FeaturesHistoryInsight

Queen Victoria: Her life through her hair

Hair works like a symbolic thread throughout a person’s life history. For Queen Victoria, this was no exception. Indeed, for a royal personage, hair plays a massive part in ceremonial display and formal dressing as well as private ritual. The role of royal hairdresser is also one that enables exceptional intimacy, thereby an indication of great privilege. Today we can visit Queen Victoria’s…
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FeaturesHistoryInsightRoyal Weddings

Is this the best royal wedding dress of all?

We’ve just had another royal silver wedding anniversary although the couple involved is so discreet, it’s perhaps not a surprise that it’s passed pretty much under the radar. Lady Sarah Chatto, niece of the Queen, celebrated twenty five years of marriage with husband, Daniel, on July 14th 2019. And that gives us a great excuse to take another look at her wedding dress. For this…
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European RoyalsFeaturesHistoryInsightSpain

Taking a look at Zarzuela Palace

Today we’re looking at the history of the Palace of Zarzuela, which is the home of King Felipe, his wife, Queen Letizia, and their two daughters, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía; as well as King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía. Construction began on Zarzuela Palace back in the 1600s, though the then-King Felipe IV meant for it to function as a hunting lodge or country palace instead of an…
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FeaturesHistoryInsight

Two Empresses: Two Widows

In 1888, a year whose numbering Queen Victoria thought odd (‘Never can it be written again!’), her daughter, the Princess Royal and Crown Princess of Prussia, had become German Empress, prompting the proud words from her mother: ‘My OWN dear Empress Victoria… may God…
FeaturesHistoryInsight

A King's last journey

Frederick II, accorded the epithet ‘the Great’ already during his own lifetime, had in fact, a whole other life after death, aside from his legacy. The great King’s legend stalks the eighteenth century like a gigantic historic shadow, much as the oversize silhouette of him prowls the terrace at his beloved refuge of Sanssouci, the palace he built for himself at Potsdam, as portrayed by the…
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