Prussian Army in the Franco-Prussian War. He served with the 3rd Bavarian Artillery Regiment and saw action at Sedan and Beauvert. He was promoted to major in December 1870. For his bravery against the enemy he received both the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Classes, the Bavarian Military Merit Order Knight 1st Class, the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Max Joseph, Bavaria'...

Princess Marie was born in London on 26 November 1875 as the daughter of Prince Alfred Emmanuel de Croÿ and his wife Elizabeth Mary Parnell.  She was thus a member of the House of Croÿ .  Duty When the First World War broke out in 1914, the princess was visiting a friend, Violet Cavendish-Bentinck, at the home of her mother, Mrs Louisa Scott; she immediately set out for France. She worked as a nurse, at the family home of Chateau de Bellignies, which was in use as a hospital and assisted Edith Cavell in helping allied servicemen to escape to Britain via the Netherlands.  For this she was arrested in 1915 along with Nurse Cavell and a number of others, but escaped the death penalty. At their trial in October, she asked for clemency for her fellow prisoners, claiming that she and her brother were solely responsible. She was condemned to ten years' hard labour, and sent to a prison at Siegburg in Germany.  The Kaiser, Wilhelm II , offered to free her, but she declined b...

Recently I read a splendid book "My Queen, My Love: A Novel of Henrietta Maria" written by Elena Maria Vidal about Henrietta Maria of France. Who was she? Who was this French princess who became Queen of England?  So, time to make up another Royal History post. Family Henrietta Maria was born on 25 November 1609 in the Louvre Palace in Paris.  Her parents were Henry IV of France and Marie de' Medici. She was thus a member of the House of Bourbon. Of course Henriette Maria had other siblings. Among them were  King Louis XIII of France and Elisabeth, who became Queen of Spain. Henrietta Maria was trained, along with her sisters, in riding, dancing, and singing, and took part in court plays. Although tutored in reading and writing, she was not known for her academic skills.  As part of her religious training, the princess was heavily influenced by the Carmelites at the French court.  By 1622, Henrietta Maria was living in Paris with a household of some...

This is a blog post at a special request. Eleonor of Aquitaine was perhaps the most famous queen in the Middle Ages.  But who was she?  On 1 April 1204 at the age of about 82, Eleanor of Aquitaine died at Poitiers. Who was Eleanor of Aquitaine? Family Eleanor's year of birth is not known precisely: a late 13th-century genealogy of her family listing her as 13 years old in the spring of 1137 provides the best evidence that Eleanor was perhaps born as late as 1124. Eleanor (or Aliénor) was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, whose glittering ducal court was renowned in early 12th-century Europe, and his wife, Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimery I, Viscount of Châtellerault, and Dangereuse de l'Isle Bouchard, who was William IX's longtime mistress as well as Eleanor's maternal grandmother. Her parents' marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather William IX. Her family were members of the House of Ramnulfid...

How it started Franz Ferdinand became heir presumptive of the throne in 1889 after the suicide of his cousin Crown Prince Rudolf and after the death of his father Karl Ludwig in 1896. This gave him a great deal of trouble, for he could not marry the woman he loved: Sophie, Countess of Chotek. Her family was not of dynastic rank.Franz Ferdinand refused to renounce Sophie to marry. A marriage In 1899, under pressure from family members (especially the Archduchess Maria Theresa, the emperor's formidable sister-in-law and Franz Ferdinand's stepmother) the couple were granted permission to wed.  Franz Ferdinand was allowed to retain his place in the order of succession and a suitable title was promised for his future wife. However, to prevent Franz Ferdinand from attempting to proclaim his wife empress-queen or declaring their future children dynasts and thus eligible to inherit the crown (especially that of Hungary, where morganatic marriages were unknown to law) once he ascended t...