"Trash written by trash": The Belgian royal family responds to its critics

A few weeks ago, I posted an article on how the British royal household seems to be getting sassier with unwarranted attacks on the royal family's private lives, after photographers invaded the privacy of the Duchess of Cambridge while she was on holiday in France. Now, it looks like Belgium's royal family is following suit. Prince Philippe, the Duke of Brabant, is the heir-apparent to the Belgium throne; he is a graduate of Oxford and Stanford, where he took his masters in political science. He has also served in the Belgian armed forces and one of his main priorities as heir to the throne is promoting Belgium's economy, representing the kingdom at over forty economic conferences. 

The Duke is married to Princess Mathilde (nee d'Udekem d'Acoz) and they have four children together - Elisabeth, Gabriel, Emmanuel and Eleanor. Recently, the couple have been the target of books and articles claiming that their marriage is a sham and that their children were conceived through artificial insemination. False interviews with the Duke's father, King Albert II, to substantiate these rather dubious claims, but both the palace and the couple themselves have retaliated by firmly rebutting the allegations. 

The blog Cross of Laeken, which is a fantastic blog that focuses on the Belgian royals, talks about these rumours and about the royal household's reaction to them. 

Marie-Astrid: the Queen who never was

The 1981 marriage of Charles, Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer was one of the most famous media events of the century. The splendour of the day and the drama of the marriage's breakdown in the next decade helped remove memories of the fact that for most of the 1970s, Prince Charles's position as the world's most eligible bachelor had helped occupy the tabloids.

Before the lithesome loveliness of Diana lit up the nation's screens, Prince Charles was linked to a whole host of women. Some eligible; many decidedly not. Certain members of the Royal Family looked on in horror at the pretty, wealthy but racy young women Charles was involved with in the decade before he met Diana. None of them seemed quite right to take on the enormous responsibility of being the next Princess of Wales. They either weren't virgins, weren't aristocrats or there was some defect in their personality that made royal insiders doubt they would adjust well to the "glamour in aspic" of marrying into the royal house. 

One woman that Charles was linked to for a time was, on paper, perfect in all respects bar one. She was Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg; she was the eldest child of Luxembourg's reigning Grand Duke Jean and his elegant Belgian wife, Josephine-Charlotte. She had trained as a nurse, despite her royal upbringing, and now served as President of the Red Cross in Luxembourg - the kind of humanitarian charity work that the British Royal Family love. She was five years younger than Prince Charles, pretty, poised and having been born into royalty herself, she knew what to expect. By 1977, British tabloids like the Daily Express were confidently reporting that Buckingham Palace would soon be announcing the Prince's engagement to the twenty-three year-old Princess of Luxembourg.

The only problem, of course, was her religion. Like all members of Luxembourg's reigning family, Marie-Astrid was a Roman Catholic. One of her father's godparents had been Pope Benedict XV and the family retained close ties with the Vatican. For years, it was assumed that it had been Pope Paul VI who ruined Marie-Astrid's chances of becoming Queen of England by invoking the Ne Temere decree, which required that, as a Catholic, she should be married in a Catholic church and promise to raise her children as Catholics, too. Given that Marie-Astrid was going to marry the future head of the Protestant Church of England, that naturally created some problems and the whole thing had to be called off.

In fact, whilst it's unlikely that the Pope would have been too enthused about seeing Marie-Astrid's children raised as Protestants, it was Britain that torpedoed the match. Not Rome.

In the first place, there were laws in place that made such a marriage impossible. If Charles and Marie-Astrid had married, it would have been the first time a British sovereign legally married a Roman Catholic since the future James II married Maria-Beatrice of Modena in 1673. Their reign had ended in revolution and when their enemies triumphed at the Battle of the Boyne, laws were introduced banning any future monarchs from marrying a Catholic. When the future George IV attempted to marry a gentle Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert, in 1785, he broke nearly every constitutional law applicable to his private life. The marriage was regarded as totally illegal and George was eventually forced to marry the far less appealing Princess Caroline of Brunswick - who may have been smelly and annoying, but at least she was Protestant and that was really all the British government cared about.

That the government considered it possible that Prince Charles might one day want to marry Princess Marie-Astrid is shown by the fact that there were several committees set-up to see if it was constitutionally possible to repeal the ban on British royals marrying Catholics. There was soft opposition, from the beginning, including from Charles's beloved grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who was not only a devout Protestant but was also naturally opposed to change. Concerns about how such a marriage would affect the already-volatile situation in Northern Ireland were also voiced. Early in 1980, the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, set up a small committee to discuss the issue. According to her future biographer, Hugo Young, the Prime Minister herself was strongly opposed to changing the law or to encouraging the Prince's marriage to Marie-Astrid. And her objections rested squarely on the idea that the princess's religion was problematic and undesirable. Some of the committees other members later told Young that they had been shocked by "the extreme anti-Catholicism" of the Prime Minister.

Eventually the rumours about Charles and Marie-Astrid faded away. Maybe that's all they ever were. Neither Charles, nor Marie-Astrid, ever went firmly on the record about how much truth there had been in the idea that they could quite married. Evidently, Mrs. Thatcher considered it a possibility, but we don't know how sold on the idea Charles himself ever was. Charles soon announced his forthcoming marriage to the beautiful Diana Spencer - young, virginal, British, aristocrat and Protestant. And Marie-Astrid married a member of the deposed Austrian royal family, Archduke Carl-Christian, in 1982 (above.)

Prince Charles is now the father of two sons and is married to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall - one of the women who was considered so unsuitable for him in the 1970s. Marie-Astrid, now an Archduchess of Austria and Princess of Hungary, is the mother of five children. Her eldest, Marie-Christine, is married to the Count of Limburg-Stirum, and is a mother herself. Her eldest son, the twenty-six year-old Archduke Imre, is engaged to the American Catholic journalist and pro-Life activist, Kathleen Walker; his 24 year-old brother, Archduke Christoph, is engaged to the French diplomat's daughter, Adelaide Drapé-Frisch. (Both engagement pictures are below.) Marie-Astrid's two youngest children are 21 year-old Archduke Alexander and 18 year-old Archduchess Gabriella. 

How history might have been different if the rumours were right and the Prime Minister had supported the idea. Perhaps though, given Marie-Astrid's own devotion to her Catholic faith and the quiet lifestyle she now enjoys, things worked out for the best. 

"Juarez" (1939)

Novelist Elena Maria Vidal reviews the classic 1939 movie Juarez, about the downfall of the Mexican monarchy  and the establishment of a republic in that country. Although ostensibly about the life of Mexico's republican leader, Benito Juárez, as Elena Maria points out, the film is today best-known for the magnificent performances of Bette Davis as the Belgian-born Empress of Mexico, Carlota, and British actor Brian Aherne as the Emperor, Maximilian von Hapsburg. Elena Maria is particularly glowing in her review of Bette Davis's performance of the Empress's mental breakdown which, as she quite rightly says, was probably one of the acting highlights of Davis's career.

For the full review, click HERE. 

For my review of a book on Bette Davis's life, click HERE. 

Defending the Belgian monarchy

The blog The Cross of Laeken, written by a regular reader of this blog and an expert on the Belgian monarchy, answers some of the rather lurid scandals flung at the modern Belgian royal family in Paul Beliën's controversial book, A Throne in Brussels: Britain, the Saxe-Coburgs and the Belgianisation of Europe (2005.) Please note this article is confined to the modern Belgian royals as covered in the latter half of book, rather than the earlier generations, which were covered in excellent if harrowing books like Adam Hochshild's ''King Leopold's Ghost'' (1998). I'm afraid I haven't read specific biographies of Leopold as a person, either the first or second. For the early twentieth century Belgian royals, Theo Aronson's "Crowns in Conflict" or Denis Judd's "Eclipse of Kings" both have good chapters. To the best of my knowledge there isn't a biography in English of Leopold III, the king during the Second World War, but I may be wrong. On this more modern focus, the principle gist of this book seems to be to try and attack the Belgian monarchy today through sexual slurs, as Matterhorn writes: -

"Of course, using sexual slurs to discredit public figures is nothing new. Consider, for example, all the feverish, torrid, and, in fact, false accusations launched against Anne Boleyn, Marie-Antoinette, Queen Maria Carolina of Naples and Queen Louise of Prussia by their political opponents. The same process is underway today, in Belgium. We need not be conspiracy theorists to conclude that many people, in powerful positions, simply do not want this battered little kingdom to exist. There is no other explanation for the endless, paralyzing political problems, the bitter divisions, growing ever greater and ever deeper, that afflict a nation which has weathered the worst storms in history triumphantly. Therefore, it is not surprising that sordid little tales are sedulously spread, to undermine Belgians' respect for their monarchy. The Saxe-Coburgs are portrayed as lascivious, promiscuous creatures by definition. How accurate is this image?" 

For The Cross of Laeken's full and thorough article on the royal house of Belgium, click here. It mentions the book covering the modern royals towards the end. 

The Legend of Queen Astrid

This is a fascinating story and one that is not particularly well-known in English-speaking countries. 

On his excellent blog, The Cross of Laeken, Matterhorn (whose comments on this blog I always enjoy very much) reflects on the premature death of Queen Astrid (above), the glamorous Swedish princess who married Leopold III, King of the Belgians, and the public outpouring of grief at her passing which led directly to the hostility felt towards her husband's second wife, Princess Lilian. 

The Age of Anne Boleyn

“But to come to her death... She was convicted and condemned [and] she was not twenty-nine years of age.”
- Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria (1538 - 1612)

“She would have been around thirty-five when she died, middle-aged by Tudor standards. Life had not been kind to her, and stress had aged her prematurely.”
- Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1991)

A mistress of King Louis XV of France always insisted that there was only one rule in polite society that could never be broken - and that was that you should never ask a pretty woman her age. So, it seems a tad impolite that for years historians have been trampling over such niceties, by debating back and forth about the age of Henry VIII's second wife, Queen Anne Boleyn. But then, as with so much about Anne Boleyn, it may not be appropriate, but it's certainly important.

The issue of Anne Boleyn's age is one which is particularly important to me, because a research paper on the subject was one of those I submitted when applying to Oxford. In the course of recently researching my own biography of Anne Boleyn, which I believe may take me the next five or six years to complete, I returned to that paper and began to research in-depth the issue of Anne's birth. It is my conclusion that the current chronology of Anne's childhood that we have been given by most historians is utterly wrong and highly misleading. Anne Boleyn was, I believe, born six years later than most modern historians suggest - not in 1501, but in the summer or autumn of 1507.

Since parish records were not kept in England until later in the 16th century, we only have exact birthdays for Henry VIII's two foreign-born wives - Katherine of Aragon, who was born in Spain on December 16th 1485, and Anna of Cleves, who was born in Germany on September 22nd 1515. For his English wives, historians have had to use comments about the ladies' generic age and appearance, ambassadorial reports, family wills and even funerary details to try and guess the birth date of Jane Seymour (?1507 - 1509), Catherine Howard (?1521 - 1525) and Katharine Parr (?1512 or 1514.)

Of course, had Anne Boleyn lived out a normal life-span, the issue of when exactly she was born would have become less and less important with the passing years. For example, had she lived to the same age as her Irish grandmother, Lady Margaret, and died at the age of 83, Anne would have lived well into the reign of her daughter Queen Elizabeth and would have died sometime around the time of the Spanish Armada. By that point, Anne would have been the Queen Mother and her influence in politics, perhaps still considerable, would have been so long-lasting that the issues concerning her early rise to power in the 1520s would not have mattered so much. Furthermore, had she been properly buried her date of birth would perhaps have been recorded on the tomb.

But Anne Boleyn did not live into her eighties and she was buried in an unmarked grave. Yet, it matters very much to what we know about her, her marriage and the English Reformation that we accurately date her birth. Was she a young woman of eighteen when the King first began to pursue her or an accomplished, mature lady of twenty-five? Was she twenty-eight at the time she was executed or was she thirty-five? Because if she was 28, as one of her stepdaughter's ladies-in-waiting claimed, then the reasons behind her execution become infinitely more sinister - at 28, Anne Boleyn was still undeniably in her childbearing years. Yes, she would have been at the tail-end of them by Tudor standards, but she would have had at least four or five more years before she was considered infertile, and so the idea that it was just her "failure" to produce a son which led to her death in 1536 suddenly becomes a good deal less convincing and the idea that it was her husband who orchestrated her monstrously unfair death becomes infinitely more likely. However, if she was 35, then she was already practically middle-aged by Tudor standards and it becomes far more likely that the entire reason for her destruction was politics pure and simple, with Anne - and to some extent, perhaps, maybe even her husband - being victims of a savagely brilliant process of character assassination, lies, manufactured hysteria and a ruthless palace coup organised by the King's chief adviser, Thomas Cromwell.

This much about Anne Boleyn's life is certain - we know that she was sent abroad for her education in 1513, that she returned to London as a débutante in 1522, Henry VIII asked her to marry him in 1527, she was crowned queen and became a mother in 1533 and she was executed in 1536. If one follows the 1501 argument, then she was 12 when she went abroad, 21 when she came back, 26 when she was engaged, 32 when she was crowned and 35 when she died; the alternative scenario has her leaving England at 6 and returning at 15, betrothed at 19, crowned at 25 and dead at 28.