Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires

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Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires Page 77

by Justin C. Vovk


  48. Declaration of Archduke Otto, March 12, 1938, Habsburg Family Archives, Cassette No. 21, File 361, in ibid., p. 266.

  49. Volkzeitung, April 20, 1938.

  50. Queen Mary to King George VI, September 3, 1939, RA GVI/PRIV/RF/11, in Queen Elizabeth, Shawcross, p. 493.

  51. Declaration of Empress Zita, July 27, 1940, Habsburg Family Archives, “New York Trunk,” No. 3, File 261, in The Last Empress, Brook-Shepherd, p. 278.

  52. The idea of Queen Mary being kidnapped by the Germans was not so far-fetched. A few months earlier, the Germans had unsuccessfully tried to capture Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who fled to safety in England.

  53. Duff, Queen Mary, p. 229.

  54. Queen Elizabeth to Queen Mary, September 13, 1940, QM/PRIV/CC12/135, the Royal Archives, quoted in Queen Elizabeth, Shawcross, pp. 522–523.

  55. Ibid.

  56. Diary entry of Queen Mary, December 19, 1939, in Queen Mary, Pope-Hennessy, p. 602.

  57. Queen Mary to Archduke Robert, undated, 1941, in The Last Empress, Brook-Shepherd, p. 286.

  58. Empress Zita to Queen Mary, undated, RA GVCC 45/1256, the Royal Archives, quoted in ibid., p. 287. In the original letter and in Brook-Shepherd, Zita addressed Mary as “Chère Cousine, Sa Majesté la Reine-Mère d’Angleterre.”

  59. Edwards, Matriarch, p. 394.

  60. Queen Mary to Edward, Duke of Windsor, August 31, 1942, RA EDW/PRIV/MAINB/156, the Royal Archives, quoted in Queen Elizabeth, Shawcross, p. 552.

  61. Edward, Duke of Windsor, to King George VI, September 15, 1942, RA GVI/PRIV/RF/11, in ibid.

  62. Edwards, Matriarch, p. 403.

  63. “Queen Mary,” British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 4813 (April 4, 1953), p. 772.

  64. British succession laws required men to precede women, regardless of their birth order, to inherit the throne. Only in instances when the monarch or heir apparent had no sons (in the cases of George VI and Queen Victoria’s father the Duke of Kent) could women ascend the throne. This was changed on October 28, 2011, at the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Australia when Queen Elizabeth II and the sixteen Commonwealth leaders agreed to give women equal succession rights with men. The new succession law is not retroactive, and the queen emphasized it only applies to the descendants of Charles, Prince of Wales. As such, should the current Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have a daughter, followed by a son, their daughter would become heiress and eventually queen regnant.

  65. Queen Mary to King George VI, March 6, 1944, RA GVI/PRIV/RF/11, in Queen Elizabeth, Shawcross, p. 579.

  66. “The Queen and Prince Philip,” Hello! Canada, no. 217 (May 16, 2011), p. 112.

  67. Brandreth, Philip and Elizabeth, p. 104.

  68. Bradford, George VI, p. 560.

  69. Edwards, Matriarch, p. 407.

  70. Anderson, “The Royals,” p. 52.

  71. Princess Elizabeth to May Elphinstone, November 18, 1948, RA QEQM/OUT/ELPHINSTONE, in Queen Elizabeth, Shawcross, p. 637.

  72. Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 617.

  73. US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States of America, 1952–1954 (Washington DC: GPO), vol. 10, p. 280. Acheson did not actually write his note regarding British solvency until November 1951, well after India’s independence. At the time, Acheson was describing Britain’s foreign policy toward its former imperial territories and protectorates in the Middle East, specifically Iran. The sentiment describing the end of the British imperial era is still appropriate.

  74. Anderson, “The Royals,” p. 59.

  75. Bradford, George VI, p. 525.

  76. Farquhar, Behind the Palace Doors, p. 297.

  77. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, p. 651.

  78. Diary entry of Queen Mary, February 6, 1952, in Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, p. 654.

  79. Queen Mary to Queen Elizabeth, February 7, 1952, in RA QEQM/PRIV/RF, the Royal Archives, quoted in Queen Elizabeth, Shawcross, p. 655.

  80. Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 620.

  81. Edwards, Matriarch, p. 414.

  82. Brandreth, Philip and Elizabeth, p. 216.

  83. Queen Mary to Queen Elizabeth, February 7, 1952, RA QEQM/PRIV/RF, the Royal Archives, quoted in Queen Elizabeth, Shawcross, p. 656.

  84. Anderson, “The Royals,” p. 56.

  85. Channon, Chips, p. 464.

  86. Edwards, Matriarch, p. 415.

  87. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, p. 676.

  88. Ottawa Citizen, March 23, 1953.

  89. Duff, Queen Mary, p. 241.

  90. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, p. 676.

  30: The Last Empress

  1. Letter of Empress Zita, May 6, 1941, Habsburg Family Archives, Cassette No. 23, File 861 in The Last Empress, Brook-Shepherd, p. 284.

  2. The Earl of Athlone was the former Prince Alexander (“Alge”) of Teck, Queen Mary’s brother. Along with many other members of the British royal family, Alge renounced his German titles in 1917 and adopted the surname Cambridge along with the title Earl of Athlone. He married George V’s cousin Princess Alice of Albany in 1904.

  3. Princess Alice of Albany, For My Grandchildren: Some Reminiscences of H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone (London: Evans Brothers, 1966), p. 257.

  4. Thomas, “Empress Zita,” The Catholic Counter-Reformation, p. 6.

  5. Dr. Otto von Habsburg to Gordon Brook-Shepherd, November 1, 2000, in Uncrowned Emperor, Brook-Shepherd, p. 178.

  6. Archduke Otto to Queen Mary, undated, January 1951, RA GV/CC 45 No. 1708, the Royal Archives, quoted in The Last Empress, Brook-Shepherd, p. 315.

  7. Felix married Princess Anna-Eugénie of Arenberg in 1952; Rudolf married twice, first to the Russian noblewoman Countess Xenia Besobrasova in 1953 (she died in 1968), and later to Princess Anna von Wrede on 1971; Robert married Princess Margharita of Savoy-Aosta in 1953; and Charlotte married Georg, Duke of Mecklenburg, in 1956. Zita’s eldest daughter, Archduchess Adelheid, never married.

  8. Brook-Shepherd, The Last Empress, p. 315.

  9. Empress Zita to Gordon Brook-Shepherd, June 28, 1982, in The Last Empress, Brook-Shepherd, p. 322.

  10. Glasgow Herald, May 15, 1982.

  11. Brook-Shepherd, The Last Empress, p. 322.

  12. Thomas, “Empress Zita,” The Catholic Counter-Reformation, p. 1.

  13. Brook-Shepherd, The Last Empress, p. 323.

  14. Ibid., p. 326.

  15. Ibid., p. 327.

  16. Dr. Otto von Habsburg to Gordon Brook-Shepherd, December 17–19, 1990, in ibid., p. 328.

  17. Michelle Green, Ellen Wallace, and Jonathan Cooper, “Europe’s Heads, Crowned and Otherwise, Bury Zita, the Last Habsburg Empress,” People, April 17, 1989, accessed March 4, 2012, http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/00003000320120043000300.html

  18. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), pp. 2–3.

  19. Green, Wallace, and Cooper, “Europe’s Heads, Crowned and Otherwise, Bury Zita, the Last Habsburg Empress,” People, April 17, 1989, accessed March 4, 2012, http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/00003000320120043000300.html

  20. Bogle, A Heart for Europe, p. 160.

  21. New York Times, April 2, 1989.

  22. Thomas, “Empress Zita,” The Catholic Counter-Reformation, p. 1.

  Epilogue

  1. Bogle, A Heart for Europe, p. iii.

  2. Letter of Dr. Otto von Habsburg to the author, April 28, 2007.

  3. For further information on Otto von Habsburg, the Duke of Windsor, King George VI, and the mystery of Grand Duchess Anastasia/Anna Anderson, consult the bibliography that follows.

  4. Raffael Scheck, Mothers of the Nation: Right-Wing Women in Weimar Germany (New York: Berg Publishing, 2004), p. 11.

  5. On the Official Website of the Imperial and Royal House of Hohenzollern, her name is given as Hermione. This is somewhat modern, as most pre-twenty-first-century sources refer to her as Hermine (http://www.preussen.de/en/family/family_tree/william_ii._king_of_prussia__ger
man_emperor.html [viewed November 1, 2011]).

  6. Cecil, Wilhelm II, p. 315.

  7. Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II, p. 355.

  8. Shaw, Royal Babylon (Kobo desktop version), chap. 5, para. 19.

  9. The June 3 flotilla was the largest assemblage of boats in history. The celebrations that day were also the largest England had seen since the reign of King Charles II in the 1660s.

  10. Ibid., chap. 9, para. 109.

  11. Wilson and King, Resurrection of the Romanovs, p. 98.

  12. Death certificate of Anastasia Nicholaievna Manahan, February 12, 1984, Commonwealth of Virginia, certificate of death 203-256, op. cit. in Resurrection of the Romanovs, King and Wilson, p. 253. Anderson married American professor Dr. John “Jack” Manahan in 1968.

  13. Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2011.

  Bibliography

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  The Guardian

  The Lady

  The Milwaukee Journal

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