Sex with the Queen (56 page)

ceremonies. If health care had improved, the deadly viruses of envy, greed, and revenge—the main ingredients of every royal court since the dawn of time—were all still thriving. And there was little room for self-expression, individuality, or personal choice, shocking new concepts heartily enjoyed by the masses.

Princesses of the late nineteenth century could look with envy on daughters of wealthy merchants who chose their friends, hob-bies, and husbands according to their own inclinations—young women who wallowed in luxury on a palatial scale, without the ancient residue of moldy hatred and mildewed greed.

Royal brides of the late Victorian period began to expect more from marriage. No longer the passive brood mares of earlier gen-erations, these women actually insisted on happiness in their married lives. And, if their husbands couldn’t provide it, they would find lovers to make life in the gilded cage more enjoyable.

Two late-nineteenth-century princesses—Louisa of Tuscany, who married Prince Frederick Augustus of Saxony, and Marie of Edinburgh, who married Prince Ferdinand of Romania—were faced with palace oppression, weak husbands, and nasty elderly monarchs. Both reacted in the same way—by taking lovers. But the more impulsive of the two would lose her marriage, her chil-dren, and her name, falling into obscurity. The more intelligent would manipulate her way to becoming a great queen ruling a crucial nation in times of the most challenging adversity.

A third princess yoked to a weak and vacillating monarch fell under the hypnotizing spell of a man so hated he unleashed a firestorm that destroyed her family and her country.

L o u i s a o f T u s c a n y ,

C r o w n P r i n c e s s o f S a x o n y

“Harmless Friendships”

Ninety years before Lady Diana Spencer burst onto the interna-tional scene as wife of the future king of Great Britain, a Haps-burg princess started along a similar path of popular acclaim and personal tragedy.

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At the age of twenty-one Princess Louisa of Tuscany was con-sidered a prime candidate for a royal marriage, even though her father had lost his duchy decades earlier when the Italian king-doms were unified into one. She boasted Hapsburg blood, dark blond hair, and sparkling brown eyes; a slender yet shapely fig-ure; and a bubbly personality. Though no great beauty, the princess was wooed by numerous princes. Of all her suitors, she preferred the handsome twenty-six-year-old Prince Frederick Augustus of Saxony, tall, blond, and blue-eyed.

Similar to “Shy Di” before she married Prince Charles, Louisa played her part as a sweet and modest young woman throughout the courtship. The prince and his family did not know that beneath Louisa’s beaming countenance lurked a soul seething with dissatisfaction.

Louisa’s parents, who had fallen so irrevocably from grandeur into mediocrity, were thrilled that their daughter would be the future queen of Saxony. They pressed her to accept the suit and, smitten by the dancing blue eyes of the prince, she agreed. But Louisa almost immediately regretted it. “For the first time in my life I felt the dreadful ‘trapped’ sensation that I afterwards experienced so much,” she wrote, “and I cried bitterly when I contrasted my position with that of other girls, who were, I imagined, not precipitated into matrimony, but were allowed a more liberal choice of a husband than a poor princess.”1

In Dresden, Louisa came not as a queen but as a princess.

Indeed, her husband was not even crown prince yet. King Al-bert, childless, would be followed by his curmudgeonly brother Crown Prince George, and only upon George’s death would his son, Frederick Augustus, become king. Until then, Louisa was at the mercy of her father-in-law and his brother.

Louisa’s in-laws were dour, humorless, and critical. Courtiers bowed and scraped and clicked their heels, then spied and plot-ted against various members of the royal family. Most servants were spies paid by one faction or another, taking crumpled let-ters out of wastepaper baskets, listening at doors, or peeping through keyholes.

To the great dismay of her in-laws, the stylish princess became t h e t u r n o f t h e t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y 2 5 9

immensely popular with the Saxon people. Women slavishly copied her gowns. Whenever the royal family went out in their carriages, it was hers that drew the most cheers, the greatest ap-plause. Louisa never failed to stick her head out the window and wave, or hold up one of her children to the crowd. Her unpopu-lar father-in-law became green with envy. “What a bid you make for popularity, Louisa,” George growled.2

Louisa fulfilled her duties as royal brood mare. She had the great distinction of presenting Saxony with two male heirs within a single calendar year. On January 15, 1893, she gave birth to George, and on December 31 to Frederick Christian. She had a third son, Ernest, in 1896, followed by Margaret in 1900 and Maria-Alix in 1901.

Despite the joy she had in her growing nursery, Louisa was terribly unhappy in the palace. Her grumpy father-in-law pricked her daily with insinuations, insults, and the withdrawal of privileges, and in return she threw violent temper tantrums.

Sputtering in fear before the anger of his father, Prince Freder-ick Augustus never rushed to his wife’s defense. Tempestuous, rash, and volatile, Louisa had the spirit to fight her many battles, but she fought them alone.

By the late 1890s her bitterness at palace life and her disap-pointment at her husband’s weakness had resulted in flirtations with other men, which she called “harmless friendships” in her memoirs.3 Events proved, however, that they were far more than that.

In 1902 King Albert died, and her tyrannical father-in-law became King George. Knowing his health was poor and he would not live long, George felt his blood pressure rise at the thought of Louisa becoming queen, and he vowed to get rid of her before he drew his last breath. Louisa aided and abetted him with her temper tantrums and love affairs. In November 1902 a palace servant told Louisa that her relationship with her sons’

tutor, Monsieur Giron, was noticed at court. The tutor promptly resigned and left the country. Soon after, according to Louisa, the king informed her that he would commit her to an insane asylum to prevent her from becoming queen at his death.

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In the dead of night Louisa packed a bag and fled. Perhaps she would not have taken this step had she known that she was pregnant by Monsieur Giron or another lover, and her daugh-ter would be forever tainted by the questionable circumstances of her birth. Louisa took the train first to her parents in Salzburg looking for refuge, which they refused her; then she traveled to Zurich where she met up with her lover Monsieur Giron.

If the Saxon royal family was relieved at her flight, the Saxon people were furious. As in Britain ninety years later, public opinion was firmly against the stodgy, heartless royal family and completely supportive of the beautiful, wronged princess. The press had a field day; politicians roared of the impending down-fall of the unpopular royal family which had driven out the peo-ple’s princess. In return King George paid some journalists to insinuate that the crown princess had gone mad. He then di-vorced his son from Louisa immediately.

Shortly afterward, her lover Monsieur Giron left her. Per-haps he could not stand the scandal, or perhaps her emotional outbursts repelled him. Louisa found herself penniless, exiled, alone, and emotionally distraught. Ironically, she committed herself to an insane asylum for several months. In May 1903

Louisa gave birth to a girl she named Pia Monica.

She must have been surprised when Frederick Augustus claimed Pia Monica as his own. Yet in August of 1902 when she was conceived—and a month before and afterward—the prince had been making official visits to the courts of Berlin, Vienna, and Munich without his wife. A man of relentless duty and stiff honor, Frederick Augustus wanted to avoid bringing shame on his country and his children by admitting that the crown princess of Saxony had conceived a bastard with a commoner.

Every year the king sent Louisa a request for her daughter, and for several years she refused, even after her ex-husband became king in 1904.

Finally in 1906, realizing that Pia Monica would have a far brighter future as a princess of Saxony than as the illegitimate child of a fallen woman, Louisa gave her up. Frederick Augustus t h e t u r n o f t h e t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y 2 6 1

raised the child as if she were his own. Given the uncertain na-ture of his divorce, he never remarried. He was a popular king, good-natured if a bit thickheaded, and beloved by his people.

In 1907 Louisa, who had been groomed as the future queen of Saxony, irreparably demeaned herself by marrying an Italian pianist, Enrico Toselli, with whom she had a son. But though she had blamed all her difficulties on palace life, neither could she find peace and happiness in the mediocre apartment of a com-moner. The couple separated in 1912, Louisa abandoning her young son. Ever restless, never satisfied, throughout her life ru-mors of love affairs wafted around her like perfume.

In 1911 Louisa further shocked the world with her autobiog-raphy,
My Own Story.
Like Princess Diana in her covert autobiog-raphy,
Diana: Her True Story,
penned by Andrew Morton in 1992, Louisa portrayed herself as the innocent victim of an ice-cold royal family jealous of her popularity and making noise about her mental imbalance.

She must have laughed in 1918 when the German monarchies fell, the kings and queens were exiled, and their viperous courts dismantled. Frederick Augustus lived the comfortable life of a wealthy private gentleman and died of heart disease in 1932 at the age of sixty-seven. His children married the scions of other toppled European royalty, Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns. Even the illegitimate Pia Monica—who grew up painfully aware that she resembled her siblings neither in looks nor in temperament—married Archduke Josef Franz of Austria. Louisa, who had fleet-ing contact with her children over the years, slid into poverty and obscurity. Ver y little is known about her after she sepa-rated from Toselli. She died in 1947 in Brussels at the age of seventy-seven.