Thanks Catherine. This means she was Lutheran when she married the Crown Prince. Did this marriage require special authorisation from the Vatican?
I am just curious because the situation of a Catholic Crown Prince marrying a Protestant Princess is fairly unusual, and I was wondering if there may have been some debate on this at the time (1926). I would imagine that some strict traditionalists would not have been happy.
I remember reading in a "Royalty Digest" magazine article (last year?) that some members of the Bourbon Parma family refused to attend the wedding of Princess Anne to King Michael of Romania in 1948 because he was Orthodox, and they weren't impressed that she was marrying a non-Roman Catholic (although her mother was Danish Princess Margrethe).
No, it didn't require a special authorisation, she just had to promise that her children would be raised as roman catholics, and that -when she felt ready for it- she would convert as well.
BTW the first king of the Belgians, Leopold I was a lutheran who never converted to catholicism!
The Belgians (and the papers) called her the snow princess (la princesse des neiges) when she first arrived in Belgium because she came from Scandinavia and was completely dressed in white.
Astrid and Léopold in 1930, at the wedding of Léopold's sister Marie José with crownprince Umberto of Italy.
Astrid was expecting her second child, prince (later king) Baudouin.
Her best friend, Swedish countess Anna Sparre, wrote :
" The year [1930] started with the marriage of Leopold's sister Marie José. She got married on the 18th of January in Rome.Astrid had ordered her outfit at Belgian fashionhouses. For the wedding she had ordered a gold colored gown with a 4 meter long train, set off with gold colored lace, that her mama [princess Ingeborg of Denmark] wore when she came to Sweden as a newly married woman in 1897. And it was very chic.Astrid also talked about her pretty cream colored veil, that the city Bruges had given her as a wedding present, and the matching gloves. The wedding festivities lasted 6 days."
Anna Sparre. La reine Astrid. Mon amie à moi.Ed. Luc Pire, 1986
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