IN THE ROYAL MARRIAGE MARKET

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3288, 6 March 1926, Page 10

IN THE ROYAL MARRIAGE MARKET

Will Prince Henry Defy Tradition ? AND WED OUTSIDE THE ROYAL HOUSE The recent announcement that the .ngagement of Prince Henry is imninent has aroused speculation as .’hethor a third member of the Royal family is to wed outside a Royal louse. But thc tradition of royalty narrying royalty remains hardly afected in other countries, though the irinccs and princesses of the de>osed dynasties of Russia, Germany nd Austria are no longer the eliible partners they were before the far for the unmarried members of eigning houses. The three great families—the Rolanovs, the Hohenzollerns and the lapsburgs—had been for long the -rincipal sources of supply, so to peak, of the royal marriage maret, and without them the choice is estricted to the point of anxious mbarrassment. Especially so, for example, in the ase of Princess Juliana, of Holtnd. She belongs to a Protestant nuse, and, of old, Germany proided an ample selection of mates or Protestant princes and prinesses, as Austria for Catholics.

Now, apart from Britain, only Denmark, Sweden and Norway can I furnish suitable candidates—Crown Prince Frederick, of Denmark,, and his brother. Prince Knud, the Princesses Martha and Astrld of Sweden, nieces of King Gustavus, and Crown [Prince Olaf of Norway, not yet of lan age for marriage. I The case of Princess Juliana, a j placid Dutch girl, is indeed a hard I one. True, there are attractions apart from Juliana’s charm. The house of Orange-Nassau is an ancient one, with a glorious past, one to which the most exalted family would feel proud to be allied. Holland, too, is a prosperous, happy country, secure from political currents likely to disturb the Court, But the fair Juliana will one day reign as monarch in her own right, and the post of Prince .Consort is apt to be a thankless, trying, uncomfortable one. Yet to elevate one of her own subjects to a place beside her would produce grave difficulties and possibly dangers. Two Danish princes, Ertk and Viggo, have boldly thrown tradition to the winds, and not long ago married respectively Miss Booth of Ottawa and Miss Green of New York. Neither of those was a morgantlc marriage, for the consent of the sovereign had been obtained. A morganatic marriage is perfectly legal and .binding and does not, contrary to the popular notion, involve social disgrace or moral dishonour. It merely Implies a recognition of th e difference in rank between the two contracting parties, together with the provision that the children of the union do not inherit the higher social status. The marriage of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the imperial throne of Aus- . tria-Hungary, to Sophie Chotek in 1900 was morganatic. The countess was a clever woman, but she never achieved her ambition of being recognised as the future Empress. A daughter of a younger branch of one of the most illustrious noble families of Bohemia, she was left an orphan at an early age and with practically no means of prospect of a dowry to attract suitors. She became a maid-of-honour to the Archduchess Isabel lof Austria, and in that household [Francis Ferdinand, then a bachelor of thirty-eight, met her and fell in love.

For long his uncle, the Emperor, sternly forbade the marriage, but the representations of Frau Schratt, .formerly an obscure actress at a little theatre In Vienna, who had acquired enormous influence over the aged and stubborn ruler were added to the prayers of Francis Ferdinand and won a reluctant consent

The Emperor, however, insisted that the marriage must be considered morganatio, the Archduke renouncing for his posterity the right of succession to the throne.

After the marriage the wise Sophie, Instead of asserting herself or seeming to work for that equal status with her husband which waaher ambition, adopted the tactics of silence and reserve, effacing herself, remaining absent from Court functions, never in the limelight. She was created Duchess of Hohenberg, but continued to avoid all prominence.

I Her first triumph was when the Kaiser received her as the consort of the Austrian heir. Eventually even | the proud old Emperor, who hated | the marriage intensely, went so far [as to accord her precedence immejdiately after the Archduchesses of the Imperial family. But when the pair were assassinated at Sarajevo, the Emperor did not pretend to feel much personal grief. The heir to the throne and his morganatic wife were not allowed a Hapsburg funeral, nor were their remains deposited in the vaults of the Capuchin Church, among the Hapsburg tombs. Only with difficulty was the Emperor persuaded to allow a service to be held over the two coffins in the Augustine Chapel of the Hofburg. Then they were removed at night to one of the Archduke’s estates and hurriedly buried without ceremony. The children of the murdered couple were not allowed to go to Vienna for the service, but only to watch the interment on the estate from a distance.

From this sad tragedy one turns with relief to the amusing matchmaking of Queen Marie of Rumania. She has succeeded in placing two of her daughters on thrones, though one of them, Queen Elizabeth of Greece, has since lost hors. TU« other. Queen Marie of Jujro-

Slavia , Is firmly established and manifestly happy with the very serious, almost melancholy, monarch of post-war Greater Serbia. Now pretty sixteen-year-old Princess Ileana is left tc be provided with a royal mate and her mother is credited with placing her hopes very high Indeed. However ,lf she is disappointed, there remains King Boris of Bulgaria, as handsome as a story book prince, thirty-one years old, accomplished and with no vices. A certain lingering romantic glamour surrounds a Balkan throne still, though offset by a spice of danger. King Boris, too, is of the bluest of blue blood, of the house which gave a consort to Queen Victoria and a king to Belgium, and through his mother descending from the proud Bourbons. But Princess Ileana 1b by no means the\ only fish In the sea. There are the Princesses Irene, Elizabeth and Marina of Greece, all charming and of eligible rank, though handicapped by lack of marriago portions. The first is the daughter, the others are the nieces, of King Constantine. The House of Savoy has provided an example of a post-war non-tradl-tional royal marriage in the union of Princess Yolanda, the elder daughter of the King of Italy, with an Italian nobleman, the Count Calvi dl Bergolo. But tradition has only been broken not abandoned in Italy, for the second daughter, Mafalda, has recently married Prince Philip of Hesse, a nephew of the ex-Kaiser, and the Prince of Piedmont, heir to the throne, is betrothed to Marie Jose, the only daughter of the King of the Belgians, a matrimonial alliance between reigning houses quite in the traditional manner.