Love is in the heir
Not even Britain’s royals can escape Cupid’s arrows. MARION McMULLEN looks at some regal romances
IT is said Prince Albert proposed to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon not once, not twice, but three times before she eventually said yes.
Elizabeth, later known as the Queen Mother, was said to be not exactly thrilled at the prospect of royal life, but their engagement in 1923 was seen as a step forward for the monarchy.
Elizabeth was not a royal herself, but she was the daughter of a peer. She said of Albert, who later became George VI after the abdication of his brother Edward VIII: “I felt it my duty to marry Bertie and fell in love with him afterwards”.
Their daughter Elizabeth Windsor met Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark in July 1939, when she and her parents visited Dartmouth naval college. Philip was then 18 and Elizabeth was 13.
Good-looking and blond-haired, the tall, athletic prince impressed
Lilibet by jumping over the college tennis nets and from that time they maintained a regular correspondence and met on several occasions.
Philip was invited to spend Christmas 1943 with the royal family at Windsor and, by the end of the war, newspapers were speculating about their relationship.
It has been suggested that they became unofficially engaged in the summer of 1946 while they were staying at Balmoral, but the official announcement was delayed until after the princess reached 21 and returned from a tour of South Africa.
Their wedding at Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947, was attended by an array of foreign kings and queens and captured the public imagination in the austere post-war day.
The newlyweds were called the
Fairy Princess and Prince Charming and went on honeymoon to Broadlands in Hampshire, home of Lord Mountbatten, and Birkhall on the Balmoral estate in Scotland.
Philip’s devotion to his wife was clear from the start. His first private secretary Michael Parker revealed: “He told me the first day he offered me my job that his job, first, second and last, was never to let her down.”
The Queen movingly spoke about her “beloved Philip” in her last Christmas Day broadcast and how his “mischievous, enquiring twinkle was as bright at the end as when I first set eyes on him”.
Philip and the Queen were both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria.
Victoria’s own love story saw her marrying Prince Albert at St James’s Palace in London on February 10, 1840. He once wrote to her “your image fills my whole soul”.
They had nine children during their 21 years together and early in his married life Albert channelled his energies into reforming the royal household and finances.
Queen Victoria went into permanent mourning following Albert’s death aged 42.
She said: “My life as a happy one is ended! The world is gone for me! If I must live on (and I will do nothing to make me worse than I am) it is henceforth for our poor fatherless children – for my unhappy country, which has lost all in losing him – and in only doing what I know and feel he would wish for.”
Antony Armstrong-Jones, who became Lord Snowdon upon his marriage, was the first commoner to marry a king’s daughter in more than 400 years when he wed Princess Margaret.
However, their engagement did not have the most auspicious of starts. The announcement in 1960 came as a complete surprise – Margaret, the queen’s younger sister, had been involved with Peter Townsend, but that marriage was not allowed as he was a divorcee.
There had been no whisperings that she had a new relationship, so the engagement to photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones was definitely a media shock. The couple married in May 1960, but the relationship broke down and they divorced in 1978.
Prince William announced in November 2010 that he was to wed his university girlfriend Kate Middleton, who he had been dating for eight years.
She wore a blue Issa wrap dress for the occasion and her outfit perfectly matched the sapphire in Princess Diana’s ring, which William had given her when he proposed during a romantic holiday in Kenya. He took pains to hide his late mother’s ring in his backpack so he could surprise Kate.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge met at St Andrews university in Scotland and their relationship flourished during romantic weekends alone on the Queen’s Balmoral estate and on holiday in Kenya.
William later spoke about how their relationship developed saying: “We just spent more time with each other, had a good giggle, had lots of fun and realised we shared the same interests and just had a really good time. She’s got a really naughty sense of humour.”
In April 2011, an estimated two billion worldwide watched their royal wedding in London’s Westminster Abbey and the newlyweds later kissed on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.