Yet they were also members of the Augustenburg branch of the House of Schleswig-Holstein. Basically my question is where they recognized as still being of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg family? Did they have what we would call dual citizenship today and were the subjects of the German Emperor?
The children of Princess Helena and Princess Beatrice were British by birth and upbringing and so raised in the Anglican Church. The children of Prince Alfred were raised in Germany and so became members of the Lutheran Church.
I believe that seven of the nine children of Queen Victoria married Lutherans. All her grandchildren through sons would have been brought up as Anglicans, however. As for her other grandchildren: since her two eldest daughters both left the UK and settled in Germany, their children would have been brought up as Lutherans.
But what of the children of her younger daughters, who stayed home? Princess Louise had a childless marriage to the Duke of Argyll; but both Princesses Helena and Beatrice had children with their German-born husbands.
I've read that the Battenberg grandchildren were baptized as Anglicans -- Princess Ena alone eventually leaving the Church of England for the Roman Catholic Church, in order to marry King Alfonso XIII of Spain.
So that leaves open one question: were Helena's children brought up as Anglicans, like the Battenberg children, or Lutherans, like the future Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse-Darmstadt?
http://europeanroyalhistory.wordpress.com/379
Message Thread
« Back to index