A number of surprising stories about the Royal Family and their history have emerged over the years. Tales include claims that a prince was Jack the Ripper as well as allegations of countless children born in illicit affairs, the lives of those royals are often forgotten in history.
One figure who lived an especially interesting life was Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. As Queen Victoria’s youngest son and second youngest child, Leopold, played a key role during his short life, and while he didn’t create too many scandals, his son is remembered for all the wrong reasons.
Prince Leopold George Duncan Albert was born at Buckingham Palace 172 years ago on April 7, 1853, to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He was the first royal baby to be delivered using chloroform and is remembered for inheriting the rare disease haemophilia from his mother.
Despite being a delicate child, he was gifted intellectually and was described by Alfred, Lord Tennyson as “a young man of a very thoughtful mind, high aims, and quite remarkable acquirements”. He entered Christ Church, Oxford in 1872 and excelled academically as he was unable to pursue a career in the military owing to his illness.
As well as having a connection to Alice Liddell, the inspiration behind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Leopold had plans to marry to escape Queen Victoria’s wish to keep him with her at home.
In 1882, Leopold married Princess Helen of Waldeck and Pyrmont in Windsor and the pair welcomed their first child, Princess Alice, the following year. However, after a fall in Cannes in 1884 at the age of 30, Leopold died from a cerebral haemorrhage. Princess Helen was pregnant at the time of Leopold’s death and welcomed their son, Prince Charles Edward, four months later.
It is the couple’s son who is remembered unfavourably owing to his links to the Nazi party, questions of serving as a spy for the Germans when he would return to the UK and claims that he abused his own daughter.
The prince was educated in the UK for the first 15 years of his life but was selected as the heir of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha by his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II after his uncle, Prince Alfred, died in 1900 and after two other relatives had refused to inherit the ducal throne.
Aged 16, Charles moved to Germany with his mother and sister and reigned under a regency until he assumed his full constitutional powers at the age of 21.
In 1917, a new Letters Patent by his cousin, King George V, banned Charles’ British relatives from succeeding him as the ruler of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and he was denounced as a traitor. He was deposed the following year and became a private citizen.
He met Adolf Hitler for the first time in 1922 and became a member of Stahlhelm’s national board. He formally joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and later agreed to serve as a spy for Hitler when he travelled back to the UK for King George V’s funeral in 1936.
The Prince wrote back and spoke of the strength of pro-German sentiment in the British aristocracy and is said to have spoken encouragingly about his leader to the Duke of Windsor (former King Edward VIII) and Wallis Simpson. The pair famously went on to meet Hitler in 1937 during a tour after the King’s abdication.
As for his personal life, he married Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein in 1905 and had five children – including the mother of the current King of Sweden. Shockingly, his daughter, Princess Caroline Mathilde, said that her father had sexually abused her – a claim that was backed up by one of her brothers.
Charles Edward died of cancer in his flat in Coburg in 1954 at the age of 69. He was described as a “penniless criminal” in one report and is buried at the Waldfriedhof Cemetery near one of his former homes.
