The use of nicknames or epithets to describe a royal or a local ruler was quite common until recent times. Before pictures were easily accessed, or in places where the first name was repeatedly used for consecutive rulers, a nickname was a useful way to distinguish one person from another. Sometimes these names were chosen by the bearer themselves, sometimes they were gained through a courageous…
Norway’s present collection of royal regalia consists of nine pieces. They include three crowns – the king’s crown, the queen’s crown and the crown prince’s crown. However, this was made in 1818 for the coronation of King Karl XVI Johan. Norway had at…
On this
day, March 27, in 1785, His Majesty King Louis XVII was borne in France. He was
born prince of France and Duke of Normandy and was the son of King Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette. When his older brother, Louis Joseph, died in June 1789, he became
the heir to the…
The fact that Europe’s queens and princesses have good relationships with each other is well known. But it’s more perhaps more unusual to hear about friendships between Europe’s royals and Russian politicians. et this was exactly what happened when Queen Sonja first met the first democratically elected leader of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. The free-spirited former Communist managed to…
On this day 64 years ago: The Queen Mother's devastating bellyflop at the Grand National
24th March 2020
March 24 marks exactly 64 years since The Queen Mother suffered one of the cruelest defeats in the history of sport when her horse bellyflopped at the finishing line of the Grand National.
Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, was a huge horse racing lover, with it being…
As the last Emperor of Russia, Tsar Nicholas II’s twenty-three-year reign came to an abrupt end when he abdicated on 15 March 1917. Those tumultuous years of his reign were defined by the Russo-Japanese War that saw the annihilation of the Russian Baltic Fleet, Bloody…
It was a royal wedding for the history books, the marriage of a future king and a regal love match to boot. On this day in 1929, Olav of Norway married Martha of Sweden in Oslo. The couple’s romance had captured the public imagination while their rather glamourous wedding brought huge crowds to the streets of the Norwegian capital. Let’s rewind nine decades and remember the wedding…
While the coronavirus continues to spread, we can rewind a little over a hundred years in time. In 1918 and 1919, another virus as ravaged countries across the globe. It caused widespread devastation but, despite its origins, it became known as Spanish flu because of a much…
While most of our “Last Queens” series focuses on consorts, this particular last queen was a reigning monarch. Liliuokalani was the only queen regnant and the last monarch of Hawaii before the Hawaiian kingdom was overthrown. It became the shortlived Republic of…
The life and times of the 18th Duchess of Alba, who had more titles than Queen Elizabeth II
2nd March 2020
The 18th Duchess of Alba, María del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva, was born on 28 March 1926 at the vast Liria Palace, which has served as the Madrid residence of the Dukes of Albas for generations (most of the home was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War and was rebuilt by the Duchess’s father and the Duchess).
The Fitz-James Stuarts, the most powerful aristocratic…
