HRH Princess Margarete of Bourbon-Parma turns 100 years old today.

Princess Margarete von Thurn und Taxis was born on 8 November 1909 at the Chateau de Beloeil, in Belgium, the family seat of the Princes of Ligne; her parents were Prince Alexander Karl von Thurn und Taxis (1881-1937) and his first wife Princess Marie, née Princess of Ligne (1885-1971), herself the daughter of Prince Louis de Ligne and Princess Elisabeth, née de la Rochefoucauld.

Princess Margarete - courtesy of roglo.eu

Margarete was the last of three children, and the only daughter; her eldest brother Raimondo married in 1949 Princess Evgenia of Greece (the daughter of Prince Giorgios and Princess Marie, née Bonaparte, and granddaughter of King Giorgios I).

Margarete’s parents divorced when she was 10; her father remarried in 1932 to Helena Holbrook-Walker; in 1923 Prince Alexander Karl was naturalized as Italian citizen, taking the title of Principe della Torre e Tasso (the Italian translation of their German surname) and was created Duke of Castel Duino, in Friuli, that still is the family seat of the descendants of Prince Raimondo and Princess Evgenia.

Princess Margarete married in Paris on 29 April 1931 His Royal Highness Prince Gaetano of Bourbon-Parma (1905-1958), the 24^th and youngest son of the late Duke Roberto of Parma (1848-1907) and his second wife Duchess Maria Antonia, née Infanta of Portugal (1862-1959). Among Prince Gaetano’s half-siblings were three titular Dukes of Parma (Enrico, Giuseppe and Elias), and Princess Maria Luisa of Bulgaria (the first wife of King Ferdinand I), while among his siblings were Duke Xavier of Parma (Head of the Carlism, and father of the present Duke Carlos Hugo), Empress Zita of Austria and Prince Felix of Luxembourg. Read more…

MAfan Italian Royals Biography, Birthday, Bourbon-Parma, Princess Margarete

On Monday, Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands attended a meeting of the ‘club of Rome’ in Amsterdam. Former president of the USSR, Michael Gorbatsjov, also attended the meeting, as he is a honorairy member of the club.

Click on image to see picture at PPE

The club of Rome is an association that was founded in the late 60-ties by European scientists who were worried about the state of the world. During the Global Assembly, a two day conference of the club that was held in the music building near the IJ river (Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ) was the last in a series of seven meetings that had to prepare the climate summit in Copenhagen, later this year. The theme of the conference was climate, energy and economic recuperation.

After the conference the queen took her time to talk with former president Gorbatsjov, as can be seen in this clip from the local television station AT5. Apart from the scientists and politicians, the conference was also attended by prince Carlos of Bourbon-Parma, a nephew of Queen Beatrix. The prince recently announced his engagement to Annemarie Gualthérie van Weezel.

Click here to go to the website of the club of Rome. And click here for the current events thread of Queen Beatrix.

Marengo Dutch Royals, Italian Royals Bourbon-Parma, Environment, Mikhail Gorbachev, Prince Carlos, Queen Beatrix, USSR

  80 years ago the engagement was announced between HRH Prince Umberto of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, and HRH Princess Maria José of Belgium.

The union between the 25-years-old son and heir of King Vittorio Emanuele III and Queen Elena of Italy and the 23-years-old daughter of King Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians was planned since the two Princes were only children – probably during the First World War the two Courts began to think about their marriage; according to what Maria José remembered years later, she grew up thinking to marry Umberto and imagining him as the fairytale prince; on the other side, Umberto knew that if he would have married, he surely would have married Maria José, as their families had planned.

Umberto and Maria José on their engagement day - from reumberto.it

The two Princes met for the first time in 1918 for a visit to Venice, together with their families; at that time, Umberto was 14 and Maria José 12; she was studying in Italy, in the Istituto Statale della Ss. Annunziata, a very exclusive girls’ boarding school in Florence.

In the following years they met several times, at the wedding of Prince Amedeo, Duke of Apulia and Princess Anne d’Orleans in 1927 and on vacation in Tuscany in the summer 1928. In the winter of the same year, Umberto visited Bruxelles, and he was expected to ask Maria Josè to marry him, but nothing happened, as well as nothing had happened between them when they met before; the main reason is that both Umberto and Maria José felt forced to marry, and in that period they didn’t want to do; in particular Umberto didn’t want to marry a woman that he didn’t love and he knews only a bit. Read more…

MAfan Belgian Royals, Historical Royals, Italian Royals Anniversary, Engagement, Queen Maria José, Savoy, Umberto II

  Prince Carlos of Bourbon-Parma, the eldest son of the Duke of Parma and Princess Irene of The Netherlands, will get married. The family announced today that the prince will marry Annemarie Gualthérie van Weezel next year.

Click on image to see picture at PPE

Prince Carlos Javier Bernardo of Bourbon-Parma, Prince of Piacenza, was born in Nijmegen on 27 January 1970. He studied Economy, History and Political Sciences at the Wesleyan University in Connecticut and Demographics and Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.  At the moment he is the director of a foundation for Innovation and Sustainability.

His fiancée, Annemarie Cecilia Gualthérie van Weezel, was born in The Hague on 18 December 1977.  She has an older brother and a younger sister. Annemarie went to secundairy school in Strasbourg (France) and studied Law at the University of Utrecht. After this she studied Radio- and Television journalism at the University of Groningen. At the moment she works for the NOS (the public channel) as a parlamentary journalist in The Hague and Brussels. 

Annemarie is the daughter of Hans Gualthérie van Weezel and Ank de Visser. Her father was a member of parliament for the Christian Democratic party. Later he was a member of the European Council in Strasborug, after which he became the Dutch ambassador in Luxembourg.  Annemarie’s paternal grandfather is Jan Hans Gualthérie van Weezel, who was the head of the police in The Hague. During the second World War he was a member of the Dutch resistance and the commander of the resistance in Velzen. He was married to Constance Eveline Crommelin, whose family belongs to the Dutch patriciate with links to the nobility.

A link to Annemarie’s anscestors can be found here. Read more about the engagement in this thread.

Marengo Dutch Royals, Italian Royals Annemarie Gualthérie van Weezel, Bourbon-Parma, Engagement, Prince Carlos

One year ago, on 27 September 2008, the wedding of His Royal Highness Prince Aimone of Savoy, Duke of Apulia, and Princess Olga of Greece took place in Patmos, the wonderful Greek island in the Aegean sea.

The Prince and Princess got engaged in 2005, and married in a civil ceremony in the Italian Embassy in Moscow on 16 September 2008, after having asked and obtained the allowance for the marriage to Prince Amedeo, Aimone’s father and Head of the Family, following the rules of the Royal House.

Click to see at the website of Prince Amedeo

They married in a Greek Orthodox ceremony, but recognised by the Catholic Church which Aimone belongs to; the ceremony took place in the Church of the Evangelismos of the Virgin Mary at Pano Kambos, celebrated by the Patriarchal Exarch of Patmos, Archimandrite Andipas Nikitaras, on the 65^th birthday of Prince Amedeo, “a tender thought of Olga and Aimone, a wonderful present” has explained the Prince.

Although a private and quite simple organized event, attended only by 40 guests, the wedding was attended by several european Royals, all related to Olga and Aimone (who are second cousins); among them were the grooms’s father and stepmother Prince Amedeo and Princess Silvia of Savoy, the bride’s parents Prince Michael and Princess Marina of Greece, Aimone’s mother Princess Claude of Orleans; the two sisters of the groom, Princess Bianca, Countess Arrivabene-Valenti-Gonzaga, and Princess Mafalda, Mrs. Lombardo di San Chirico, with their husbands and children; the sister of Olga, Princess Alexandra, Mrs. Mirzayantz, and family; King Constantine and Queen Anna Maria of Greece, Queen Sofia of Spain and Princess Irene of Greece, who are cousins of both Prince Amedeo and Prince Michael; Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy and Prince and Princess Casimir of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. Read more…

MAfan Italian Royals Prince Aimone, Princess Olga, Savoy, Wedding Anniversary

 Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy, the 72 year old son of the late King Umberto II of Italy and his wife Queen Maria José, will be put on trial, accused of having took part in criminal association with the purpose of corruption of officials. The trial will begin on 21 December 2009, at 9.30am in Potenza, Italy.

Click to see at the website of Vittorio Emanuele

He has told to the press to trust in the verification of the facts, and to be very sad due to these charges; his lawyer has declared to be “disappointed as a lawyer and scared as a citizen because the air has been used as a proof” of these accusations.

He was arrested after a casually-begun investigation on 16 June 2006 together with other 12 people, accused of corruption, exploitation of prostitution, extortion, having lied in official documents, threats, abetment. He was released a week later, and placed under house arrest until 20 July 2006, when he was definitely released.

His arrest and the charges he is accused of had induced his cousin Prince Amedeo of Savoy to publicly state his claims to the Headship of House Savoy, being “in presence of facts that can injure the Royal House”. According to Prince Amedeo, Vittorio Emanuele lost his rights to the Italian Throne because he married Marina Ricolfi Doria without the (never requested) permission of the then Head of the Family King Umberto II; the never authorized marriage has implied for Vittorio Emanuele the loss of all his rights to the Italian Throne and of all his titles for himself and his descendants, according to the rules of Savoy Family.

This is the second trial for Vittorio Emanuele, after the one following the murder of Dirk Hamer in 1978; Vittorio Emanuele was charged of having killed him and offensive weapon possession, but the Assize Court of Paris acquitted him from the first accusation in 1991 with a very controversial decision. Later in 2006, he has been recorded during a phone call, talking about this trial and the french judges admitting that he “was in the wrong” but that he “fooled them”.

More about Vittorio Emanuele can be found in this thread.

MAfan Italian Royals Legal Matters, Prince Vittorio Emanuele, Savoy

Francesco II and Maria Sofia - click to see bigger

150 years ago, the Italian peninsula was divided in several States; one of them, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, was ruling over all the south of Italy and the Sicily; another one, the Kingdom of Sardinia, was beginning to expand itself and to conquer several other Italian regions.

On 22 May 1859, King Ferdinando II of the Two Sicilies died in Caserta. His very reactionary politic, fully supported by his second wife Maria Teresa, a daughter of the famous Archduke Karl, Duke of Teschen, was described by W. E. Gladstone as “the negation of God erected to a system of government”. His successor as King of the Two Sicilies was his eldest son Francesco, a very shy and deeply religious man, unable to take any kind of decision. The new King inhereited a country politically in very critical conditions: the Kingdom was threatened to be invaded by the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the internal political situation was marked by a strong fight between the liberals, supported by the new Queen Maria Sofia, the very unconventional sister of the famous Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and the conservatives, strongly supported by the Dowager Queen Maria Teresa.

Prince Carlo Filangieri - click to see at the website of Filangieri Museum in Naples

In the summer 1859 this fight exacerbated inside of the Two Sicilian Court: the influence of Queen Maria Sofia on the King was speedily increasing, she succeeded in persuading the King to grant the Constitution to his Nation and she asked to the liberal Prime Minister, Prince Carlo Filangieri, to write the document. At the same time, Queen Maria Teresa begun to feel herself in danger, and started to plot against the King, the Queen and the Constitution.

Helped and supported by the reactionary members of the Court, including a lot of clergymen, army officers and courtiers, Maria Teresa plotted to dethrone Francesco and to create King her own firstborn son Luigi, Count of Trani; between August and September in some cities appeared on the walls writings celebrating King Luigi I. Read more…

MAfan Historical Royals, Italian Royals Francesco II, Murder Plot, Queen Maria Sofia, Two Sicilies

Click to see the picture at royaltyguide.nl

 Her Royal Highness Princess Maria Cristina of Bourbon-Parma died yesterday in Wien, aged 84. She was born in Wien on 7 June 1925, the eighth and youngest daughter of Prince Elias of Bourbon-Parma and his wife Maria Anna, née Archduchess of Austria. Her paternal grandparents were Roberto I, the last Duke of Parma, and his first wife Maria Pia, a daughter of King Ferdinando II of the Two Sicilies; her maternal grandparents were Archduke Friedrich of Austria, Duke of Teschen and Supreme Commander of the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I, and his wife Isabelle, born Princess of Croy.

Like most of her siblings, Princess Maria Cristina never married; only her sister Alice married to her second cousin Infante Carlos of Spain, claimant to the Two Sicilian Throne. Of the remaining siblings, a brother, Carlo, died aged 7 in 1912; another brother, Roberto, became the titular Duke of Parma at the death of their Father in 1959, until his own death in 1974, while the youngest brother Francesco died unmarried in 1939; one of her sister, Giovanna, was killed in a shooting accident in 1949, while the other two sisters died unmarried.

Princess Maria Cristina suffered in these last years of poor health; her rests will probably be buried in the crypt of her Family in Monichkirchen, in Austria, near to her parents and most of her siblings.

More information can be found in this thread.

MAfan Italian Royals Bourbon-Parma, Death, Princess Maria Cristina

Click to see the picture on the website of the Royal Family of Savoy

HRH Prince Umberto of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, has been baptized on saturday, 18 July 2009. The cerimony took place in Giuggianello, near Lecce, in Apulia, the italian region Umberto’s father is Duke of.

The godparents of the little Prince are HRH Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, for whom Princess Bianca, Countess Arrivabene-Valenti-Gonzaga stood proxy, and Count Carlo Radicati di Primeglio; Prince Umberto has been christened by his distant cousin, Prince Alessandro of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, who is a Catholic priest.

The cerimony was attended by TRH Prince Amedeo and Princess Silvia of Savoy, Duke and Duchess of Savoy, Prince and Princess Michael of Greece, HRH Princess Bianca of Savoy with her husband Count Giberto Arrivabene-Valenti-Gonzaga and children, HRH Princess Mafalda of Savoy with her husband Francesco Lombardo di San Chirico and children, TRH Prince Casimiro and Princess Maria Cristina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Don Alvaro and Dona Antonella d’Orleans-Borbon.

Prince Umberto is the son and heir of HRH Prince Aimone, Duke of Apulia, and his wife Olga, née Princess of Greece; he was born in Paris on 7 March 2009.

More infos can be found in the website of the Royal House of Savoy, and in this thread.

MAfan Italian Royals Christening, Prince Aimone, Prince Umberto, Princess Olga, Savoy

Click on image to see photo at Belga

  The last few days all member states of the European Union organised elections for the European parlament. Belgium’s royal family set a good example and all adult members of the royal family were pictured while visiting the polling stations. The duke and duchess of Brabant voted at a polling station in Laeken, as did princess Astrid, her husband Lorenz and their two eldest children prince Amedeo and princess Maria Laura. Prince Laurent and his wife princess Claire went to a polling station in Tervuren to vote.

Click on image to see photo at AP

The king and queen however were unable to vote, as the constitution prohibits that. Apart from elections for the European parlament the Belgians yesterday also voted for the regional parliaments. In Luxembourg Princess Alexandra and her brother prince Félix of Luxembourg went to the polling station in Luxembourg city. Click here to see a picture.

In Hungary archduke Georg and archduchess Eilika voted in Soskut, some 30 kms south of Budapest. The archduke is a member of the junior opposition conservative party, the Hungarian Democratic Forum. He was also one of their candidates for the European parlament, but according to the first reports his party did not get enough votes to get him there. In Turin, prince Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, son of the pretender to the Italian throne, voted for the first time in Italy. Like archduke Georg, Emanuele Filiberto tried to get elected into European parlament but failed. Click here to see a picture.

Marengo Austrian Royals, Belgian Royals, Italian Royals, Luxembourg Royals Archduchess Eilika, Archduke Georg, Elections, European Union, Prince Emanuele Filiberto, Prince Felix of Luxembourg, Prince Philippe, Princess Alexandra of Luxembourg, Princess Mathilde