Re: Princess Louise of Wales
Not "hung up on rank"? That may be perceptual one way or another. From mine, she seems like a rather scheming figure of grand alliances, one result of which through one daughter was a grandson called Kaiser Wilhelm II. In the wider scheme of things, I think the choice of this granddaughter Louise was the actual pragmatic one. Duff came from a place and class that at least in theory understood the restrictions and boundaries and duties of royal life. Of course that formula is not a guarantee of marital success - witness one Diana Spencer a century later, but again the option of marriage into British nobility seems a wiser course. Someone else pointed out to me that in our lifetime "it's been a downward slide from the twentieth century to the present, not only are aristocrats an option but divorcees and foreign commoners are all part of the marriage market". Perhaps the ancient heads of European royal houses long ago had some wisdom when they insisted on "co-equal" and dynastic alliances - they may have been aware that if "anything goes, then anything can happen". Previous Message And Queen Victoria was not hung up on rank the way her European colleagues were.
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