People that have married in to Royal Families since 1800 Spam
Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg
Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg was Queen of Spain as the wife of King Alfonso XIII.
Victoria Eugenie was born on 24 October 1887 at Balmoral Castle, in Scotland. Her father was Prince Henry of Battenberg, the fourth child and third son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine by his morganatic wife Countess Julia Hauke, and her mother was Princess Beatrice, the fifth daughter and youngest child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Victoria Eugenie grew up in Queen Victoria’s household, as the British monarch had reluctantly allowed Beatrice to marry on the condition that she remain her mother’s full-time companion and personal secretary. Therefore, she spent her childhood at Windsor Castle, Balmoral, and Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. She was a bridesmaid at the wedding of her cousins, the Duke (later King George V) and Duchess of York on 6 July 1893.
Her father died while on active military service after contracting fever in Africa in 1896. After the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, the Battenbergs moved to London and took up residence in Kensington Palace.
In 1905, King Alfonso XIII of Spain made an official state visit to the United Kingdom. Victoria Eugenie’s uncle, King Edward VII, hosted a dinner in Buckingham Palace, in honour of the Spanish king. He noticed Victoria Eugenie and asked who the dinner guest with almost white hair was. Everybody knew that King Alfonso was looking for a suitable bride and one of the strongest candidates was Princess Patricia of Connaught, daughter of King Edward’s brother, the Duke of Connaught. As Princess Patricia seemed not to be impressed by the Spanish monarch, Alfonso indulged his interest in Victoria Eugenie, and so the courtship began.
When Alfonso returned to Spain he frequently sent postcards to Victoria Eugenie and spoke of her approvingly. His widowed mother, Queen Maria Cristina, did not like her son’s choice, in part because she considered the Battenbergs non-royal because of the obscure origin of Prince Henry’s mother, and in part because she wanted her son to marry within her own family, the Habsburgs from Austria. Another obstacle to a marriage was Victoria Eugenie’s Protestantism (Alfonso was Roman Catholic; she was Anglican).
Another potential problem was haemophilia, the disease that Victoria had transmitted to some of her descendants. Eugenie’s brother Leopold was a haemophiliac, so there was a 50% probability that Victoria Eugenie would be a carrier, although the degree of risk was not yet known. Still, if Alfonso married her, their issue could be affected by the disease.
Nonetheless, Alfonso was not dissuaded. After a year of rumours about which princess Alfonso would marry, his mother finally acceded to her son’s selection in January 1906 and wrote a letter to Princess Henry of Battenberg, Victoria Eugenie’s mother, telling her about the love Alfonso felt for her daughter and seeking unofficial contact with the king. Some days later at Windsor, King Edward congratulated his niece on her future engagement.
Princess Beatrice and her daughter arrived in Biarritz on 22 January and stayed at the Villa Mauriscot where some days later King Alfonso met them. At the Villa Mauriscot, Alfonso and his future bride conducted a chaperoned, three-day romance. Then, Alfonso took Victoria Eugenie and her mother to San Sebastián to meet Queen Maria Cristina. On 3 February, the king left San Sebastian to go to Madrid and Victoria Eugenie and her mother went to Versailles where the Princess would be instructed in the Catholic faith: As the future Queen of Spain, she agreed to convert. The official reception of Victoria Eugenie into the Catholic faith took place on 5 March 1906 at Miramar Palace in San Sebastián.
Princess Victoria Eugenie married King Alfonso XIII at the Royal Monastery of San Jerónimo in Madrid on 31 May 1906.
After the wedding ceremony, the royal procession was heading back to the Royal Palace when an assassination attempt was made on the King and Queen. When anarchist Mateu Morral threw a bomb from a balcony at the royal carriage. Victoria Eugenie’s life was saved because, at the exact moment the bomb exploded, she turned her head in order to see St. Mary’s Church, which Alfonso was showing her. She escaped injury, although her dress was spotted with the blood of a guard who was riding beside the carriage. There exists a large statue in front of the Royal Monastery of San Jeronimo dedicated to the victims of the bombing of May 31, 1906.
After the inauspicious start to her tenure as Queen of Spain, Victoria Eugenie became isolated from the Spanish people and was unpopular in her new land. Her married life improved when she gave birth to a son and heir-apparent to the kingdom, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias. However, while the baby prince was being circumcised, the doctors noted that he did not stop bleeding — the first sign that the infant heir had haemophilia. Victoria Eugenie was the obvious source of the condition, which was inherited by her eldest and youngest sons.
Contrary to the response of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, whose son and heir by another granddaughter of Queen Victoria was similarly afflicted, Alfonso is alleged never to have forgiven Victoria Eugenie nor to have come to terms with what had happened. In all, King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenie had seven children, five sons and two daughters. Neither of their daughters is known to have been a carrier of haemophilia.
After the births of their children, Victoria Eugenie’s relationship with Alfonso deteriorated, and he had numerous affairs. It has been said that he had a dalliance with the Queen’s cousin, Beatrice, Duchess of Galliera, but this is disputed. There is some evidence that Alfonso tried to seduce Beatrice, but she didn’t give in. The king, in anger, expelled her and her husband from Spain. Then members of the king’s circle spread rumours that Beatrice had been expelled because of her bad behaviour, which was not true. All this situation was very painful for the Queen, who could do nothing to help her cousin.
Victoria Eugenie devoted herself to work for hospitals and services for the poor, as well as to education. She was also involved in the reorganization of the Spanish Red Cross. In 1929, the city of Barcelona erected a statue of her in a nurse’s uniform in honor of her Red Cross work (the statue has since been destroyed).
The Spanish royal family went into exile on 14 April 1931 after municipal elections brought Republicans to power in most of the major cities, leading to the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic. Alfonso XIII had hoped that his voluntary exile might avert a civil war between the Republicans and the Monarchists. The royal family went to live in France and later Italy. Victoria Eugenie and Alfonso later separated, and she lived partly in the UK and, after being invited to leave Britain by its government, in Switzerland. She purchased a chateau, the Vieille Fontaine, outside Lausanne.
In 1938, the whole family gathered in Rome for the baptism at the Palazzo Malta of Juan’s eldest son, Infante Juan Carlos by Vatican Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (who stood in for the dying Pope Pius XI and would himself become Pope Pius XII in a few months). On 15 January 1941, Alfonso XIII, feeling his death was near, transferred his rights to the Spanish crown to his son, the Count of Barcelona. On 12 February,
Alfonso suffered a first heart attack. Alfonso died on 28 February 1941. In 1942 Queen Victoria Eugenie was obliged to leave Italy, having become persona non grata to the Italian government, according to Harold Tittmann, a U.S. representative at the Vatican at the time, for her “ill-disguised leanings to the Allied cause.”
Queen Victoria Eugenie returned briefly to Spain in February 1968, to stand as godmother at the baptism of her great-grandson, Infante Felipe, the son of Infante Juan Carlos and Princess Sophia of Greece and Denmark. Felipe became King of Spain after his father, King Juan Carlos I, abdicated in June 2014.
Victoria Eugenie died in Lausanne on 15 April 1969, aged 81, exactly 38 years after she had left Spain for exile. She was interred in the church of Sacré Coeur in Lausanne. On 25 April 1985, her remains were returned to Spain and re-interred in the Royal Vault in the Escorial, outside Madrid, next to the remains of her husband, Alfonso XIII, and not far from her sons, Infante Alfonso, Infante Jaime, and Infante Gonzalo.
