For Queen Victoria, the number fourteen held a terrible power. This date, the ‘14th’, could seem to haunt the Queen like the shadow of death. Much as she later tried to reclaim it as a sacred date, she beheld it with an almost mystical sense of dark fascination and dread. Her feelings for this day of the month were well founded and can be traced back to the date of the death of her beloved…
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…
In Berlin, there is a missing queen. Her burial place in the historic Hohenzollerngruft [Hohenzollern vault] in Berlin Cathedral is disputed and may be lost. Elisabeth Christine, Frederick II’s (‘the Great’) unloved queen was a victim of historical banishment, in…
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 SofÃa; as well as King Juan Carlos and Queen SofÃa.
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…
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…
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…
Emanuela Orlandi – the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican clerk – went missing in 1983 when she failed to return home after a music lesson in Rome. The search for her continues to this day and her family recently received an anonymous letter saying that her body could be buried in the Teutonic cemetery, which is a burial ground just inside the Vatican’s walls.
The two tombs that…
After the First World War, several of Europe’s monarchies fell, and among them were the German and Austrian-Hungarian Empires. While many of the royalty in these countries fled to other countries to live their lives in exile, others chose to remain in their country of…
A fond tradition arose in the lifetime of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, Queen Victoria’s two-time Prime Minister, namely that of his receiving flowers, often primroses from the Queen. To Disraeli, Queen Victoria was the ‘Faery’ – his endearing name for his…
Buckingham Palace has confirmed that a man was detained in the early hours of this morning in Buckingham Palace’s forecourt.
The 22-year-old man is believed to have climbed over the fence from the Buckingham Palace Road side of the building; he was arrested just a few minutes later, according to the BBC.
He did, however, have a chance to begin banging on the doors of the royal residence as…
