Saddest Royals


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As for sad royals, Prince Charles because he never looks happy, CP Masako, Tsarina Alexandra, and the Princesses of Monaco - Grace, Caroline & Stephanie.

I think Charles looks much happier since he married Camilla, actually. I wouldn't count him as a sad royal at all.

I think one of the saddest royals was Queen Victoria, in the latter part of her life. She really adored Albert and had to spend nearly 40 years of her life without him. She also lost three children before her own death.

Princess Margaret strikes me as having had a pretty unhappy ending to her life--she couldn't marry her first love, her marriage ended in divorce and she suffered with ill health for years before she died. :sad:
 
Queen Beatrix's speech after the A. Attacks this spring just about broke my heart- she was so sad & humble.
 
I would never consider Princess Diana or Charles as sad,they both got what they wanted in the end.I would add Princess Caroline of Monaco to my list,because of the losses of her beloved mother and husband.
 
If the allegation of Anna anderson to be grand duchess Anastazia proved,once,to be true,nobody would have argued that she will be the saddest royal.
 
Queen Victoria never came out of mourning when her beloved Bertie died.
 
:previous:
and always tried to keep in mourning her whole family...
 
Queen Victoria never came out of mourning when her beloved Bertie died.

:previous:
and always tried to keep in mourning her whole family...

I think that showed you how much she loved him and was attached to him.

A few years into the marriage, Diana was quite a sad person, showed in pictures alot. I would say she was one of the saddest royals.
 
Yes, Dazzling, it's true that she loved him very very much, but after his death she became a little too much oppressive toward her family...
 
well the one which comes to my mind is princess sophia dorothea of celle;
she was divorced by her husband prince george louis of hanover (the future king george I of great britain) in 1794. she was then confined to the castle of ahlden for the rest of her life and her children was not permitted to visit her. she died in 1726 !!

btw this reminds me of a similar story, that of the mother of prince albert, the prince consort: princess louise of gotha.
she too was divorced by her husband (duke ernst I of coburg) and not permitted to visit her children.
nothing can be worst for a mother dont you think !! how :sad:
 
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Princess Sybilla of Sweden and Princess Marina of Kent , both husbands died in air-place crashes.
 
As to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Luise of Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg - Alberts mother - comes to my mind as well. I always thought she had quite an unhappy life - her mother died shortly after her birth, at the age of 16 she had to marry Ernst I. of Sachsen-Coburg-Saalfeld, the marriage was unhappy and she had to leave the court after the break up with Ernst without her two sons. Although she had five happy years with her new husband at St. Wendel, she suffered badly from the separation from her children. And then she died of cancer, only 30 years old... A short and tragic life IMO. :ermm:
 
Definately, Empress Soraya of Iran and Princess Diana of Wales
These are two saddest royals that have passed into eternity.
I rarely see a full smile on Charlotte Casiraghi.Maybe she is serious and not sad. I do not know which.
 
Empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran always looks sad in photos I have seen. I think this is the saddest royal I know.
 
Archduke Rudolf Habsburg: lack of proper bond with his parents, lack of understanding among his contemporaries, unhappy marriage, unhappy love (Mary Vetsera), huge depression, suicide at age of 30. The only joy of his life was his daughter Erzi.
 
I'd add King Baudouin, for losing his mother as a child, having to take the throne so young, and never having children. (Although Fabiola obviously made him happy.) The Duke of Windsor had a pretty unhappy life, too.
 
To me, and despite all her beauty, glamour and wealth, P. Caroline of Monaco is one of the saddest royals. Just look: she loses her mother in a sudden brutal accident right after a scandalous divorce; then, another tragical accident kils the love of her life and leaves her children totally at her care. Suddenly she envolves herself with a married man ( in spite of his noble condition ), marries him and has to put up with his temper and bad habits... The same man who fails her when she needs him most: the death and funeral of her father. Finnaly the same man who puts her to public humilliation with an unknown woman, and forcing her o face a lonely life once more. I must admit that if after all this P. Caroline is still able to lift her head high and proud, she must be a great woman... :cry: :cry: :cry:
 
I'd also go for king Baudouin, he faced many sad things throughout his life, sometimes I get mad specially because of the children part, he and Fabiola would've been such great parents; but in the end I think he was happy because he had such a great woman by his side, but still, he had some really sad moments in his life
 
(...) The same man who fails her when she needs him most: the death and funeral of her father. (...)

Well, you can't really say that the failed her, cause he was heavily ill with some kind of a pancreatic disease at that time and was in the intensive care unit of Princess Grace Hospital. They thought about flying him to Germany but it was too dangerous for him, so it must have been pretty serious when he wasn't even transportable.
 
I'd say Princess Diana and Prince Frederick, son of King George II. The former didn't have a very happy upbringing, her marriage didn't work out: indeed I don't really think Charles loved her at all, and when she joined the Royal Family, she had no idea of what she was meant to be doing. Nobody helped her at all.

As for Prince Frederick, his parents hated him. Why??
 
Her sister Elisabeth had a strange epiphany of her own and became a nun. Now that was unusual--to give up all that material comfort to be a nun?

Not exactly. As a member of the ruling house, she was treated with respect and courtesy and deference. Next, she had contributed financially to the welfare of the religious community to which she joined and professed vows. Furthermore, she was an abbess, a religious superior. Grand Duchess Elizabeth was no ordinary nun by any stretch of the imagination.
 
Just read on the Iranian royal forum that Ali Reza, the second son of Empress Farah Pahlavi committed suicide today. So this must be a nightmare for the family since already Princess Leila committed suicide in June 2001.:eek:
 
Just read on the Iranian royal forum that Ali Reza, the second son of Empress Farah Pahlavi committed suicide today. So this must be a nightmare for the family since already Princess Leila committed suicide in June 2001.:eek:

That is just awful! No family deserves that.
 
Just read on the Iranian royal forum that Ali Reza, the second son of Empress Farah Pahlavi committed suicide today. So this must be a nightmare for the family since already Princess Leila committed suicide in June 2001.:eek:


OMG!!! that is terrible news:cry:
 
Princess Leila was the only daughter of the late shah of Iran and empress Farah.She commited suicide too.
What a sad news,I am so sorry for this family

Just a correction: Leila Pahlavi was not the only daughter of the Shah and Farah, she was the younger daughter. The couple had 4 children, two boys and two girls. Leila would be 40 this year, were she alive. And Ali Reza was 44, so very young.:ermm: It's very sad and unfair indeed! I just cannot imagine their mother's sorrow from now on. An unbelievable tragedy - May God help this woman stand this!!
 
Sad to hear this tragic news.
 
Inbreeding is harmful in a direct correlation to how many recessive genes for illnesses there are in the family.

Longterm, multigenerational inbreeding tends to collect recessive genes and keep them closeted in one segment of the gene pool. If no such genes are present, there's no problem with marrying a cousin.

Mutations tend to happen randomly, so that one could expect that after 800 years or so of inbreeding, that more problems would appear (as compared with the case studies of the 10,000 first cousin marriages, which concluded genetic problems were not statistically much worse than with stranger marriages).

But, the royal families of Europe are textbook examples of the problems of recessive genes accumulating in one branch of the gene pool. They're very lucky their problems are not worse than they have been. However, the sheer number of miscarriages, stillborns and multiple child-deaths is typical of inbreeding populations (as anyone who has studied genetics must surely know).

If we were to take the recently studied 10,000 first cousins in America and have them all inbreed for the next 8-10 generations, the results of the inbreeding would be much more apparent. Statistically, it's impossible for it to be otherwise - that's how recessive genes work.

Many of us probably have some recessive genes that cause no problems in ourselves, having inherited a single gene that mutated in some great-great-grandparent. But if we marry some other descendant of that same great-great-grandparent, the chances are much higher of getting the same rare mutation.

Sources:

How to compute an inbreeding coefficient

Bittles, A.H. (2001). "A Background Background Summary of Consaguineous marriage". consang.net. Retrieved 2010, citing Bittles, A.H.; Neel, J.V. (1994). "The costs of human inbreeding and their implications for variation at the DNA level". Nature Genetics (8): 117–121.

PLoS ONE: The Role of Inbreeding in the Extinction of a European Royal Dynasty

(And many other articles).

So do not use the recent "it's not that bad to marry your first cousin" study to claim that generations of first, second and third cousin marriage does not result in a higher expression of homozygous recessive illnesses, that would be an error.
 
I am very saddened to hear about Leila Pahlavi, somehow that tragic news had eluded me until tonight. I feel as if I know her, somehow, as I remember when she was born and what a pretty little girl she was.

And now to hear that Ali Reza also took his own life...it's unbelievably sad for that family. Ali Reza had so much to offer the world in his scholarship, but the depression he and Leila suffered from must have been indescribable. How Empress Farah copes, I cannot imagine. She has written memoir (after Leila's death but before Ali Reza's), and I think it would be a very good read.
 
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