Pity Poor Royal Brides

Czar Nicholas II was a totally incompetent ruler, but while, most royal marriages were political alliances in which the couple had no choice, Nicholas and Alexandra were truly in love. 

Royal marriages were arranged as treaties between countries.  Usually the bride and groom had no choice.  History is full of these marriages, and many child brides became unhappy wives.

Ferdinand and Isabella wanted an alliance with England against France, so they shipped their pious, Catholic 15-year-old daughter Catherine off to Protestant England to marry the heir of Henry VII.   She did not speak any English and clung to her Spanish ladies-in-waiting for support.  In spite of that, the marriage seems to have been happy until Catherine failed to produce and heir and Henry VIII met Anne Boleyn. 

Empress Maria Theresa of Austria sent her youngest child, 14-year-old Maria, to France, where she learned the language and became the fun-loving Queen Marie Antoinette married to a dull, dim-witted husband.  The French revolted; Louis XVI and Marie lost their heads. 

American’s remember England’s George III as the hated “tyrant” of the American Revolution.  He was only 22 when he became king, a young man under the influence of his mother.  He wanted to marry an aristocratic English lady, but Mama objected.  She imported a German bride for him. Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a little, ugly girl, portrayed in cartoons as monkey-faced.  George was a good and faithful husband.  They had 15 children.  But as an old man he issued an edict dissolving all the marriages in England.  By that time he was insane, confined in Windsor Castle, and no one paid any attention. 

Czar Alexander II of Russia demanded that his son choose a German bride.  Nicholas went off to the wedding of Elizabeth of Hesse-Darmstadt to his uncle, the Grand Duke Serge.   Nicholas met Elizabeth’s younger sister, Alix, and fell in love.  Their deep affection for each other sustained them until the day they and their children were taken into a cellar in Siberia and shot to death. 

From another book I learned that Elizabeth’s life was even more tragic than Alexandra’s.  She didn’t have the glory of being married to a czar, and unlike Nicholas, his uncle was a brute and a pervert.  Elizabeth’s marriage was a sham.  Unhappy and childless, she became a nun and devoted her life to helping the poor.  When the Bolsheviks seized power, they killed as many of the royal family as they could catch.  They murdered Elizabeth and threw her body down into a well.

No one I know is of royal blood.  We choose whomever we want to marry.  Yet how many of these marriages, begun so hopefully and based on love, end “‘til death do us part” with a lifetime of devotion like Nicholas and Alexandra? 

We do not get executed like European royals, but a common cause of murder in the U.S. is spouses shooting each other.  The lucky ones simply get divorced.  Over half of American marriages end in divorce.