Naser al-Din Shah belonged to the Qajar dynasty and ruled during the 19th century. Slowly, his country began to descend into chaos, caught between the competing pressures of England and Russia. He was a very open sovereign. He visited Europe and was well received, he knew how to please. Following the example of his predecessors, and…
Princess Alexandra was the eldest daughter of King George I and Queen Olga, and married Grand Duke Paul of Russia. She died at 22, during childbirth, leaving behind two children, Dimitri and the subject of this photograph, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna the Younger. Maria was partly raised by her grandparents in Russia. She is pictured…
Queen Marie-Christine, widow of Ferdinand VII Marie Christine of Bourbon-Two Sicilies married her uncle, King Ferdinand VII of Spain. She was his fourth wife. King Ferdinand died shortly after, and Marie Christine found herself the Regent of her young daughter, Isabella. Civil war soon broke out; coups were orchestrated constantly. The political situation was explosive….
Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna as a child, the Future Duchess of Edinburgh Maria Alexandrovna was the daughter of Tsar Alexander II and his first wife. She married Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria. The queen opposed the marriage. She hated the Russians, both for their status as international political rivals…
In the Balkans, monarchs were caught between a rock and a hard place, the Nazis and the Soviets. In Yugoslavia, Prince Paul, as he himself told me, was under truly immense pressure from the Germans. Unable to secure aid from the Allies, and in order to save his country, he went to Berlin to unite…
We were relatively safe in Morocco, owing to its Spanish dependency and the neutral position of Franco. The same could not be said for the members of our family who were scattered throughout Europe. Like everyone, royalty suffered during the war. The real drama for most of these dynasties was having family members and loved…
Brazil was a Portuguese colony at the turn of the 19th century, when the heir prince severed ties with the motherland and his family. He became the first sovereign of an independent Brazil. As much as Pedro I was an adventurer, his son and successor was an intellectual. Emperor Pedro II was close friends with…
Andre of Greece, the beloved brother of my father, married princess Alice of Battenberg. She was somewhat deaf, and out of fear that she would make a mistake, they had her memorize the responses she was to give to the priest’s questions during the marriage ceremony. Unfortunately for Alice, the priest reversed the order of…
The following photographs are taken from the personal albums of my grandmother Queen Olga of Greece; they are her private photographs, shot by the queen herself. They have never before been shown or published. I hope to share many more in the future. Grand Duchess Alexandra in the salon of Pavlosk Palace Grand Duchess Alexandra…
My maternal family, the House of Orléans, hated Napoleon III. One of his first acts upon coming into power was to confiscate their fortune, to which the journalist Henri de Rochefort remarked, “C’est le premier vol de l’aigle.” (The play on words here cannot be translated into English, vol means both flight and theft in…