Friday, August 29, 2008

Kaiser plans Victoria Luise's marriage

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 August 29, 1907

 According to the Los Angeles Times, Kaiser Wilhelm II is said to be arranging the marriage between his only daughter, Princess Victoria Luise, to his first cousin, Prince Leopold of Battenberg. Prince Leopold is the third child and second son of Princess Beatrice and her husband, Prince Henry of Battenberg.
Victoria Luise, who is approaching her 15th birthday, is said to be "an unaffected and clever girl."

 The engagement is expected to take place in the fall, but a wedding will not be celebrated until the princess reaches her 18th birthday. Leopold's only sister, Ena, is married to King Alfonso XIII of Spain. It has been suggested that Alfonso wanted to marry Victoria Luise, but "her Lutheran papa frowned on the Spanish king and would hear of her embracing the Roman Catholic faith." 



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 [Prince Leopold was a hemophiliac, and it is unlikely that the Kaiser would have considered Leopold as a husband for his daughter. Wilhelm and Leopold were both grandsons of Queen Victoria, but Leopold's father, Henry, was the product of a morganatic alliance. If Wilhelm did not want his sister, Viktoria, to marry Alexander of Battenberg (Henry's brother), he was not going to allow Victoria Luise to marry Leopold of Battenberg, who had two strikes against him: hemophilia and the Battenberg strain.]

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