THORNY CROWNS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7808, 12 September 1903, Page 2

THORNY CROWNS.

[ : Straage Fate of AU Sovereign Ladles Not of -loyal Birth. (By EX- ATTACHE in the New Orleans • "Times-Democrat.") Queen Draga's shocking death afc Belgrade serves fco draw attention once again ' fco tne more than ordinary share of mis- ' fortunes thafc have fallen to the lot of every ' one cf those women who have been raised ", from among the people to -Sovereign rank. All these fair Sovereigns remain on record as objects of sympathy and of pity, rather than of envy, and the celebrity which surrounds their names is due not so. much to the brilliancy as to the sadness of their lot. Empress Josephine, born as a Mdlle Tascher de la Pagerie, owes her place in the niche of history to tho heartless treatment, to which she was subjected by her husband, and she is remembered, not as the brilliant and frivolous Consort jof the monarch who, for twelve years, was the mightiest in Christendom, but as the pitiable victim of his selfish ambition and of his cruelty. Equally sad was the fate of the beautiful Hortense, mother of Napoleon IH., and born as a Mdlle de Beauharnais, who, from the day she became Queen of Holland i until the time of her death in poverty, abandonment* and exile, was a disappointed, sorrowing and heartbroken woman. The . gilded apple of Royalty, which had been placed in her hands in 1804, had turned into Dead Sea fruit. She had seen her eldest son die, her second son killed, and her third son a fugitive, forced to seek a haven of refuge in the United States. The very name she bore was. proscribed, all her relatives were either in banishment or dead, while her poverty was so great that ' she was forced to appeal for relief to King Louis Philippe the bitterest enemy of her house and the most relentless persecutor of her surviving son. Nor was the fate of Queen Caroline Murafc, whose husband was first imprisoned and then executed by : order 4i the Bourbon King of Naples, any a juHa and Desiree Clary, the two daugh- • ters of the Marseilles broker, who became i respectively Queen of Spain and Queen of Sweden, -were both noted for their donies--1 I tic sorrows and for the NEGLECT AND INDIGNITIES OS EVERT KIND to which they were subjected by their hus- : bands Queen Desiree of Sweden died at. A ' ■

Stockholm some five and twenty years ago, and in going through my boyhood memories I am able to recall to mind a trip fco Stockholm and being taken by my father to kiss the small and fragile hand of a singularly sweet-faced old lady— a vision of black lace, white hair and still wonderfully brilliant blaok eyea — who enjoyed the distinction of having jilted the great Napoleon previous to her union to his rival, General Bernadotte. Curiously enough, she could never be persuaded to revisit her^iative country, and from the time of hw husband Bernadotte's arrival in Sweden in 1810, after his election as crown prince of tliat country, she never left the dual kingdom to the day of her death. She retained, however, to the last all her French sympathies and tastes. Every Frenchman who visited Stockholm was made welcome at her palace, and she ' displayed the keenest interest in French politics, French social events and Frenoh literature. Exile, widowhood and the tragical death of her only son in South Africa had endowed Eugenic de Montijo, the granddaughter of the Scotch merchant Kirkpatrick, with a majesty which, though sorrowful, is far superior to any which she ever possessed in the days of her greatest magnificence at the Tuueries. The aspect of the onoe beautiful, brilliant and supremely elegant, but now broken and infirm and aged consort of Napoleon 111. is sufiicient to excite commiseration even in the. hearts of the bitterest enemies of the Bonaparte regime. To such am extent is this tbe case that when she first visited Paris again, a few years back, the mob of men and women who had assembled afc the railroad statiou terminus to hoot and hiss her on her ax- ( rival t for her alleged responsibility in the disastrous war of 1870, made way respectfully for her, the men bearing their heads and the woman murmured pitifully, " Oh, j 'la paurre femme" (Oh, the poor woman), ! while this wreck of former splendour, j beauty and elegance limped feebly to her car- i riage. J Yet another of these heroines of royal romance is Natalie de Kefcchko, the more j or less legally divorced Queen of the late King Milan of Servia. Her life, until now, has been more strange, more extraordinary and more - T **TLI» O_T EXCITING INCIDENT than those of the three other ladies above < mentioned- Were it described in a novel r it would be set down as extravagant, Unreal . and impossible; but far fron. such being the case, ifc constitutes one of the most romantic pages. of the contemporary history of Europe. Born in 1659 at Florence, Queen Natalie is the daughter of the exceedingly wealthy Colonel de Ketchko, an officer of the Russian Commissary Department, who died a few years ago. Her mother, from whom ehe inherits her magnificent and somewhat voluptuous style of beauty, was a member , of the Roumanian family of Stourdza, while her grandmother on the paternal side was a daughter of the.Bojar Constantino Baisie, a name which, of noble French origin 1 , is gloriously associated with fche history of the old Servian Empire, five and six centuries ago. Queen Natalie spent most of her childhood at Florence, where she attended one of the schools, a number of American girls being among her classmates. On completing her education she lived some time on her father's estates in southern Russia and at St Petersburg, where she, however, did not figure among what Thackeray describes as the. " upper silccles." For her father, although very wealthy, occupied a relatively subaltern position in the Imperial service, and her mother's title and lineage oarried but little weight in the Russian capital, princesses, especially those ..of the Stourdza family being as plentiful as mere peasants, and only rarely as respectable — in Roumania and Bessarabia. Natalie was affianced to Colonel Constontinovics of the Servian Army, when* a few days' prior to the date set for the wedding she made the acquaintance of his cousin, Prince Milan, who was to be the principal guest of the ceremony. The latter never took place. For Milan* infatuated by Natalie's beauty, and eager- for her fortune, at once proceeded to play his customary role of false friend by supplanting his cousin in her affection, and a few weeks later Natalie became by her marriage to Milan, first the sovereign princess and then the Queen Of Servia. THE • TTNIOI. WAS AST TTNHAPPY ONH from the Veny outset, owing to the discovery made by Milan after thg, wedding that his wife's fortune was so completely tied up and well protected that he could not evefi touch it. Moreover, her high spirit and strong temper did not tend to. improve matters, and even before the bin'b of their only son the stories of their differences became £he talk of every Court- in Europe. So much has been published on both sides of the Atlantio during the lasfc few. weeks concerning Servian royalty that ifc would be superfluous to make here mono than a passing reference to the gross indignities by means of which Milan compelled' Natalie to quit Servia, to the manner in which her only boy, at the time eight years of age, ■was forcibly torn frpm her side by the police at Wiesbaden ; to the way in which this very son, the apple of hen eye, turned against her when king and banished her from his kingdom because she had -disapproved of his marriage, and finally to the manner in which she learnfc at Versailles of his terrible death. To-day she is like exEmpress Eugenic, a woman without a country oz nationality, who has lost both husband and only son. Still less is it necessary to give here the record of Queen Draga. It is not a savoury one, and save for the few years spent under the roof of Queen Natalie as her lady-in-waiting, until dismissed in disgrace, end for the time that she was the legal consont of King Alexander of Servia, it can scarcely be described as reputable. TJkat hex marriage to the last of the Obrenovitohes brought her happiness, it is difficulty to believe. For she was from the vepy* outset ', SUBJECTED TO THE MOST CRUEL A-TRONTi, not only by the foreign Courts, but by her own people, who did nofc hesitate to give expression to their resentment that a woman of her questionable antecedents should occupy a seat on the throne of Servia. She knew "that both her husband and herself were in constant dangen of the tragic fate which ultimately overtook than, and ifc is doubtful indeed if she ever had a moment's tranquility and freedom from anxiety of the most hideous obaracter, at any rate during : the last twelve months of her life. , More fortunate is the New Orleans gin}, Alice Heine, who, ha/ving failed to find in her union with the reigning Prince of Monaco that happiness and consideration which ehe expected, but whioh she enjoyed in her finst marriage to the late Due de ' Ricbelieu, has effected a separation from J Albert 1., declining any longer to share his . rouge-et-noir throne.