HRH Princess Birgitta has died on December 4, 2024, at the age of 87, at her home in Mallorca, the Swedish Royal Family has announced.
As her death as announced, King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf said: “My sister was a colourful and straightforward person who will be deeply missed by me and my family.”
The Princess was born in 1937 and was also one of four sisters who grew up together at the Haga Palace in Stockholm.
She was the second child of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf and his wife, Sybilla. Like her older sister, Princess Margaretha, and her two younger sisters, Princess Désirée and Princess Christina, she had no succession rights as women were barred from inheriting the Swedish throne at the time.
Despite this, Birgitta took on a range of official royal duties when she reached adulthood.
The Swedish royal house states that Princess Birgitta recalled how the Second World War was felt in her royal household, growing up.
Her father, Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, told her that he did not want the family to have “any special privileges” while others were “forced to give up so much”.
A tragic turn in the family’s life occurred when Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf died in a plane crash in 1947 in Denmark when Princess Birgitta was just ten years old.
In the autumn of 1959, Princess Birgitta went to Munich in Germany to study German, and there she met the German prince and art historian Johann Georg von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and later married him on May 25, 1961. The couple went on to have three children.
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