Email being what it is, I found myself engaged
in a series of exchanges yesterday that was launched when a certain colleague,
who shall remain nameless, forwarded a copy of an article detailing a
developing scandal in Sweden over allegations contained in a book published
last year. According to author Roger Lundgren, who penned The
Reluctant Monarch, HM King Carl Gustav of Sweden frequented strip
clubs in Slovakia and the US during travels in those countries.(Note A)
This initial article led to numerous observations about the pulchritudinal penchants
of Europe’s throng of miscellaneous nobles, and how they all seem
to evince similar proclivities for scandal.
HM King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden.
I wish my folks had named me after an anti-tank weapon.
Leaving aside the incongruity of the
Scandinavian press with its Side 9 Pigern
(“Page 9 Girls”) expressing puritanical shock and dismay at such reprehensible
conduct, it wasn’t the “scandal” so much as the “sameness” of it that got
me thinking about the similarities between so many royals. While I’m
something of a monarchist, I’m the opposite of a royal-watcher, and I
certainly don’t purport to be an expert on genealogy; and I don’t subscribe to
Thomas Carlyle’s “great man” theory of history (or at least not to all of
it). But as I’ve said before, history by its very nature is
comprised of people and the impact of their actions on the flux and flow of
international events. We ignore interconnectivity between people at our
peril. To put it another way, given how often we have to listen to folks
ramble on about “complexity”, it’s worth remembering that one of the
characteristics of complexity (and therefore of ”complex systems”, another
phrase used ad nauseum these days) is interdependence between
individual actors. Ceteris paribus, the greater the number of “nodes”
where two or more individual actors interact, the greater the level of actual
or potential complexity in a given system.
We don’t have to look to the computing sciences
or delve into the mysteries of bosons, mesons and other members of the
subatomic bestiary for examples of this sort of thing. History - the
history of people and their interactions, especially when the inter-actors are
people who exercise power and influence - provides a wealth of examples of
complex systems. This was brought forcibly to my attention when, during a
visit to Denmark in 1990 to be vetted by my future in-laws, I visited
Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen and saw this painting:
The painting - which, at 5 x 7 metres, is
bloody enormous - takes up a whole wall and depicts a fictionalized scene
during the “Fredensborg Days” period of the monarchy of King Christian IX
of Denmark (1818-1906), who was on the throne from 1863 until his
death, making him one of the longer-reigning monarchs in Danish (and European)
history. The painting’s informal name is “The Father-In-Law of Europe”
because of its depiction of the massive range of family connections
enabled by Christian’s six children. You can see Christian and his wife,
Louise of Hesse-Kassel, seated on the blue settee. There are a number of
other notables in the painting; I’ll get to them in a few moments.
I won’t go into too much detail
about how he ended up on the throne. Suffice it to say that
Christian, a scion of a lesser male branch of the ruling Oldenburg family,
found himself at the centre of a succession debate resulting from the
inability of King Frederick VII to father children. Christian’s marriage
to Louise proved to be fortuitous and an example of dynastic foresight; as a
great-niece of Christian VII (b.1749, r.1766, d.1808) she actually had a better
claim to the throne than her husband (save for the fact that Denmark adhered to
a partial version of the Salic Law that prohibited - as Shakespeare put it in Henry
V - “your highness claiming from the female”). In 1847, the great
powers of Europe put their heads together and nominated Christian to succeed
Fredrick when the latter should shuffle off the mortal coil; Fredrick agreed in
exchange for promises of financial support.
When Fredrick died in November 1863
and Christian came to the throne, an immediate crisis exploded over possession
and status of Fredrick’s hereditary domains of Schleswig and
Holstein, two provinces on the Danish-Prussian border. Christian signed
the November Constitution, making Schleswig part of Denmark, and resulting in a
brief war between Denmark and a Prussian/Austrian alliance in 1864. While
this Second War of Schleswig didn’t turn out well for Denmark (Schleswig
and Holstein, along with Saxe-Laurenburg, became Prussian and
Austrian possessions in 1865 under the Treaty of Vienna), it did include
the famous Battle of Dybbøl Mølle, a defensive action outside of the southern
Danish city of Sønderborg, which was notable for the use of complex
defensive earthworks of a type that wouldn’t be seen again until 1914 (you can
visit the site; the windmill - which is what mølle means - is still
there).
“Kampene ved Dybbøl, 1864”, by Jørgen
Valentin Sonne, 1871
It’s worth noting that the trench system
constructed by the Danes at Dybbøl Mølle followed and was built on the line of the Danevirke, a
system of fortifications more than a thousand years old, which had been
begun by King Gudfred in 808 to defend against the Franks, recently
united under Charlemagne. There’s a reason that battles keep happening at
strategic places; it’s called “geography”.
Anyway, back to Christian IX. His
accession to the throne put an end to the Oldenburg Dynasty and launched the
Glucksburg dynasty, only the second dynastic change in the history of
Denmark’s royal family (the Oldenburgs came to the Danish throne with
the election of Christian I in 1448, replacing the succession of
Viking and Medieval kings that had preceded them since Gorm the Old, who
reigned from 936-958 AD). The number of kids that Christian and
Louise managed to produce over the next several years (as well as Christian’s staunch
defence of the prerogatives of the monarchy and his resistance to the
liberalizing forces sweeping Europe in the latter half of the Victorian era)
created complex familial nodes that continue to dominate Europe’s royal
relations today. His children, their spouses,
and their grandchildren included:
·
King Fredrick VIII of
Denmark (1843-1912) m. Princess Lovisa of Sweden
o
King Christian X of Denmark
o
King Haakon VII of Norway
o
Princess Louise of Denmark
o
Prince Harald of Denmark
o
Princess Ingeborg of Denmark
o
Princess Thyra of Denmark
o
Prince Gustav of Denmark
o
Princess Dagmar of Denmark
·
Princess Alexandra of Denmark m. King Edward VII
of the UK
o
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence
o
King George V
o
Louise, Princess Royal
o
Princess Victoria
o
Prince Maud of Wales
o
Prince Alexander John of Wales
·
King George I of Greece m. Olga Konstantinovna
of Russia
o
King Constantine I of Greece
o
Prince George of Greece and Denmark
o
Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark
o
Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark
o
Princess Maria of Greece and Denmark
o
Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark
o
Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark
o
Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark
·
Dagmar of Denmark m. Czar Alexander III of
Russia
o
Czar Nicholas II of Russia
o
Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich
o
Grand Duke George Alexandrovich
o
Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna
o
Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich
o
Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna
·
Thyra of Denmark m. Ernst August of Hanover, 3rd
Duke of Cumberland
o
Princess Marie Louise of Hanover and Cumberland
o
Prince George William of Hanover and Cumberland
o
Princess Alexandra of Hanover and Cumberland
o
Princess Olga of Hanover and Cumberland
o
Prince Christian of Hanover and Cumberland
o
Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover, Duke of
Brunswick
·
Prince Valdemar of Denmark m. Marie of Orléans
o
Prince Aage of Denmark
o
Prince Axel of Denmark
o
Prince Erik of Denmark
o
Prince Viggo of Denmark
o
Princess Margaret of Denmark
Say what you like, that’s a perfectly
astonishing brood. And there are some pretty big names among Christian’s
list of grand-kids. If you take a swing around Europe’s royal families
these days, quite a few of them still have a Viking somewhere in the
woodpile. Let’s try it out, starting with an easy one:
·
Margrethe II of Denmark: Fredrick IX - Christian
X - Fredrick VIII - Christian IX of Denmark
·
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom: George VI
- George V - Princess Alexandra of Denmark - Christian IX of
Denmark
·
Harald V of Norway: Olav V - Haakon VII -
Frederick VIII of Denmark - Christian IX of Denmark
·
Albert II of Belgium: Astrid of Sweden - Princess
Ingeborg of Denmark - Fredrick VIII of Denmark - Christian IX of Denmark
·
Constantine II of Greece (until the monarchy was
abolished in 1973): Paul of Greece - Constantine I - George I - Christian IX of
Denmark
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Prince Henri
of France, Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg, Nicholas Romanov of Russia, and
Hans-Adam II of Lichtenstein are not directly descended from Christian IX,
putting them in something of a minority (especially as the French and Russian
royal houses are considered ‘deposed’). And while King Juan Carlos of
Spain is not descended from Christian, his son and heir-apparent, Felipe Prince
of Asturias, is, by virtue of Juan’s marriage to Sophia of Greece and
Denmark (eldest child of Paul of Greece, and sister to King Constantine II
of Greece) another descendent of Christian IX. So once Juan Carlos
disappears into the pages of history, the next King of Spain will be one
Christian IX’s scions, further cementing that ancient gentleman’s hold on the
thrones of Europe.
And what of our friend Carl XVI
Gustav, whose indiscretions launched this whole line of discussion?
Well, it turns out that, unlike so many of his peers, he is not in fact, a
descendent of Christian IX.
Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and
Gotha, Grandfather of King Carl Gustav, ca. 1933
But he came close. Carl is the son of
Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who was the daughter of Charles
Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha - a chap infamous in the Swedish royal
lineage for having been an Obergruppenfuhrer
of the S.A. Charles Edward was something
of a scandal for the British royal family too. He was the eldest
(and only) son of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, who was the eighth
child and fourth son of Victoria and Albert.
Prince Leopold, a haemophiliac, was notoriously
frail and, as such, his mother (protective at the best of times) did her best
to keep him around the house. Seeing marriage as his only chance for
escape, Leopold expressed an interest in a number of prominent ladies of the
era - including, interestingly, Alice Liddel, the daughter of the
vice-chancellor of Oxford for whom Reverend Dodgson (aka Lewis Carrol) wrote Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland. Leopold eventually married (at his mother’s
suggestion, natch) Princess Helene Friederieke, the daughter of Georg Viktor,
Prince of Waldeck-Pyrmont, in 1882. But before he did, he courted none
other than Princess Karoline Mathilde of
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, a great-niece of Victoria, and a
daughter of one of Napoleon III’s paramours and Fredrick VIII, Duke of
Schleswig Holstein. Fred was the rival Oldenburg claimant to the
duchies that were at stake when Christian IX took the Danish throne for the
Glucksburgs in 1863, and later lost to Prussia and Austria. Had his
great-grandfather Leopold married Princess Karoline, Carl Gustav would’ve enjoyed
an older (and Salic Law-compliant) claim to the Danish throne than its
current occupant, Margrethe II.
History is full of what-ifs. For one of
the best examples imaginable, take another look at that painting of Christian
IX and his flock of relatives. Two of the children depicted are the
future King George V of the UK and the future Czar Nicholas II of Russia
(probably added as the painting was being completed, seeing as how they were
born, respectively, in 1865 and 1868).
Here’s what Nick (on the left) and
George (on the right) looked like forty years later, in 1913:
The resemblance is uncanny, and it goes beyond
the mere physical. Reigning monarchs, first cousins, and virtual twins,
glorious in their finery - blissfully unaware that the world they knew
would cease to exist in less than a year, and that only three years after
that, the gentleman on the left, with all of his family, would
be butchered by Bolshevik fanatics in a filthy basement in
Yekaterinburg.
One line dies, another line lives on.
There’s something to be said for having big families - even if, from time
to time, some of them get up to shenanigans.
Cheers,
//Don//
P.S. If you like big-scene paintings, here’s another one by Tuxen - the wedding of Nicholas II in 1895: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TsarNicholasIIWedding.jpg
P.P.S. Tuxen’s also famous for being a member of the “Skagen School” of artists that painted realistic maritime scenes of the northernmost tip of Denmark. I have a number of prints (my wife’s maternal grandfather was a merchant marine/fisherman). Here’s an example of that sort of work: http://rubensgallery.org/upload1/file-admin/images/new22/Laurits%20Tuxen-227734.jpg
Notes
A)
[http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/people/strip-club-scandal-pressure-mounts-on-swedish-king-20110607-1fpty.html].
