Possible Brides for Nicholas II


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Can you imagine putting that surname on your passport, let alone a banking cheque or perhaps the back of a soccer/football uniform? :D

That makes me wonder if it really is a surname or a territorial designation. Like the difference between Franz of Bavaria and Franz Wittlesbach.
I believe that the name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha is not really a surname. As I understand it the true name of all the Saxon families was Wettin. Hanover was Guelph and Prussia was Hohenzollern. Wpuld their be one for Schleswig Holstein families.
 
But again,Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg was a cadet line of German(Oldenburg) dynasty that ruled in Denmark for centuries,which,again,was originally a German dynasty who married almost exclusively Germanic Princesses...
But Louises mother Landgravine Charlotte of hesse was a born Princess of Denmark and sister of King Chirstian VIII. of Denmark. His son King Frederik VII. had no descendants as had Charlotte's older sisters so she was closest related to him.
 
But Louises mother Landgravine Charlotte of hesse was a born Princess of Denmark and sister of King Chirstian VIII. of Denmark. His son King Frederik VII. had no descendants as had Charlotte's older sisters so she was closest related to him.

Yes,correct...but what I meant was that Denmark was ruled by German dynasty(Oldenburg) for centuries marrying almost exclusively Germans...

By doing that they perceived German blood no matter if they ruled in Denmark,Russia,Sweden...

Remember,a German,Christian von Oldenburg was the one who became first King Christian I of Denmark from Oldenburg dynasty in 1448 and Queen Margarethe II also belongs to junior branch of this same family...

From then on,as they were Germans in male line,they married almost exclusively German Princesses...

Here is a list of Queen consorts until the reign of Frederik VII:


Princess Dorothea von Brandenburg (1430-1495)

Princess Christina of Saxony (1461-1527)

Archduchess Isabella of Habsburg,Princess of Spain (1501-1526)

Princess Sophie von Pommern-Wolgast (1498-1568)

Princess Dorothea von Sachsen-Lauenburg (1511-1571)

Princess Sophia von Mecklenburg-Güstrow (1557-1631)

Princess Anna Katherina von Brandenburg (1575-1612)

Princess Sophie Amalie von Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1628-1685)

Princess Charlotte von Hessen-Cassel (1650-1714)

Princess Luise von Mecklenburg-Güstrow (1667-1721)

Countess Anna Sophie von Reventlow (1693-1743)

Princess Sophie Magdalene von Brandenburg-Kulmbach (1700-1770)

Princess Luise von Hannover,Princess of Great Britain (1724-1751)

Princess Juliane Marie von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1729-1796)

Princess Caroline Mathilde von Hannover,Princess of Great Britain (1751-1775)

Princess Marie Sophie von Hessen-Kassel (1767-1852)

Princess Caroline Amalie von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg (1796-1881)


If you look carefully to this list you will see that there is not a single Queen of Denmark until 19th century who hasn't been ethnically German.They might be Princesses of Great Britain,but since House of Hannover ruled there they were still German by blood...

Russian Emperors from the Holstein-Gottorp line followed similar example...the last Russian Emperor Nikolai II had only 1/256 of real Russian blood.The most part was German.The same can be said for Prince Chales who has almost 3/4 of German blood and that 1/4 of Scottish blood due to Queen Mother...

The point of all this is to prove that there is almost not a drop of Danish blood in Oldenburg dynasty that ruled in Denmark for centuries and junior branch still rules...

If you take a look at Prince Philipp's ancestry,who was born prince of Greece and Denmark,out of his 128 nearest ancestors only 3 of them were not Germans...First two were Jean de la Fontaine(French) and his wife Maria Rosalia Bonelli(Italian) who lived in city of the Biberach in Baden-Württemberg.The third was Anton Kornely who was obviously a Hungarian.The rest of them were Germans!

King Christian IV tried to marry a lady with real danish blood,Kirsten Munk,but his marriage was doomed from the start and treated morganatic due to her low birth...
 
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Of course the argument about the British royal family being German is rather irrelevant considering that the majority of the so-called English are German in descent themselves - from the Anglo-Saxons, the Celts (which were originally Germanic tribes) or Scandinavian.

To find someone in England with no German ancestry would be rather hard.
 
Of course the argument about the British royal family being German is rather irrelevant considering that the majority of the so-called English are German in descent themselves - from the Anglo-Saxons, the Celts (which were originally Germanic tribes) or Scandinavian.

To find someone in England with no German ancestry would be rather hard.

You are right,I forgot about that fact...
 
The point of all this is to prove that there is almost not a drop of Danish blood in Oldenburg dynasty that ruled in Denmark for centuries and junior branch still rules...

.

One should not forget that people had a much wider horizont in the times when the idea of national states was not yet important. A princess marrying to Denmark simply became the Danish queen, with noone interested in her "nationality" and "blood" (as long as it was Royal) because it was expected that she became as Danish as possible and ASAP after her marriage.

Think of "the white Liesl" - Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick who married Charles III. of Spain. As soon as she married him and converted to the Catholic faith, she was considered by her court "the Spanish queen" and had to live according to the Spanish customs at court. When 3 years into her marriage, her husband inherited Austria and was elected emperor (as Charles VI.) she moved to Vienna and lived there as the German empress.
 
A princess marrying to Denmark simply became the Danish queen, with noone interested in her "nationality" and "blood" (as long as it was Royal)

At that time,nationality of the future Princess or a Queen did matter for the sake of politics of one country...

Blood did also matter as it brings prestige and more importantly connections...

First few Kings of Sweden from Bernadotte dynsty had problems finding a suitable bride because they were treated as parvenue dynasty for the lack of "blood" and "connections"...

When Augusta Viktoria was considered as a future bride of Wilhelm II her mothers ancestors(Hohenlohe-Langenburgs) were treated as "good enough" which means they barely scraped through,while her father's family has been tainted by by the blood of her ancestress whom they referred as "a mere Danish Countess"(Dannenskiold-Samsoe)...
 
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I think the BRF having a German blood from 150yrs ago is more relevant that the larger British population being descended from Germans 900-1000 years ago.
The anti-Germanic feelings of some countries when it comes to certain Royals is intriguing as well as bigoted. Alexandra was called that "German woman" by people who adored Catherine the Great who was also German. Prince Albert was hated by the high and mighty for being German, and those same people who disliked him just conveniently forgot their precious Queen was a Hanover and Saxe-Coburg.
 
I think the BRF having a German blood from 150yrs ago is more relevant that the larger British population being descended from Germans 900-1000 years ago.
The anti-Germanic feelings of some countries when it comes to certain Royals is intriguing as well as bigoted. Alexandra was called that "German woman" by people who adored Catherine the Great who was also German. Prince Albert was hated by the high and mighty for being German, and those same people who disliked him just conveniently forgot their precious Queen was a Hanover and Saxe-Coburg.

I wonder why people hated them so much in general?One may have a reason to hate Hitler in particular,but to hate somebody JUST because he is German is insane...

Prince Claus was hated in the Netherlands at the beginning just because he was German,but through years public opinion softened and he later became one of the most popular members of the royal family...

Not to mention Catherine the Great who has done so much for the Russians without a drop of Russian blood,but also never forgetting who she was and her Stettiner German accent with whom she spoke for the rest of her life...

Not to mention hailed Queen Victoria whose first language and mother-tongue was German...yet she was considered British,unlike her husband who was often described as "that petty German Princeling"...
 
Not to mention hailed Queen Victoria whose first language and mother-tongue was German...yet she was considered British,unlike her husband who was often described as "that petty German Princeling"...

My dear Marc23,

Are you sure about this statement? Queen Victoria was fluent in German, as it was her mother's tongue, but her grandfather George III and her father were both born in England and spoke English. I thought she learned both languages at the same time but never that German was her first language.
 
Victoria, like her ancestors and children grew up multi-lingual in speaking at least both German and English equally. Her children also learnt French from childhood.

Her preferred language at home was German - first with her mother and governess (both German) and then with Albert but she was equally proficient in English and could move equally from one language to the other.
 
I think the BRF having a German blood from 150yrs ago is more relevant that the larger British population being descended from Germans 900-1000 years ago.

If you are going to use that argument that you also need to remember that the present British royal family are direct descendents of the Anglo-Saxon Kings from 900+ years ago.

They simply intermarried more into Continental families than the peasants but their ancestry is as strongly built in the Anglo-Saxons as the majority of the British people who ancestors were also German.

The Queen is a direct descendent of Harold Godwinson - the king who died at Hastings, Alfred the Great - the king who defeated the Danes and founded the English navy (and burnt the cakes) and even from Egbert of Wessex - the very first King of England.
 
Yet again, i don't consider who your ancestors were a 1000yrs ago to have more impact to who your ancestors were 200yrs ago. So whoever is decended from William, Matilda, Stephan or Alfred is a mute point for me.
As to the anti-German feelings amongst so many of these countries, the feeling was pre-Hitler so I don't think it's necessary to even bring him up. To add to the crazy list of "they just hate me because I'm German" is Marie Antoinette; though the hatred towards her from those at court might have been due to Austria's policies.
 
But my point is that the present British population and the present British royal family have the same ethnic background - and like it or not it is German - whether it is 200 years ago or 900 years ago it is still German.

Don't forget that since 1066 of the English/British monarchs only William I, William II, Stephen, Henry II, Richard II, Edward IV, George I and George II were born outside of England/Wales (with James I and Charles I born in Scotland). So of 40 monarch since 1066 8 have been born outside the UK and yet still they aren't British.

The fact is that they have been being born in the UK - as has the majority of the population - which is also of German ethnic origin - but have some other ethnicity in them - French and Spanish for instance - doesn't mean they aren't as British as the descendents of other Germans who invaded the country during the period BCE or in the first 1000 years CE.

They are all German in ethnicity.

The hatred of the Germans rises in the late 19th Century as Germany supassed Britain as the industrial powerhouse in Europe and as a result of the vicious anti-German propaganda of the first world war. For the previous 1500 years Britain had had much closer relatinhips with German states than with the French for instance - why - because of common ethnicity. Even the English language is more Germanic than anything else. Yes there are some influences from the Romance languages but it is more German - even the days of the weeks are named after the Anglo-Saxon gods (yes I know some of you will say Viking but... they were the days of the week in use before the Viking invasions and of course reflect the fact that the Vikings themselves were also ethnically German).

Fact is that most of Europe is descended from the Germanic tribes that invaded western Europe in the years at and after the fall of the Roman Empire - the Vandals, Goths, Franks, Huns etc - all Germanic tribes.

NB Mods I do think that this thread is getting off track a lot.
 
My dear Marc23,

Are you sure about this statement?

Yes,try to google "Queen Victoria's first language" and the answer will come as there are many links ;)

She was raised mainly by her mother with Baron Stockmar and Baroness von Lehzen...
 
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Even the English language is more Germanic than anything else.

English language officially belongs to West Germanic languages along with Dutch,Scottish,Frisian,German and Low German...

North Germanic languages include Danish,Norwegian,Swedish,Icelandic and Faroese...
 
Clearly I am not making sense to some. BEFORE WWI and BEFORE WWII! There were a lot of selective anti-German feelings in certain countries, usually when the monarch married someone from a German state. It is quite strange considering that these same countries have had German monarchs before and were just fine with it; I suppose it is just selective bigotry.
I am not even going to bother talking about this 900yr old ancestors because I have stated that to me it means nothing.
Back to the selective bigotry, perhaps that negative feelings towards Alexandria and her heritage was influenced by Alexandria herself and her personality. Unlike Catherine The Great she didn't succeed in her role so any thing negative they could find on her was going to be exacerbated including her ethnicity.
 
To be fair, looking dour and not smiling was the practice when taking photos during Alexandra's time. I have often been struck by how downright evil Mary of Teck looks in her photos.
In those days photographs required exposure times of anything up to one minute, sometimes more if it was a large camera and glass plates. Imagine having to assume an unmoving or frozen pose with a big smile for that length of time. Before too long it would become a strained grimace.

In any case having a formal photograph taken was a serious business (and something of an ordeal) and a smile would have been considered to be quite improper or not befitting the occasion. Thus photos of smiling royals (and most other people as well) from that era are few and far between.

That makes me wonder if it really is a surname or a territorial designation. Like the difference between Franz of Bavaria and Franz Wittlesbach.
I believe that the name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha is not really a surname. As I understand it the true name of all the Saxon families was Wettin. Hanover was Guelph and Prussia was Hohenzollern. Would their be one for Schleswig Holstein families.
Saxe-Coburg & Gotha is indeed a territorial designation and held by one branch of the Wettins, just as Saxony, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Meiningen etc were/are others.
The Grand Ducal House of Oldenburg and the S-H-S-G families of Denmark, Greece, Norway, and, beginning with Charles, of Great Britain, are all branches of the Oldenburg dynasty (as are the Romanovs, descendants of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp who became Tsar Peter III). 'Oldenburg' is thus both territorial and nominal, if those branches apart from the Romanovs and future (Oldenburg-)Windsors actually used surnames.
 
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Clearly I am not making sense to some. BEFORE WWI and BEFORE WWII! There were a lot of selective anti-German feelings in certain countries, usually when the monarch married someone from a German state. It is quite strange considering that these same countries have had German monarchs before and were just fine with it; I suppose it is just selective bigotry.
Germany was not a united country before 1871, when the German states was united under the Prussian rule. There were several wars between 1848 and 1871, against Denmark, Austria and France, and that was probably one reason why the neighbouring countries feared a strong united Germany, which country was the next to be attacked?
 
Marie Fedorovna was from Denmark I believe so that probably contributed to her dislike for Alexandra.
 
Was Princess Sophia of Prussia considered as a possible bride for Nicholas II?
 
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