Marriage to Commoners vs Royals/Nobles


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I think that royals world has expanded in the last 50 tp 60 years. They don't move in royals only sectors of society. Their worlds are bigger so their marital choices are bigger.

Also, the tradition of marrying one's cousins and even siblings has been shown to detrimental to the "bloodlines" and quite gross IMO.

I also think that most royals are less snobbish than the aristocracy that surround them.
 
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I think it's two reasons that non-royals are so appealing:

Reverse Snobbery
Public pressure for a 'fairytale'
Idealization of the 'down to earth commoner'
The prince is going through a rebellious phase
Commoners supposedly had a 'happy' family

BINGO. I cannot find one statement here that I disagree with.:cool:

ETA: I am not knocking commoner marriages. A couple of the Royal houses(the Netherlands, Luxembourg come immediately to mind) have welcomed commoners that have brought as much or more happiness and prestige to their dynasties than any aristocrat could.

But there are commoners, then there are commoners. Sometimes it seems that some of the Royals are trying to top one another with a game of "how low can you go", that-in an insidious way-lowers the respect for and the prestige and mystique of the monarchy in the public mind. Then begins the loud questions "why are we paying for these people?!" Added to the bad behavior of some of the born Royals(Juan Carlos, Carl Gustaf) it's a recipe for disaster.

And it has already begun.
 
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It kind of irks me that everyone goes on and on and on about how they need the woman they love to handle the burden of being future king, but there is no burden. There are no restrictions on their lives as evidenced by how these newly minted princesses spend all their time jet setting at celeb events.
 
Well, people now tend to marry those they socialize with and see frequently, which was not the case in the past.
It would seem odd for someone now to wed a total stranger. Yet this was once common practice.

Personally I think it's a change for the better!
 
Actually AristoCat, I don't see many of the current CP's and Queens leading jetset lives and in fact-in the cases of Belgium and Spain their jobs seem quite thankless at times. Even the perks there are not worth the opprobrium and turmoil, imo.

The CP's and queen consorts are-for the most part-very hard working, imo.
 
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Surely royals marry non-royals nowadays for love...?
 
Surely royals marry non-royals nowadays for love...?

Actually, I think it takes more than just "love" for a succesful marriage, most of the modern royals seem to understand that love can disappear over time while genuine affection and understanding between two people can last for a lifetime.
I am sure that the royals keep that in mind, they have to find someone who has the right personality and attitude to be able to represent the royal family & their country in a positive way. They need to find someone who knows how to behave appropriately,who cares about family, acts discreet and decently in public etc.
 
blauerengerel, you beat me to it. The idea that romantic love can or should be the only consideration when selecting a spouse is dangerous fantasy, suitable only for teenagers imo.

Even(smart) non Royals don't pick a life partner simply based on romantic love. Factors such as suitability and background, compatibility and common goals are just as important. So why should it be any less for Royal men and women?

Romantic love is the beginning of a relationship, but it can be very fleeting imo.
 
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Among the high British aristocracy, that has historically been quite far from the truth. As recently as the 1980's and the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer all one could read in the paper for weeks and months was rather awestruck stories about the young woman's glorious Spencer lineage linking her back to Charles II and beyond, and her strong ties to British history.

Even Kate reportedly suffered snide mockery from William's posh aristocratic friends because her parents were middle class.("doors to manual"!)

Traditionally, Britain has been one of the most class conscious countries in Europe. The Windsors and the aristocracy have become more open to commoners now because frankly they don't seem to have much of a choice.

When I said "bloodlines" I mean royal bloodlines which really were the only ones that counted. Even on the continent mere aristocratic ancestry would not have suited some of the more tradition bound royal families. Queen Victoria had no problem with her children marrying people whom her continental cousins did not consider acceptable at all, and at the time her own people were not at all pleased with all of those German marriages either.
In The UK it is the British press who are more concerned about "class" and are much more snobbish than the people they actually purport to write about. It was certainly the press who were impressed with illegitimate descent from Charles II which had they known anything they would have known was not a terribly exclusive club. The aristocracy have always been much more practical when it comes to the marriage market.
Britain might be known for its class consciousness, but personally I think we might be just more open about its existence for I have visited several countries where the same distinctions exist and are even more rigidly enforced even though they claim to deny it.
 
It depends on what Royal family some family are required to marry another royal! But most marry a approved commoner to spread the gene polle .
 
In the past, royal-to-royal marriages were arranged for one reason: cementing political power. Since most Royal families have no political power, the need for a Crown Prince to marry some Princess to strengthen their defence etc is not required.

I'm glad to see that regent Crown Princes/Princesses are marrying for love and more importantly, when they want.
 
Not to mention, centuries of inbreeding produce un-lovely physical and mental issues in the offspring. We now know that its a BAD thing to marry and uncle to his neice, especially when both sets of parents were double first cousins. Hapsburg lip anyone?
 
^This is also a way to have trademark lol
Well, there is not much to choose between and like you all said, the genetic pool would have been very small.

But I´m secretly mourning William and Madeleine :D
 
Someone here said that Queen Victoria was half German. She was almost all German if one considers her genetic background. Her father the Duke of Kent was the son of two Germans, if I remember correctly (I am speaking of genes here, not place of birth). Her mother was a cousin of the Duke of Kent specifically imported from Germany to provide a suitable mother for the Duke's desired heir. We would have to look back a few generations to find anything but German here.
The Duke of Kent's mistress, who went by the name of Julie, was of French and Italian descent, and would have brought more genetic variation into the family. They supposedly had at least one child (some say more than one) but this information, I have read, was concealed by Victoria herself, when she came to the throne. I my readings about Edward Duke of Kent and Julie, some sources say the knowledge about their children was concealed. Others say that their descendants were known. One story is that their son Robert Woods married Charlotte Grey, the daughter of a parliamentarian known as "Earl Grey", for whom the tea was named. In fact, when searching their heredity at a Mormon genealogical site, I found the marriage of Robert Woods and Charlotte Grey, the daughter of Earl Grey. As I recall, they had several children, but Robert died young. I did not follow that line further.
 
^This is also a way to have trademark lol
Well, there is not much to choose between and like you all said, the genetic pool would have been very small.

But I´m secretly mourning William and Madeleine :D


I sooo wanted those two together...my favorite Royal fantasy couple, after Charlotte Casiraghi and Felix of Luxembourg, OR Amedeo of Belgium!:D

Oh well.
 
I don't consider a 'royal person' to be any better in lineage than a commoner or have any higher status as any other person.

If a commoner is willing to take on the House of Windsor, more power to her, perhaps she can bring some stability and dignity back to the family. She's giving up a heck of a lot more than the royal family is in order to belong to it.



LaRae
 
Someone here said that Queen Victoria was half German. She was almost all German if one considers her genetic background. Her father the Duke of Kent was the son of two Germans, if I remember correctly (I am speaking of genes here, not place of birth). Her mother was a cousin of the Duke of Kent specifically imported from Germany to provide a suitable mother for the Duke's desired heir. We would have to look back a few generations to find anything but German here.
The Duke of Kent's mistress, who went by the name of Julie, was of French and Italian descent, and would have brought more genetic variation into the family. They supposedly had at least one child (some say more than one) but this information, I have read, was concealed by Victoria herself, when she came to the throne. I my readings about Edward Duke of Kent and Julie, some sources say the knowledge about their children was concealed. Others say that their descendants were known. One story is that their son Robert Woods married Charlotte Grey, the daughter of a parliamentarian known as "Earl Grey", for whom the tea was named. In fact, when searching their heredity at a Mormon genealogical site, I found the marriage of Robert Woods and Charlotte Grey, the daughter of Earl Grey. As I recall, they had several children, but Robert died young. I did not follow that line further.

This isn't exactly accurate.

While the Duke and Duchess of Kent were likely related (I can't remember how closely), they weren't cousins. Going back 3 generations there isn't a single common ancestor (in comparison, the QEII and the DoE have their first common ancestor in Christian IX at 3 generations back for both of them, and their second in Victoria at 3 generations back for HM and 4 for the DoE).

While all of the Duchess of Kent's recent ancestors were German (she was, after all, from Germany), you kind of have to question at what point a family ceases to be of whatever nationality their ancestors came from and of whatever nationality they're raised to be. Victoria was born on British soil. She was raised there, spent the vast majority of her life there, and eventually died there. Her father, likewise, was born, raised, and died on British soil, although he travelled and lived elsewhere more than his daughter. The Duke of Kent had a German mother, but his father, GIII, was also born, raised in, and died in Britain. GIII's parents were both born in Germany, and you can follow the paternal line there back a bit (Frederick, PoW, GII, and GI), but GI's mother was Sophia of Hanover, whose mother was born in Scotland. If we argue that Victoria was German because her great-grandfather was born in Germany, then by that extension Sophia was Scottish because her mother was born in Scotland (and in turn, her son, GI, and grandson, GII, were also Scottish, or British...).

As for the Duke of Kent's alleged child... This is a myth. The Duke of Kent was with Julie from 1790 to 1818. Any child they had would have been covered up long before Victoria came to the throne - Victoria did not have the power to completely destiny evidence of the existence of a child born a minimum of 19 years before she came to the throne (and that's assuming that the then 58 year old Julie had given birth to a child the year she and the Duke split up). If a child was born and a cover up happened then it was the Duke and Julie who did it, as they would have given up the child for adoption - there are claims that Robert Woods is a child who was born to them while in Canada and then adopted by an aid and left behind when the Duke left Canada. However, as the Duke's brothers made no attempt to hide their illegitimate children born around this time I can't see why he would have either. Instead the whole "I'm descended from the illicit relationship between a Prince and his mistress who had a secret baby" story seems to be more of a fantasy some families have made up for their geneologies.

As for a marriage between Robert Woods and a daughter of Earl Grey, neither Wikipedia nor The Peerage list a daughter named Charlotte as having been born to Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (the parliamentarian for whom the tea is named). In fact, none of the Earls Grey are listed as having a daughter named Charlotte. The 2nd Earl did have a daughter, Mary, who married one Charles Wood, 1st Viscount Halifax of Monk Bretton though.
 
You are so right in much of what you say here, Ish, and one reason I come to the Royal Forums is to get this detailed kind of historical knowledge.
The information I got on Earl Grey and a daughter Charlotte came from the Mormon Genealogy records, supposedly one of the most complete sources for all genealogy, but it certainly has some "holes" in it. it is not complete. And of course could be wrong in some particulars.

You are certainly right that people from Country X can have a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. Scotland in the Middle Ages had a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds present. People think that Scotland was "Gaelic" or "Celtic" but it was a crossroads of Flemish, Hungarian, French, Breton, Saxon, Jewish, as well as Gaelic. This became pronounced in the Norman period when the Stewart family began their rise in Scotland. The Stewart family itself was comprised of various ethnic backgrounds. So one can easily agree with you that the country one was raised in is sometimes more important than one's ethnic background.

My son's only cousin "returned" to Ireland and married a German who had moved there. The cousin has English, Irish, and French ancestry. Potpourri! The names of Irish alone show their ethnic diversity.

One can read lots of stuff which is not true about such people as Edward and Julie. So I was just reporting on what I read, and probably you read deeper. I have only been paying attention to these historical matters for about 12 years, and not consistently. I WAS fascinated with the information that Julie's mother was of the noble Colonna family. Maybe that was not true either?
 
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If the Mormon geneologies that you're using are familysearch.org I would question the validity; the information on it is user submitted that isn't validated in any way by the site.

I don't know what other Mormon geneolgy sources there are, but I'd definitely appreciate links (please pm me).

Looking at Family Search, I've found the record of two Robert Woods, both allegedly sons of the Duke of Kent and Julie, both married to a Charlotte Gray (neither Charlottes had parental information attached). One of the records does list Julie's mother as having been a Colonna, but everywhere else I've read that her parents were Jean-Claude Mongenet and Jeanne Claud/Claudine Pussot. I'm not inclined to believe that either is necessarily right as I don't know the validity of either set of sources, but I'm not buying that Robert is their child, or that this Charlotte was also the daughter of an Earl Grey.
 
:previous: I was having a general think about why royals marry non royals and it occurred to me that as young adults, their entire circle of friends is confined to those that played in the same sandbox, went to the same schools, socialised with throughout their lives.

These peers are friends and since politically advantageous alliances are no longer de rigueur, and suddenly falling in love with your best friend is unlikely, then I would say the heart rules. As adults their sphere of experience expands. Frederik at the Olympics and William at University are excellent examples.
 
First of all "Royal" is a made up term that makes no one more special than anyone else. Today, royals marry non-royals, because their scope is limited to a few at best, no one is trying to gain territory or make some sort of a armed alliance, with a marriage. They marry people they care about and get past the nonsense of the past.
 
Royals go to the same schools and generally are in the same social circles until they go to college or go into the military. When they met someone outside of this social circle, it's something new. Someone who hasn't lived a royal life has different experiences than someone who has lived a royal life.

It could be in some cases the difference is maybe interesting to them. A example of this would be a royal taking a vacation by car, stopping in a rest area for lunch and sitting at a picnic table enjoying the view. This is probably something that a lot of royals (perhaps the majority of them) have probably never done because of security issues or their privacy being violated by curious onlookers.

The expectations are also different which the one is a royal and the other a non-royal. There isn't an expectation that they will marry nor would they be pressured by their royal relatives to marry a non-royal if they got serious.
 
I also think that what the public expects of a royal marriage has changed. In the old days, it was in a way expected for royal couples to have relationships outside of the marriage once the heir & spare had been provided. Most were arranged marriages and they looked for love outside of the marriage.

That has changed, the public now expects their royals to have functional marriages and frown upon extramarital affairs. That means that royals need to marry people they can get along with, people they love.

The Charles and Diana situation with both of them having affairs would have been normal and accepted in the past but it caused quite the scandal when it hit the papers.

So love matches are more beneficial to the modern day monarchies than dynastic matches.
 
I don't think it was ever acceptable for the royal women to have affair because it would bring up the legimaticity of the royal children. It was okay for Bertie to mess around but it won't be so for Alexandra. People today still question Prince Harry's parentage because of Diana's affair with Hewitt.
 
... Maybe because there are no so many royals left...:-D

There are as many royals left as in the old days. Families considered 100% ´equal´ are:

Anhalt
Austria-Hungary (Habsburg)
Baden
Bavaria (Wittelsbach)
Belgium
Bonaparte
Brazil (Orléans-Bragança)
Bulgaria (Saxen-Coburg and Gotha)
Denmark
France (Bourbon)
Great Britain (Windsor)
Greece and Denmark
Hannover
Hessen
Hohenzollern
Italy (Savoia and Savoia-Aosta)
(Schleswig-)Holstein
Liechtenstein
Lippe
Luxembourg (Nassau)
Mecklenburg
Monaco (Grimaldi)
Montenegro (Petrovich)
The Netherlands (Orange-Nassau)
Norway
Oldenburg
Parma (Bourbon)
Portugal (Bragança)
Prussia (Hohenzollern)
Reuss
Romania (Hohenzollern)
Russia (Romanov)
Saxony
Schaumburg-Lippe
Spain (Bourbon)
Sweden (Bernadotte)
Tuscany (Habsburg)
Two Sicilies (Bourbon)
Waldeck (Waldeck-Pyrmont)
Württemberg
Yugoslavia (Karageorgevich)

Then there are a LOT of families which are not fully equal but a marriage with these was not seen as a mésalliance, Houses like Croÿ, Hohenlohe, Isenburg, Löwenstein-Wertheim, Thurn und Taxis, Windisch-Graetz, Sayn-Wittgenstein, Lobkowicz, and name them all...

:flowers:
 
I also think that what the public expects of a royal marriage has changed. In the old days, it was in a way expected for royal couples to have relationships outside of the marriage once the heir & spare had been provided. Most were arranged marriages and they looked for love outside of the marriage.

That has changed, the public now expects their royals to have functional marriages and frown upon extramarital affairs. That means that royals need to marry people they can get along with, people they love.

The Charles and Diana situation with both of them having affairs would have been normal and accepted in the past but it caused quite the scandal when it hit the papers.

So love matches are more beneficial to the modern day monarchies than dynastic matches.

These are good points, and I think it also has to do with an overall change in how people in general view marriages. Obviously, there are differences from country to country, but in the past (and really, the not-so-long-ago past), marriages would generally take place between people of similar backgrounds (class, religion, education, race, etc.), and divorce was a no-no, so a lot of things had to be tolerated (extramarital affairs, etc.) Even if marriages weren't arranged, there were certain expectations. I can see this looking back just 3 or 4 generations in my own family, and I'm sure others can too.

Now, however, we live in a world where there's a lot more mobility, which means that we're increasingly interacting with people from a wide variety of backgrounds. And the same is true with royals. Of course, I think such changes are certainly slower to come to royal families, but such general societal changes affect them, too. (Not to mention other factors, such as the fact that political alliances are no longer made through royal marriages).
 
Royals married royals for alliances and also, the belief that they were imbued by God for their positions. No one believes such nonsense any more. So, they realized it didn't matter.
 
Replying to your January 2014 post, Ish, I consider your information better than that of the Mormon genealogy records. I happen to have a close-by source of the Mormon records because there is a Mormon church, with a records tie to Salt Lake City, less than a mile from my house.
In doing research into my own genealogy of the Middle Ages, I consulted many sources, not one, because I didn't have an absolutely perfect and reliable source to consult. I found "Normans in Scotland", a book by Graeme Ritchie, which helped immensely, even through its footnotes, in directing me to truer genealogical material for my own family in Scotland. Sometimes one looks and looks and only after a long time one finds the "truth." Edison said he invented 999 lightbulbs before he invented one which works.
In the case of obviously enthroned royal families, their records are kept for many many generations by reliable people, so their task is negligible when pinpointing royal descent.
 
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In the modern era, DNA can rule out SOME specific familial diseases. I imagine that this has been done in the cases of non-reigning royals who marry. Quietly, of course.
In the case of a "dominant" gene, which descends to 50% of children (or 75% when both parents have it) there is NO chance of the children having the same mutation if a parent does not have it. So the outlook for royals marrying cousins today could be simpler, in terms of checking out mutation problems scientifically. If a British royal wanted to marry a German cousin, their DNA would be well-mapped and at least the obvious defects could be ruled out, and love could bloom!
I think other traits than we know of descend through families, however, not just traits for physical impairment. Traits of personality descend. Most of you probably have observed this.
 
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