In the end, this was a royal wedding all about the special bond between a grandmother and granddaughter. As Princess Beatrice married Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, she wore a gown that had once belonged to her granny and the tiara that the Queen had chosen for her own wedding over seven decades before. But this wasn’t a one way street of tributes. For the Queen made some rather lovely nods to her…
It’s become one of the big questions in the run up to a royal marriage – which tiara will the bride wear? It’s now an accepted part of any Windsor wedding and the decision of Princess Beatrice to wear the same tiara as her grandmother did as a bride for her…
In the run up to this royal wedding, there was as much speculation about the guest list as there was about the bridal gown. As Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, only daughter of Princess Margaret and her former husband, Antony, Earl of Snowdon, prepared to marry Daniel Chatto, the…
On a summer’s day in 1818, a young German princess walked into one of the most famous hotels in London to meet a man twice her age. Just a year earlier, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen and her suitor, William, Duke of Clarence, would never have considered chatting let alone taking the step that would inevitably follow this brief exchange. But after a short time together, with chaperones, of…
Lady Jane Grey, or Lady Jane Dudley, was proclaimed Queen on this day in 1553. She has been commonly referred to as The Nine Days Queen. She was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII through his daughter Mary, Queen of France. From 10 July to the 19 July, she was the de facto…
Starting 23 July, guests can once again tour Royal Collection Trust castles, palaces, and galleries as Windsor Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, The Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace, and TheQueen’s Galleries in London and Edinburgh re-open to the public.
The…
A chance listing on the Public Catalogue Foundation Art UK, for an oil on canvas painting (35.8 x 30.7 cm) said to be of Russia’s last Empress, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, when she was Princess Alix of Hesse (1872-1918) led me to investigate this extraordinary artwork further. Because in the many years I had researched on Princess Alix, I had never seen anything like it. It does not resemble…
Archduchess Mathilde of Austria was born in 1849 as the daughter of Archduke Albert, Duke of Teschen and his wife, Princess Hildegard of Bavaria. She grew up in a wealthy and charming home with a kind family. During the summer, the family spent their time at the Weilburg…
They were an unexpected king and queen and their royal romance has weathered several storms but today King Albert II and Queen Paola of Belgium will mark their sixty first wedding anniversary. The couple, who married on July 2nd 1959 in Brussels, now live quietly following…
If ever a royal wedding dress summed up its wearer, it was the gown chosen by Sophie Rhys-Jones for her marriage to Prince Edward on 19 June 1999 at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Subtle, elegant and classic, this was the final Windsor bridal dress of the 20th century and it saw in a new era with style.
Sophie and Edward’s big day might have been a modern marriage but it had an air of the…
