HRH The Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathern
Despite being the least troublesome if not favourite of her children, Queen Victoria did not at first approve of Arthur's choice of bride in Princess Louise Margaret (Luise Margarete) of Prussia. However, they had a happy marriage and produced a major sub-dynasty of three children - Margaret, Arthur and Patricia. This was helped by the fact that Arthur's elder brother, Alfred, had moved to Coburg as the reigning Duke and whose son, also Alfred, died young, as did Arthur's younger brother, Leopold. When King George V came to the Throne in 1910 there were no other major adult members of the British Royal Family than the two Connaught Arthurs who acted as Aides and Counsellors of State alongside Arthur junior's wife/cousin, Alexandra of Fife, and her sister Maud. (The likes of the Athlones, etc would come to help out later.)
Through their elder daughter, amongst Arthur and Louise Margaret's descendants are the present-day Queen of Denmark and the King of Sweden. Although Arthur junior passed away before his father, he did himself father a son who became the 2nd Duke of Connaught (covered in the previous Blog). But the Dukedom became extinct and his wife's Dukedom of Fife passed to her sister Maud's descendants. Their other daughter, Patricia, is famous, amongst other things, for renouncing her title on marriage.
Margaret
The Connaughts were a widely travelled family and both Margaret and Patricia were expected to marry into a foreign royal family, if not become Queens. After a failed visit to Portugal, the family travelled on to Egypt where they met the then Prince Gustav Adolf of Sweden who is believed to have been earmarked as a husband for Patricia. However, he and Margaret fell in love at first sight and they were married at St George's Chapel, Windsor within 6 months on 15th June 1905. One of Margaret's wedding presents was the Connaught tiara, which remains in the Swedish royal jewellery collection today and is still regularly worn.
As Crown Princess from 1907, Margaret was a quick learner and immersed herself in her new country. She was interested in the Arts, sport and gardening, and introduced a more relaxed attitude to the stiff Swedish court which helped her husband's and the country's reforms and meant she spent more direct time with her children.
Margaret and Gustav's children included Ingrid who would marry Frederick of Denmark and go on to be Queen there and Bertil who would act as adviser and substitute father to the young Carl Gustav (the present King of Sweden) whose father, Margaret and Gustav's eldest son, also Gustav Adolf, died in a plane crash in 1947. Their youngest son, Carl Johann, would become the last surviving great-grandchild of Queen Victoria.
Margaret herself had died early, on her father's 70th birthday, 1st May 1920, due to complications following an operation when she was 8 months pregnant with her sixth child. Gustav Adolf went on to marry Margaret's second cousin Lady Louise Mountbatten, born a Princess of Battenberg. It would be Louise who would go on to become Queen of Sweden when her husband succeeded to the Throne, but she would have to wait until 1950. Margaret would then have been 68 years old if she had lived.
In 1905 Margaret was assigned a five-pointed Label based on her Father's. Unusually, in fact uniquely, she added a green Shamrock to each of her extra two Points between the outer Fleurs-de-Lys and the central St. George's Cross. It may simply be that Connaught (nowadays spelled Connacht) is a province of Ireland.
As Crown Princess of Sweden and Duchess of Scania, Margaret placed the Shield of her personal grant of Arms with her Label as an Inescutcheon on top of the Arms of her Husband rather than the plain, generic United Kingdom Arms. Equally unusual, this Inescutcheon is shown as a Shield rather than an Oval which, for instance, the present Queen of Sweden, Silvia, uses. Queen Louise would also use a Shield-shaped Inescutcheon.
Arthur
Young Arthur was apparently the first British royal prince to be educated at Eton College. He went on to study at Sandhurst from where he saw active service during the Second Boer War with the 7th Hussars. During the First World War, he served as aide-de-camp to successive commanders of the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium. He rose to the rank of Colonel and, in 1922, was made an honorary Major General.
In 1913 he married his cousin, HH Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife in her own right. She was a Granddaughter of HM King Edward VII, the eldest Daughter of HRH Louise, Princess Royal. Together they had the one child, Alastair, whose anomalous if not rather tragic life was covered in a previous Blog.
Prince Arthur died of stomach cancer at age 55. His Father would outlive him by four years and Alastair would survive another year. With that, the Dukedom of Coannaught and Strathern would become extinct.
Arthur's Label was assigned to him in 1904 and had the addition of a St. George's Cross on each of the outer Points to his Father's Label.
Patricia
Princess Pat, as she was widely and affectionately called, was named after the Irish Patron Saint on whose feast day she was born. She was widely travelled, accompanying her Father to India and, most famously, to Canada when he was appointed Governor General there in 1911. Patricia was famously featured on a Canadian banknote!
Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was not only named after her, but she was appointed it's first Colonel-in-Chief. It was founded for service in the First World War on 10th August 1914 by Hamilton Gault, a prominent Montreal businessman, who raised the regiment out of his own funds, making it the last privately raised regiment in Canada if not the Empire. The Princess maintained close ties with the regiment throughout her life, and hand-sewed the original regimental colour, which was carried into every First World War battle in which they, 'The Patricias', fought. This became known as the "Ric-A-Dam-Doo", reportedly from the Gaelic for "cloth of your mother". A nonsense version of the Regimental Song but for Scouts has Princess Pat living in a tree! It is still popular with Canadian Scouts.
When she died, another Patricia, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, took over as Colonel-in-Chief and insisted on being called 'Lady Patricia' as her predecessor had been.
Princess Pat paved the way for the Royal Family in the dark days following the Great War in many ways. Firstly, she decided to marry a commoner, the naval Commander and later Admiral Alexander Ramsay in 1919, rather than a royal or even one of her own cousins. (A copy of the Order of Service can be found here. Unfortunately, it does not carry either Patricia's or Alexander's Coat of Arms.) Secondly, she decided to marry in Westminster Abbey, the first royal to do so in almost 600 years. She also decided, with agreement from HM King George V, to renounce her titles on marriage, and so the Bride left the Abbey as 'plain' Lady Patricia Ramsey. She did not, however, appear to lose her rank and was seen at successive coronations decked out in Robe and Coronet.
Patricia's five-pointed Label as a grandchild of a sovereign was assigned to her on her marriage in 1919. At that time the Labels were still based on the Father's and Patricia's curiously added a Fleur-de-Lys on each of the two inner Points so that all three Fleurs-de-Lys were together instead of alternating with the Crosses.