Who’s who royal of yore
Daughter of Belgian King Leopold II and Queen Marie-Henriette of Habsburg-Lorraine, Princess Louise had an unhappy marriage, before falling in love, being forcibly interned and finally considered an enemy of her native country.
Everything you need to know about Princess Louise of Belgium:
His birth
Louise Marie Amélie, Princess of Saxe-Cobourg and Gotha, was born on February 18, 1858 in Brussels. She is the eldest of four children of the 2and Belgian King Leopold II and Queen Marie-Henriette, born Archduchess of Habsburg-Lorraine. She was 7 years old when her father ascended the throne of Belgium.
son marriage
On February 4, 1875, two weeks before she turned 17, Princess Louise married her cousin Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, aged 31. A marriage that turns into a fiasco on the wedding night, and which takes her to Vienna where she will live from now on.
Their children
Although her husband deeply disgusts her, Princess Louise bears her two children. A son first, Léopold, who was born on July 19, 1878 and died, single, at only 37 years old. A daughter, then, Dorothée, on April 30, 1881. Married in 1898 to Ernest-Gonthier of Schleswig-Holstein -the couple will have no children-, this one will die at the age of 85, in 1967.
His death
Persona non grata, both in the Belgian royal family and in that of her husband – she had divorced in 1906 – Princess Louise died on 1uh March 1924, at age 66, in Wiesbaden where she found refuge. She rests in the cemetery of this town in Germany in the Land of Hesse.
Three things to know about her:
• Princess Louise, who dreamed of the great love she does not find in her union with Philippe de Saxe-Cobourg, does not hesitate to deceive him. As Belgian royal chronicler Patrick Weber recounts in “The Saxe-Coburg Saga (published in 2016 by Editions Perrin), she first had an affair with an aide-de-camp of her husband, then fell madly in love with the Croatian count Geza Mattachich with whom she fled in 1897.
• Her adulterous liaisons – which, when known, caused a scandal in Vienna as well as in Brussels – were also added to the expenses considered reckless had tragic consequences for her in 1898. “A princess, daughter of a king, who fled and squandered her fortune can’t be crazy! For the princess, the descent into hell begins. Examined by doctors, she died demented and interned in an insane asylum”, specified Patrick Weber in his book. Until her dear Geza – with whom she remained until his death – managed to get her to escape in 1904.
• Princess Louise will not be able to return to Belgium at the end of her life. Considered Hungarian by the Belgian state, she was in fact an “enemy” for her native country in the years following the First World War.
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