Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria

by Julia P. Gelardi

  In this, Alfonso was not alone. One of Maria Cristina’s contemporaries said that she “never lets you forget that she is Queen.” The widowed regent also gained the nickname “Doña Virtudes, meant as a compliment by some, a sneer by others.”17 What, then, would Maria Cristina be like as a mother-in-law? Would she prove as caring to her daughter-in-law as she had been to her own children, or was there to be more of the unsympathetic demeanor so visible to the public?

  As the pretty Missy of Edinburgh grew into a lovely young woman, her admirers multiplied. One turned out to be none other than Princess Maud’s brother, Missy’s highly eligible and favorite cousin, Prince George of Wales. The future King George V’s infatuation with the adolescent Marie grew from the time spent with his Edinburgh cousins while he was stationed at Malta with the Royal Navy during the 1880s.

  Always a welcome guest at the Maltese home of his uncle and aunt, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, George of Wales spent many hours by Missy’s side. A mutual attraction took hold. George, then in his early twenties, was smitten with the attractive teenager, ten years his junior. Though a frequent companion to both Missy and her sister, Ducky, George did not hide his preference for the fair-haired elder sister. Whenever they went for rides to watch the spectacular sunsets over the island, it was Missy, not Ducky, who sat next to George in the carriage. It was not long before Missy sensed her older cousin’s feelings.

  On one occasion, after being scolded for some minor offense, the teenaged Missy, sobbing her eyes out, sought the consoling arms of Prince George. George gently embraced his young cousin and offered her his sympathy. “Poor dear little Missy,” he whispered in her ear as her mass of golden hair cascaded about his arms. “Poor dear little Miss,” murmured George tenderly. Never averse to being the center of attention, the teenager savored the encounter. It was at that moment that poor little Missy learned “how very sweet the big, grown-up cousin could be!”18

  Far from dimming, as time and distance might normally have been expected to do, George’s infatuation grew as Missy neared marriageable age. Her sparkling blue eyes and silky fair hair, framing delicate features, haunted his thoughts as the prince sailed the seas. Because of his duties, George was away at sea for months, meaning that the only way he could let Missy know of his feelings was through letters. Early in 1891, the lovesick George penned his devotion to his “darling Missy,” explaining that “it is nearly 9 months since I have seen you now, but you are constantly in my thoughts.” It ended with the prince beseeching Missy not to “forget your most loving and devoted old Georgie.”19

  This was a union very much to the liking of George’s father, the Prince of Wales, as well as Missy’s father, the Duke of Edinburgh. George’s hopes, however, were cruelly dashed. Hampered in his pursuit by major obstacles—his physical absence and the implacable opposition of two stubborn mothers—George was saddened to find that he could not fight two formidable opponents to the marriage.

  As George’s love letters arrived, the Duchess of Edinburgh watched her daughter like a hawk. Her fierce opposition to the match doomed any plans for marriage between the two infatuated cousins. Like the Princess of Wales, who refused to countenance any of her daughters marrying Germans, Marie prevented her daughters from marrying British princes. Thus did the duchess destroy all chance of her daughter becoming the wife of the future King George V.

  Unhappy with the sentimental letters her nephew was penning to Missy, Marie convinced the dutiful Missy to tell George that a marriage between them was impossible. As instructed, Missy then wrote to tell George that instead of becoming her husband, he must remain her “beloved chum.”20 It was a bitter blow to Prince George, who had waited patiently for years for his Missy to grow up. His reward was within reach when it was cruelly snatched from his arms.

  Though their relationship did not end in engagement and marriage, Missy and George remained on very good terms. Well into the 1920s Missy still kept a crystal ball given to her by George from his courting days. And whenever she handled it, an enigmatic smile lit up her face. In fact, some of Missy’s fondest memories were of the times she spent with Prince George in Malta. After living in Romania for several years, she wrote to George in 1901, confessing that “the brightest times I ever had were these Malta days.”21

  Had Missy accepted George, she might well have been Queen Consort of England instead of Queen Consort of Romania. The thought undoubtedly haunted George and Missy’s grandmother when she admitted, not long after Missy’s marriage, that “Georgie lost Missy by waiting & waiting.”22

  This episode galvanized the Duchess of Edinburgh into action. With a beautiful daughter on the brink of womanhood, Marie knew that she had to act quickly in order to avert another unsuitable romance. Ever the ambitious mother, Marie had her sights set on a glittering future for her eldest daughter. Though the British throne was not to Marie’s liking, the Romanian throne was another matter. Fortunately for the ambitious mother, King Carol I of Romania was also on the prowl for an ideal wife for his nephew and heir, Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania, who was nursing a broken heart after an unsuitable romance. Before Missy realized it, and before Ferdinand embroiled himself in another objectional romance, the machinations of King Carol and the Duchess of Edinburgh would work to unite the destinies of these two young people.

  Romania’s current ruler was the former Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who had been chosen to take over the reins of power in 1866. The senior branch of this dynasty had provided rulers for Prussia. And now a strong, united Germany was ruled by the same Hohenzollern family with Missy’s pompous and bombastic cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, at its head. A lifelong admirer of his own dynasty and Teutonic heritage, Karl nevertheless threw himself wholeheartedly into his role as leader of Romania. After successfully leading a combined Romanian and Russian contingent to victory against the Turks at Plevna in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, Prince Karl became Romania’s first king in 1881, taking the name Carol I.

  Like his uncle, King Carol, Prince Ferdinand (“Nando”) belonged to the same junior, Catholic branch of the Hohenzollern family, the Sigmaringens. As his marriage was childless, Carol chose a nephew, Ferdinand, as his heir in 1889. All was calm in Bucharest until Ferdinand embroiled himself in an unsuitable romance. This scandal was the catalyst that sent Nando in Missy’s direction. King Carol and the Duchess of Edinburgh arranged for the couple to meet in Germany.

  Dressed in a mauve gown adorned with an orchid, Missy sat next to Nando at a gala dinner. They conversed in German and Missy found him shy but amiable. Their next meeting in Munich was just as agreeable. Masking his shyness again through laughter, Nando aroused in Missy a desire to put him at ease, while her beauty and feminine charms worked their wonders on the young prince.

  At twenty-six, Ferdinand was ten years older than Missy. Bookish, mild-mannered, inclined toward intellectual pursuits, Nando, who had dark brown hair and eyes, might have been considered handsome except for large ears that tended to protrude and a long, straight nose, characteristic of the House of Hohenzollern. In character, they differed tremendously. Where she was outgoing, Ferdinand was introverted. Missy admitted that during these days it was “his extraordinary timidity…[that]gave you a longing to put him at his ease, to make him comfortable; it aroused your motherly feelings, in fact you wanted to help him.” These were not exactly words of passion, but for the innocent sixteen-year-old it was enough to prompt her to accept his marriage proposal—a proposal prompted by the Kaiser, Missy’s mother, and Charly Kaiser Wilhelm and Sophie of Greece’s sister. As a close friend of the Duchess of Edinburgh, Charly became a frequent visitor to Coburg. Missy was at first a great admirer, but that soon changed to disappointment and anger. Charly, recalled Missy, was “capable of lifelong friendships, of generosity and even of abnegation, [yet] she was for all that, one of the most fickle and changeable women I have ever had to deal with.”23

  Taken aback by news of the betrothal, Queen Victoria admitted that “the
Verlobung [engagement] of Ferdinand has given her [Queen Elisabeth of Romania] a shock but she is not ill-disposed towards poor little Missy”24 Queen Elisabeth’s acceptance of Missy was surprising, considering the part she played in inflaming passions between Ferdinand and an unsuitable commoner. Ever the romantic, Carol’s wife Elisabeth—or Carmen Sylva, as the poetess Queen of Romania was known—had been instrumental in promoting Nando’s romance with one of the ladies of the Romanian court, a certain Helene Vacarescu. But the Romanian elite and the king, for that matter, disapproved of the match. To them, for any member of the royal family to marry a Romanian was simply out of the question for political reasons. King Carol ordered Ferdinand to choose between the throne or his love. Ever obedient, the crown prince chose duty. Enraged by his wife’s part in encouraging the couple, King Carol I banished his queen from Romania for two years: Elisabeth was sent packing to her mother in Germany. Not surprisingly, Missy’s knowledge of the Vacarescu affair was nonexistent at the time of her engagement. Missy and her sisters had been sheltered all their lives; so much so, in fact, that Missy years later admitted she and her sisters “had been kept in glorious, but…dangerous and almost cruel, ignorance of realities,” so that their upbringing was “based upon nothing but illusions…and a completely false conception of life.”25

  Stories about the affair spread beyond Bucharest. This, combined with the news of Missy’s betrothal, was too much for one member of the British royal family, the Duke of Cambridge, and his confidante, Lady Geraldine Somerset, who wrote: “disgusted to see the announcement of the marriage of poor pretty nice P. Marie of Edinburgh to the Prince of Roumania!!! It does seem too cruel a shame to cart that nice pretty girl off to semi-barbaric Roumania and a man to the knowledge of all Europe desperately in love with another woman. Queen Victoria took a similar view of the situation. When the queen realized that her daughter-in-law, Marie, had engineered the match, she felt sorry for her granddaughter, calling Missy “a great victim…to be enormously pitied.”27

  The queen also could not help expressing her misgivings about the engagement. For a start, the country itself and the society in general were, in the queen’s eyes, valid reasons for being wary about the marriage. The queen was also perplexed that Missy would be married at so tender an age, obviously forgetting that her own daughter, Vicky, the Princess Royal, was engaged at fourteen and married at seventeen. The queen confided to Victoria of Hesse herself that “We have been much startled lately to hear of Missy’s Engagement to Ferdinand of Rumania. He is nice I believe & the Parents are charming—but the Country is very insecure & the immorality of the Society at Bucharest quite awful. Of course the marriage would be delayed some time as Missy won’t be 17 till the end of Oct!”28

  Moved by the plight of her grandson, George, who had waited so long for Missy and now had suddenly lost her, the queen admired his stoic response to the engagement, “Poor Georgie…is not bitter.”29 Despite her initial misgivings, Queen Victoria gave her approval to the marriage. But it was done with some concerns on her part. Her eldest daughter, the Empress Frederick, confided to Sophie of Greece the British royal family’s uneasiness over the engagement:

  Aunt Beatrice [Ena’s mother] is not at all delighted at Missy of Edinburgh’s engagement, and thinks about Ferdinand as we all do. Neither my Mama nor Uncle Alfred seem much pleased. It seems Marie was perplexed and did not know what to do. There were different suitors, and this was thought the best way to solve the question. Still my family regret it. Missy is till now quite delighted, but the poor child is so young, how can she guess what is before her?30

  Queen Victoria was active in the ensuing negotiations over the marriage contract between Missy and Nando. The fact that Missy was marrying a Roman Catholic meant she was automatically forfeiting her place in the line of succession to the English throne. Nevertheless, the queen gave her views on the matter to her prime minister, Lord Rosebery, who duly passed them on the British Foreign Office, stating: “Her Majesty considers that there should be a treaty of marriage, as the union is one between a British Princess and the heir to a foreign crown…she thinks that the Princess’s renunciation of her British rights should appear as an article in the treaty, though it is in fact involuntary”31

  After careful analysis, the Foreign Office concluded that Missy need not undergo any sort of formal renunciation at all because she would be “disabled ‘ipso facto’ by her marriage” and thus “any renunciation in a treaty is, strictly speaking, unnecessary and superfluous.”32 Queen Victoria disagreed. Lord Rosebery issued a memorandum stating that “the Queen is of the opinion that something must be mentioned in the treaty with regard to the renunciation.”33 Victoria’s preoccupation with this issue was best summed up by her private secretary, who told Rosebery, “I return the Roumanian Treaty with the Queen’s corrections.…The Queen thinks…it could be more graceful if Princess Marie were voluntarily to renounce the Crown of Great Britain and Ireland instead of being ruled out of it.”34 In the end, Queen Victoria won, as the “renunciation would be by separate instrument of which note would be taken in the treaty”35 No stone was left unturned in the marriage negotiations; what seemed a pedantic exercise was in Queen Victoria’s eyes a necessity. Thanks to her intervention, Missy was spared the “humiliation” of being automatically “struck off” the English line of succession for her forthcoming marriage to a Catholic prince.

  Not content with this small triumph, Queen Victoria was still giving her views to the Foreign Office on how Missy should be addressed. Just a month before the wedding day, the Foreign Office instructed the British chargé d’affaires at Bucharest, Charles Hardinge, that Queen Victoria “thinks that the Princess should also be styled granddaughter of the Sovereign, giving the Queen’s full title.”3

  The wedding, on 10 January 1893, was held at Sigmaringen Castle, a fairytale edifice perched high above a mighty cliff overlooking the Danube River. Missy was dressed in a a voluminous gown in keeping with the tastes of the day. When the time came to affirm before the world their intention to marry, the bride and groom’s responses were almost a reflection of how they viewed their marriage. Nando’s “ja” was “heard distinctly over the church, but the answer of Princess Marie was quite inaudible.”37

  If Missy was overcome by the thought of her new life and position, she betrayed nothing to the throngs of guests who watched her carefully. In reporting to Lord Rosebery Lord Malet, Britain’s minister in Berlin, who had been specifically asked by Queen Victoria to witness Missy’s wedding, praised the princess:

  I cannot close this Despatch without mentioning the effect which the great beauty of the Bride, and the charm of her manner produced upon all who saw her. Her Royal Highness took the hearts of her future countrymen by storm. The Ministers and the ladies who had come with the King of Roumania spoke to me in the most rapturous terms of Her Royal Highness and said they were completely under her fascination.38

  Though Queen Victoria was unable to get to her granddaughter’s wedding, she did not forget to honor Missy. On the wedding day itself, salutes were fired from forts and ships at Portsmouth. At Osborne, the queen held a dinner party which included the Romanian minister to London and Lord Rosebery, the prime minister. In her toast to the newlyweds, Queen Victoria raised her glass with the words: “I wish to propose the health of my dear grandchildren Prince and Princess Ferdinand of Romania, with every wish for their happiness.”39

  The Empress Frederick gave her opinion to Sophie of Greece, “I think it very hard upon her, that she should be married off so young, and go so far away”40 How right she proved to be.

  Missy’s honeymoon lasted only a few days, but the experience left the young woman in a daze. Completely unprepared for what was in store for her, Missy became suddenly bewildered with married life. The almost brusque fashion in which Nando exercised his conjugal rights left the more mystical and unworldly bride in shock. “He was,” recalled Missy, “terribly, almost cruelly in love. In my immature way I tried to respond
to his passion, but I hungered and thirsted for something more.”41 Despite the romantic setting of her honeymoon cottage and the obvious pleasure Nando was deriving from their time alone together, the young bride felt disappointed if not deceived by her experiences.

  Already within a few days of their marriage, Missy sensed a mental gulf. Her new husband, a man of few words, found it difficult to communicate with his wife in the way she wanted to be understood. A bit of imagination and patience on Nando’s part, with some bantering and wooing during their first days of marriage, might have gone a long way in easing Missy’s transition to married life. Queen Victoria was right when she had noted upon hearing of Missy and Nando’s engagement: “she is a mere Child, & quite inexperienced!”42

  The day after Missy’s wedding, Queen Victoria wrote to the Empress Frederick of her concern for the newly married bride:

  Yesterday poor little Missy was married—the irrevocable step taken “for better, for worse.” I ought not to tell you now, who have this so soon before you, what I feel about a daughter’s marrying, but to me there is something so dreadful, so repulsive in that one has to give one’s beloved and innocent child, whom one has watched over and guarded from the breath of anything indelicate [that she] should be given over to a man, a stranger to a great extent, body and soul to do with what he likes. No experience in [life (?)] will ever help me over that.43