Post-Umberto, Oldenburg relaxed its usual standards for the heir in 1987, when he married a non-Gotha countess. Otto of Austria held out hope for his heir marrying equally until he relented in 1993 and accepted a rich baron’s daughter after resisting a match with a morganatic Habsburg. Greece relaxed in 1995, the same year the head of Portugal’s RF married a member of the lower nobility. The Bulgarian heir was permitted to marry a commoner in 1996, his father having previously “lowered the bar” by marrying an untitled Spanish aristocrat in 1962.
We are now in the 21st century… Baden relaxed in 2001, as did the Two Sicilies senior line (only after a prolonged resistance). Hesse relaxed in 2003. Spain in 2004, the French House of Orléans in 2009. Parma in 2010. Holstein in 2017. Yugoslavia (for the unmarried heir’s brother) in 2017. And then there’s Liechtenstein, Brazil, Prussia, Saxony (lots of issues there!) and Württemberg, where heirs marrying within the Gotha has generally been the ongoing practice if not the rule. Lastly, if one recognizes Maria Vladimirovna for Russia, she has recently sent what is to my mind at best a mixed signal regarding the status of her future commoner daughter-in-law, so Russia may also figure in this last category.
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