ROYAL MARRIAGES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20959, 24 February 1930, Page 2

ROYAL MARRIAGES.

FREER SINCE THE WAR. ROYALTIES STILL WED EACH OTHER. BUT MATES OFTEN COMMONERS. Lpve matches among thg children of Royalty have become- more easily possible since the world war. That cataclysmic upheaval, in whose wake came many social reforms, taught princes and princesses sometimes to seek their wives and husbands without'too much deference to ministers and ambitious parents, says a writer in an American paper. * r l do not wish to be a queen,” many a princess has been heard to say in the past few years. The fact is that it is harder to marry a throne these days, since the war deprived many a likely prince of his prospects. And princes have been looking with favour upon girls brought up outside court circles, A more liberal education than that accorded to their_ Royal parents and the opportunity to mingle more freely with , the people of their own and other countries, have given the, children of the new''generation a different point of view. Yet marriages still take place between princes and princesses, THE MOST BRILLIANT MATCH.

Th most brilliant of all the matches since the war is that between Italy’s Crown Prince Humbert and Marie Jose, daughter of the King and Queen of the Belgians. The alliance is both a love match and a strengthening of political bonds. It had its beginning in the days of the world war, when the young princess was sent to Italy so that she might go to school in Florence, far from the western front.

She-learned to love the 1 country that gave her shelter and the Royal children, Yolando, Mafalda, Humbert, and Giovanni, whose games she shared in holiday time. When the war was over she continued to make visits to Italy. She and the Prince danced together. They rode, they swam, they played tennis. Sometimes the Prince’s swift car would speed to meet her on her way south, and bring her to Racoonigi. The telegraph wires tingled with reports of their betrothal. The world war broke down, many traditions. _ While it was going on. Princess Beatrice of Spain, young as she was, visited hospitals with her mother. Princess Mary mingled with the soldiers at Paddy’s Goose dub, and took a course in nursing at the Ormond Street Hospital for' Children. Princess Ileana took the leadership of the Girl Scout .movement in Rumania, . Princess Marie Jose, an accomplished musician, found audiences in the schools of Brussels. All of these young women are as athletic as girls usually are.

Princess Yolanda; sifter of Prince Humbert, found her husbapd, Count Calvi di Bergolo, through her love of riding. She first met him at Tor di Quinto, where Italy’s crack cavalry officers ride before the Fang and provide a spectacle guaranteed to make any guff's heart leap. She saw him again, and often, at Pinerolo, the cavalry school where he was an instructor. It is not 'lax from Racoonigi, summer residence or the Royal family Her greatest pleasure was to ride the most spirited mounts the school could provide. When she was a .child'she would protest vehemently against all suggestions that some day she would make a great match:' i** I’ll'marry for love," she would announce, " and I will never be a queen.” One day the general in command at Pinerolo was surprised to have Captain Calvi di Bergolo ask for leave of, absence. It was'refused. “ Sir, the King has summoned me to Rome. 1 My betrothal to the Princess Yolanda is to be announced, sir,’’ reticently explained the officer. And now the Princess and her husband live in all simplicity at Pinerolo.

. • Like her sister Yolanda, Mafalda—who inherited .some of the beauty and brilliance of Queen Margherita f her grand-mother-preferred not 'to wear a crown. :Sho looked with favour upon a persistent suitor,; Prince, Philip of Hesge, nephew of the former Kaiser, who, because of a difference in religious beliefs, and because of his loss of' prestige in his own country, had a difficult .time in getting a 'hearing among her elders.; With determination the. Princess broke down the resistance to the man of her choice. They were married quietly in Rome, ENGLISH MATINGS. Every member of the-English Royal household who has married since the World War has married a ' commoner. Lord Louis Mountbatten married the rich Miss Ashley. Not long afterward the abbey :was to be decked in gala attire for two more such weddings. The first came that day when Princess Mary in her, coach l of glass and gold drove from Buckingham Palace through the packed streets to marry Viscount Lascelles. Then Albert, Duke of York,. bestowed his name and titles ou the Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon. The courtships ip both instances wete unostentatious, enough to please any democratic English heart. The Duke of York, it is said, had to ask'three times for Lady Elizabeth’s hand, and. only after much wooing was he permitted to present himself at Castle Glatnis formally to make big/ request to the Earl of Strathmore •and _Kinghorne, her father. At 24, Princess Mary was spoken of as a girl without a beau. A list of names had been scrutinised and weighed, including German princes and a Russian Grand Duke, but the Princess was free to carry out her own wishes. ' It was at a ball that Viscount Lascelles, now the Count of Harewood, attracted her attention. He was tall and distinguished and had a fine record of senuce in the army and in the FoVeign Office. He was an officer with the Grenadier Guards and wore the medal of the •U. 8.0. and the Croix de Guerre. He and the Princess were frequently thrown together at house parties and bails, and their bond of companionship was strengthened by their fondness' for riding. The marriage of Crown Prince Gustavua Adolphus of Sweden and Princess Louise, formerly Lady Louise Mountbattbat kas taken place since the World War In the true sense of the word Lady Louise Mountbatten was not a commoner, since sb e is a cousin of King George. But the fact that she did not bear a royal title caused some murmunngs in Sweden, owing to a fundamental law forbidding the heir to the T rr - y the daughter of a awedist or a foreign private man.” The accident of war took from her her title pj? ch r nge - d ker name, f ar her father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, chose to renounee kis foreign tank of prince and to “ Milted" th * M ” m » Another royal marriage also concerns S/nf r p°i f , Swe den—that of Prince Leopold of Belgium to Princess Astrid, niece of the Swedish King and daughter of gotlanT lDgeborg and the Duk e of Vester-

] n « a eh other is said to ? J sant in Paris, where hnl r wV £ eopold escorted Astrid to fter hotel, Whore she and her mother were stopping incognito. Not long afterward Prince Leonold and his mother. Queen Elizabeth off the Belgians, went to Stockholm. One day w-+n^ Ueen Saw tfl ° Princess at lunch with a group of friends in a restaurant and approved of her son's choice. Then began tnat senes of visits by Leopold to Sweden. Once he travelled third class tent ) S f °T n SU i tca60 > and was com , fc , be tal " Gn /or a junior butler about to enter service in the palace The announcement of their engagement 'came follow Tf ple iS aad was soon followed by the civil wedding at Stockholm and the religious ceremony in the thirteenth century Church of Saints Michael and Gudule, in Brussels. • A SCANDINAVIAN WEDDING Last March another royal wedding took place in, Scandinavia when' Princess

Martha, Princess Aetrid's sister, became the bride of Prince Olaf of Norway. The marriage was hailed as creating a new era of good feeling between the sister countries. The Prince and the Princess were cousins. _ They had known each other since their childhood play days, spent in part of the palaces of their grandparents, the late King and Queen of Denmark.

The youngest Queen in Europe is Marie of Yugoslavia, wife of ‘King Alexander. Though she is the daughter of Queen Marie of Rumania, “ mother-in-law ” of the Balkans and matchmaker of Europe, it has been said that hers was not a made-to-order match. When the King went to Rumania to discuss the affairs of the Little Entente, be met her at a State dinner in his honour. " Your Majesty, this is our daughter," he heard Queen Marie say. The. monarch, who through the years of his bachelordom had ■“ never'found a face that appealed” to him, was struck by the beauty of the Princess.

While this soldier King—for eight years he was und,er arms—has striven to hold together his heterogeneous kingdom, the handsome Rumanian Princess, whom he made his Queen, has kept discreetly in the background, shunning publicity, wrapped up in her duties and her children.