It's taken them almost two hundred years to get a Belgian girl on the throne. Mathilde is hugely popular and while her place of birth may have helped to start off with, she's built on that herself to win respect at home and abroad.
Mathilde will be a home grown queen for Belgium - the first since the beginning of its modern monarchy
In modern times nearly all European heirs have married people from their homelands. In Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the United Kingdom the future kings have all chosen brides of the same nationality. In Spain, Crown Prince Felipe went one better - his wife, Letizia, hails from Asturias, the area of which he is prince as heir to the throne.
Letizia Ortiz was born in Asturias and in 2004 became its princess on her marriage to Prince Felipe
(photo Luis Carlos Diaz)
But finding English born queens in English history is a harder job. The first homegrown queen was, wait for it, Elizabeth Woodville. The girl who seemed to break the mould with her marriage claimed another first by becoming the first English woman to wear the crown of Queen Consort. Anne Neville was another homegrown queen but if we put Henry VIII's marrying spree of 1533 - 1543 there are just two other queens of England born in that country. One was the Queen Mother and the other her predecessor as Queen Consort, Mary of Teck.
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was just one of a handful of English born women who have been queen of their country
But did it really make that much difference? Tomorrow we'll look at the Eleanors - the women who conquered English kings in the 12th and 13th centuries but who suffered a lot of hatred along the way...and part of that was because they just weren't English.
No comments:
Post a Comment