An overload of cuteness

The Duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex and their children, George, Charlotte, Louis and Archie, were on hand today at the Billingbear Polo Club in Wokingham for The King Power Royal Charity Polo Day.  The two families cheered on the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex as they took part in the polo match.

Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images

A Royal visit to Gotha

King Philippe and Queen Mathilde visited Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha today.  The castle, once one of the residences of the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, is now a museum.

One of the exhibitions on view is "Marriage as a model for Success: German-English Marriages."    2019 is the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the births of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Victoria and Albert were first cousins.  Albert was the younger son of Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, whose sister, Victoire, who married the Duke of Kent, was the mother of Queen Victoria.

King Philippe is the great-great-great-grandson of King Leopold I of the Belgians, who was born Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saafeld, the younger brother of Duke Ernst I and the Duchess of Kent.

In 1826,  when Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg became extinct, Duke Ernst ( who was the third duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saafeld) had the best claim for Gotha.  He ceded Saafeld to the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen) and became Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Prince Leopold was first marriage to Princess Charlotte of Wales, heiress presumptive to the British throne.  She was the only child of King George IV.  Her death in childbirth in November 1817 led to a race among several of King George III's unmarried sons to find suitable wives and produce legitimate heirs.  The succession race was won by the little Mayflower, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent, as she succeeded her uncle William IV in 1837.  Three years later, on February 10, 1840,  Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert.

Leopold became the first king of the Belgians in 1830.  Two years later, he married Princess Louise of Orléans.

The King and Queen of the Belgians are in Germany for a state visit.

Prince Andreas of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the head of the Ducal house, and his elder son, Hereditary Prince Hubertus and his wife, Kelly,  joined the king and queen for their tour to the castle and exhibitions.

There are photos on Getty, but the images do not have the embedding code, which means bloggers cannot use the photos.

Here is a link to the local Gotha newspaper,Thüringer Allgemeine, which has an article and photographs.


https://www.thueringer-allgemeine.de/regionen/gotha/philippe-und-mathilde-erforschen-in-gotha-ihre-koeniglichen-urspruenge-id226432885.html

Margaret Rutherfurd marries Prince Charles Murat

July 8, 1929


Mrs. Margaret Rutherfurd, the former wife of Sir Paul Dukes, was married today to Prince Charles Michael Joachim Napoleon Murat, third son of Joachim Napoleon, 5th Prince Murat and Marie Cecile  Ney d'Elchingen,  reports the New York Times.

The wedding took place at the Church of St. Francois the Saviour in Paris.

The bride is the daughter of Mrs. William K.  Vanderbilt and the late Lewis Morris Rutherfurd of New York.  Her witnesses were Alan Rutherfurd, her cousin, and Jacques Balsan, who is married to the former Consuelo Vanderbilt.

The Duc d'Elchingen and the groom's brother, Prince Joachim, "appeared for the bridegroom."

It was a quiet ceremony with only "a few intimate friends" in attendance.

The Prince and Princess' civil marriage took place recently in Paris.

This is the third marriage for the Princess.  Her first marriage took place in September 1911 at the "little chapel" on the estate of her stepfather, the late William K. Vanderbilt at Deauville, Normandie, where she married Ogden Livingston Mills, now the Under Secretary of the Treasury.  The couple were divorce in Paris in 1920.

Two years later, in October 1922, she married Sir Paul Dukes, an English author and lecturer, who had been knighted for "his work as head of the British Secret Service in Russia in the early days of the Soviet."

This marriage took place in Nyack, New York.  Sir Paul and Lady Dukes lived in an apartment at 180 Riverside Drive.

Before her divorce from Sir Paul "there were persistent rumors" that she would marry Prince Charles Murat, "should she win her freedom.   Her divorce was finalized earlier this year.

It was during her second marriage that she dabbled as an actress and ballet dancer and also becoming a devotee "of the cult of Oom the omnipotent." Shortly after her divorce from Mills she became involved with "mystic order of the 'Tantriks of India,' a so-called love cult."  It was at the cult's Nyack center where she met Sir Paul Dukes.  He had come to the States "to recuperate from a nervous breakdown."

Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd was born in 1891, the second child of  Anne Harriman and her second husband, Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, the younger brother of Winthrop Rutherfurd, who was briefly engaged to Consuelo Vanderbilt, an engagement broken by her mother, Alva, in order to arrange the marriage with the Duke of Marlborough, which ended in divorce.

Anne's third marriage was to Consuelo's father, William Kissam Vanderbilt, thus making Margaret and Consuelo stepsisters.

This is the first marriage for Prince Charles Murat, who was born in 1892.  He is a great-great grandson of Joachim Murat, King of Naples, and Caroline Bonaparte, a sister of Napoleon I.    Prince Charles has American ancestry as his paternal grandmother, Caroline Georgina Fraser from Charleston, South Carolina, married Prince Napoleon Lucien Charles Murat, 2nd Prince Pontecorvo and 3rd Prince Murat.

Count Tono gets life for three murders

Source: Facebook

Count Anton "Tono" Goess. 55, was sentenced on July 5 to life for the murders of his father, stepmother and brother.

He received the maximum sentences for the triple murder at the family home, Schloss Bockfliess in Lower Austria.  The sentence was handed down in the Regional Court at Korneuburg.

The day before, according to news reports, Count Tono was in tears as he tried to reason his actions. "Everything was too much for me," he said in court.

His defense pleaded for manslaughter, which would have brought a ten year sentence as Tono, according to testimony, had suffered for years from a "tyrannical father," until he finally exploded last December. Tono also suffered from a hereditary disease, neurofibromatosis.  In 2017 he had to be revived after an arterial rupture that, according to witnesses, had left him "infocused and irritable."

The count confessed to the manslaughter of his family, but he did not believe he murdered him


https://royalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-reason-for-murder-dumb-waiter.html


https://royalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2018/12/count-anton-von-goess-arrested-in-three.html

https://www.bild.de/news/ausland/news-ausland/blutbad-auf-schloss-bockfliess-lebenslaenglich-fuer-graf-tono-55-63112090.bild.html

Archie's baptism

Both photos: @Chris Allerton/Sussex Royal

Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor was baptized today in the Private Chapel at Windsor Castle.  The officiant was Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Only 25 guests attended the ceremony in the small chapel (which seats 30).  Neither a guest list nor the names of the godparents were released.


The Church of England requires at least three godparents, two of whom must be the same sex as the infant who is being baptized.   Godparents must also be baptized in the Trinity and should also be confirmed.

This means Meghan's friends,  Jessica Mulroney and Serena Williams, cannot serve as godparents.  Jessica is Jewish and Serena is a Jehovah's Witness, a faith that does not recognize the Holy Trinity.

The Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended the baptism, as well as Meghan's mom, Doria Ragland, and Harry's two maternal aunts, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes.

The first photo was taken in the Green Drawing room at Windsor Castle.

One guest spotted arriving by car at Windsor was Alexandra "Tiggy" Pettifer (nee Legge-Bourke) who served as William and Harry's nanny, companion and as a personal assistant to the Prince of Wales.

Tiggy is the daughter of William Legge-Bourke and the Hon. Shan Bailey, daughter of the 3rd Baron Glanusk, who became the Princess Royal's Lady-in-Waiting in 1987.

It is possible that Tiggy is one of Archie's godmothers.  William and Harry are godfathers of Tiggy's two sons, respectively.

The Sunday Times is reporting that Charlie van Straubenzee is one of Archie's godfathers.   Charlies and the Duke of Sussex have been friends in school and, at Harry's wedding, Charlie gave one of speeches at the reception.

The christening service was described as "intimate."

Details about Archie's baptism

Archie will be baptized by the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

The names of the godparents will not be made public. 

Embed from Getty Images

The reason for the murder -- a dumbwaiter?

The trial of Count Anton "Tono" Goess begins Thursday in Austria  The 55-year-old nobleman is accused of killing his 92-year-old father, Count Johannes Ulrich, his stepmother, Margherita, 87, and his brother, Count Ernst, 52.

The alleged murders took place on December 19 at Schloss Bockfliess near Mistelbach.

It was largely assumed that a financial dispute was the reason for the murders, but it now appears that Count Tono allegedly killed his family due to a family fight about a dumb waiter.

Count Ulrich had installed a dumbwaiter nearly two years earlier in the castle, but there were legal issues concerning the installation as the castle is a protected monument.  Tono  and his brother, Ernst, wrote a joint letter to the local authorities on December 18.  The next afternoon, they presented the letter to their elderly father over cake and coffee in the fireplace room.

The count was not pleased with the letter, screaming "Everything is wrong.  Please do not send it.  I do not approve," he wrote on the letter, thus, according to one Austrian newspaper, signing "the death sentence for his family."

Count Tono got up and went downstairs to the hunting room and came back with a shotgun, and shot his father, stepmother and younger brother.

He was arrested later that day.

In his defense, Count Tono claimed that he suffers occasional delusions and severe headaches due to Neurofibromatosis, but several experts will testify that he is sane.

https://royalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2018/12/count-anton-von-goess-arrested-in-three.html

https://www.oe24.at/oesterreich/chronik/niederoesterreich/Tragoedie-im-Schloss-3-fach-Mord-wegen-Aerger-mit-Behoerden/386674790?fbclid=IwAR3w-4f45BhFbpqgr8Gty6im49GSpYds4vvPYAXHT1V-A66hKVYy_l_7h3o

50th anniversary of the Investiture of the Prince of Wales

from the New York Times

I was 15 years old on July 1, 1969.  My mom and I were up early to watch the live coverage of  the Investiture of the Prince of Wales, which was televised on all three networks.  CBS News also had highlights program at 10 p.m., which we also watched.

The Investiture of the Prince of Wales is not an ancient tradition.  According to Philip Ziegler's official biography, King Edward VIII,  "there had been no formal investiture of a Prince of Wales for more than 300 years, but Empress Frederick had suggested that ceremony should be revived."   Empress Frederick (the Princess Royal, eldest child of Queen Victoria) died in August 1901, nearly 7 months after the death of Victoria, so she certainly did not have a role her great-nephew David's investiture in 1911.   

David Lloyd George, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, saw the investiture as a "chance to gratify Welsh national pride and win political support."

Frances Donaldson's biography,  Edward VIII, pointed out that "legends tell of the investiture at Caernarvon Castle of Prince Charles  (afterwards King Charles I) in 1616, there existed no authentic record of an English prince having been formally invested in Wales."  Previous investitures had taken place at Westminster and in "various English towns."

It was Lloyd George, "the famous enemy of inherited privilege, who conceived the idea of transforming the ceremony into a Welsh pageant."

Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images

November 1969 National Geographic

http://royalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2008/11/national-geograhic-and-investiture-of.html

The marriage of Prince Joachim of Prussia and Countess Angelina of Solms-Laubach

Prince Joachim of  Prussia and Countess Angelina of Solms-Laubach were married today at the Monte-Sion Church in Mallorca.

Getty does not have an images so I am providing several links to photographers who were at the wedding.  I cannot use these photos due to copyright and costs.  Only Getty allows bloggers to use a selection of their collection for free.

The guests included members of the bride and groom's families, including  Prince Georg Friedrich and Princess Sophie of Prussia,  Grand Duchess Maria of Russia with her son, Grand Duke Georg and his longtime girlfriend, Rebecca Bettarini.

The bride was given away by her father, Count Friedrich-Ernst  zu Solms-Laubach.

The flower children were Angelina von Arnim, Emilia von Arnim, Oscar Collan
Caspar Keane, Elmira grafin zu Solms-Laubach and Fidelia grafin zu Solms-Laubach.

The couple's daughter, Georgina, was carried by her grandmother,  Countess Sylvia zu Solms-Laubach.


Countess Angelina Sylvia Anneliese Margot of Solms-Laubach is the second of five children of Count Friedrich Ernst of Solms-Laubach and Baroness Sylvia von Podewils.

https://www.ppe-agency.com/  has 83 photographs from the wedding.

https://www.bunte.de/royals/royals-weltweit/deutscher-adel/joachim-von-preussen-tiefer-rueckenausschnitt-xl-schleier-diesem-traumkleid-sagte-seine-angelina-ja.html

Baseball and royals

Everyone knows I am a huge baseball fan.  I love my Nats ... and this blog is about royalty.

Earlier today in London at the inaugural MLB Series in London, the Duke and Duchess met with the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.  The Duke is the Patron of the Invictus Games Foundation, which was the official charity of the two-game series.

This was the first time that a major league baseball game has been played in the United Kingdom.

The Duke of Sussex was scheduled to be at the game today - but surprise, he was accompanied by his wife, Meghan.

The Duke and Duchess visited both locker rooms where they were photographed with the teams.  The New York Yankees presented the couple with a tiny pinstripe Yankees shirt with Archie 19 on the back.  The Boston Red Sox's gift was a Red Sox onesie.

The Yankees defeated the Sox 17-13. 

Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images  Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images

Mail Call

A lovely thank you for TSH Prince and Princess Casimir of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, who were married on June 1.

the Sussexes' African tour announced

The Duchess will accompany the Duke  to South Africa, but he will be traveling alone to Angola, Malawi and Botswana. 

It is expected that the couple's infant son, Archie, will accompany his parents to South Africa.


The dates of the tour will be announced at a later date.

Queen & Eisenhower dedicate new Seaway

Embed from Getty Images 

June 26, 1959


Queen Elizabeth II and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower today dedicated the new St.. Lawrence Seaway.

The president and the queen "pledged that the great waterway will be the instrument for even closer friendship between two old friends, the United States and Canada," according to the Chicago Tribune.

Tens of thousands French-speaking Canadians were in the audience and both the president and the queen "gave parts of their dedication remarks in French.

Embed from Getty Images 

Elizabeth's "royal upbringing gave her an edge over the President" gave "nearly one-third of her 1,000 word address" in French.

"....this new water route will facilitate the meeting of thousands of citizens from the New and Old World, helping in this way to dissipate misunderstandings and to strengthen agreement and peace between nations."

She concluded her dedication with "It is a magnificent monument to the enduring friendship of our two nations and to their partnership in the development of North America.  That partnership is most agreeably symbolized, Mr. President, in the act that you and I have joined together to perform this ceremony today."

Embed from Getty Images 

When the ceremonies were over and the President and the Queen were ready to leave,  Elizabeth said: "It's been quite a day."   President Eisenhower replied: "Yes, but an enjoyable one."

George VI's nephew a German captive

Embed from Getty Images

June 26, 1944

Berlin Radio said tonight that Viscount Lascelles has been captured in Italy, according to the Associated Press.

George Henry Hubert Lascelles. 21, is the elder of two sons of the Princess Royal, younger sister of King George VI, and her husband, the the Earl of Harewood.

Shortly before the announcement in Berlin,  an official announcement was released from Harewood House in Leeds.

"Lord Harewood has had official intimation that Lt. Viscount Lascelles is reported wounded and missing and believed to be a prisoner of war.

Lord Lascelles joined the Grenadier Guards two years ago as a private.  He is the heir to his father's earldom.

A Toronto dispatch citing the Canadian Broadcasting company said  Lord Lascelles "was wounded so severely that he could not be moved except by jeep." Another Grenadier Guard volunteered to get a jeep but when he returned Lord Lascelles and his men were missing."

The Countess of Wessex in Norfolk

Both photos @Ken Stone

Two very sweet photos of HRH The Countess of Wessex at the Royal Norfolk Show earlier today.  The photos were taken by my friend, Ken Stone ... so envious his royal photo ops. Thanks, Ken.

These photos cannot be reproduced without his permission as he is the copyright holder.