Upcoming Royal weddings

July 8, 1889

It has been "announced, and authoritatively too," that Prince Albert Victor, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, and second in line to the throne, is "engaged to be married" to his cousin, Princess Victoria of Prussia," reports the Los Angeles Times.   Prince Albert Victor's sister, Princess Louise, is "in due process of time, to be wedded to the Earl of Fife."

The "sovereign people of these United States care nothing for royalty in the abstract".  But "wedding bells sound just the same under whatever form of government," and the two royal couples "will be fore the footlights for some time to come," and will certainly attract "a very fare share of friendly notice -- even in republican America."

Prince Albert Victor is in his 25th year.  His bride-to-be is the daughter of the late German Emperor Friedrich III, "better known by his all but life-long title of 'the Crown Prince.'"

Princess Victoria "occupied a good deal of attention last year with her unpropitious love affair with Prince Alexander of Battenberg - the plucky but ill-starred ex-ruler of Bulgaria."

Young Victoria had the support of her mother, Victoria, and her grandmother, Queen Victoria, but Chancellor von Bismarck, put his foot down, and made it clear that the young Prussian princess would not be permitted to marry Prince Alexander, due to -- he said -- "political reasons."

Prince Alexander has already moved on and has "taken a young prima donna to share his political and domestic fortunes -- and misfortunes."

The new romance between Prince Albert Victor and Princess Victoria appears to be history -- in reverse -- repeating itself.  In 1858,  Princess Victoria, the Princess Royal, then 18, married Prince Friedrich of Prussia, and moved to Germany to begin a new life.   Now, 31 years later,  Empress Friedrich's daughter, Princess Victoria is about to reverse the journey, "come to England to wait for a throne, just as her mother did before her."

The other bridal couple will also create a lot of attention in their nuptials.  It was Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, Princess Louise, who "broke through the charmed circle," of royal princes,  and married the Marquess of Lorne, heir to the Argyll dukedom.  Now her niece, Princess Louise of Wales, is about to due the same thing.   

Princess Louise is 22, and her future husband, Lord Fife, is 39.  Despite their age differences, Louise may have "considerably more quiet enjoyment of existence than if she had taken her life in her hand and her chances of dynamite in Russia with some semi-civilized relative of the Czar."