A ROYAL BETROTHAL.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 163, 15 August 1914, Page 6

A ROYAL BETROTHAL.

TWO ROMANTIC ALLIANCES RECALLED. THE report from London, although yet unconfirmed, that Prince Alexander of Battenburg is to marry Countess Zia Torby recalls the romantic loves of their parents, Grand Duke Michael Micliaelovitch and the Countess Torby and Prince Henry of Battenberg and Princess Beatrice oflEngland. The sou of one Emperor and uncle of another were sent into exile and a petty German princeling married the daughter of Europe's most powerful sovereign. Curiously .enough, a morganatic marriage, which was the cause of the Grand Duke Michael's loss of favour, was the foundation of the rise of the Battenbergs. And still more interesting, the marriage of Prince Alexander and the Countess Zia, if it takes place, will make the issue of the Grand Duke's morganatic marriage the sister-in-law of tlie Queen of Spaim For the last twenty years the accounts of the fashionable folk at the various winter and summer resorts on the Continent, in London during the season and in the Shires at hunting time have included the names of the Grand Duke Michael of Russia and the Countess Torby. No function was complete without the presence of the tall, slender, silent, black-bearded man, and the radiant, beautiful, blonde woman, for love of whom he became an expatriate.

Their villa at Nice was the centre of that sc-mi-royal life that is found along the Riviera in January and February. Homburg saw them when the late King Edward, made his annual A'isits. Trouville and Deauville welcomed them after they finished the Paris season with the Grande Semaine.

In the London season, they wore seen at the opera and attended all the smart balls and alinners. At their country house the week end parties were the gayest and most fashionable. But they never went to Russia. The punishment meted out to the Grand Puke Michael by the Czar for defying the head of the Romanoffs and marrying the beautiful woman lie loved who did not happen to be of royal birth was expatriation. lii his case love brought exile. But with the father of young .Prince Alexander of Battenberg love was more kind. Prince Henry was of a far more retiring nature than his brother, Prince Louis, the popular sailor, and inclined to studious pursuits. Princess Beatrice, youngest daughter of Queen Victoria and her constant companion, fell in love with the blonde young German. The British public did not relish the proposed alliance, and there were many sneers at the audacity of a German princeling aspiring to the hand of an English royal princess. Even the Government of that day did not regard the marriage favourably, but Queen Victoria had her way and overcame all opposition to make her daughter happy.

The Princes of Battenberg also owed their title to a morganatic marriage. The original Counts of Battenberg were a German family, whose seat was the Castle of Kellerburg, near the town of Battenberg, in the now Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. The tj.tle, Count of Battenberg became extinct in-J.114. Alexander, a younger son of Louis 11., Grand Duke of Hesse, fell madly in love with a Polish beauty, the Countess .Julia Theresa von Hanke, whom he married morganatically »» 1851. The bride was created Countess of Battenberg by the Grand Duke, who in 3858 raised her rank to that of Princess, and gave to her and her children the right to style themselves Princes and Princesses of Battenberg, with the prefix of Serene Higness.

Prince llenry Maurice, their third son, left three sons, the eldest of whom is Prince Alexander. His one daughter, Victoria Eugenie, named for her grandmother and the Empress Eugenie, is now the Queen of Spaiu,