HRH The Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany
They had a happy, though brief, marriage. Helena gave birth to a daughter, Alice. His daughter's name may come as no surprise as Leopold was acquainted with Alice Liddell for whom Lewis Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Leopold died in 1884 from a cerebral hemorrhage after a fall whilst in the South of France on doctor's orders, four months before the birth of his son, Charles Edward, who would succeed his uncle Alfred as Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Helena, as much an intellectual as Leopold, never remarried but carried on with charity and welfare work alongside others from the British Royal Family.
Alice
Alice's other claim to fame is that she was unfortunately a carrier of her Father's hemophelia. Her eldest son Rupert died at the age of 20 of a hemorrhage caused by a car accident. Their younger son, Maurice, died at 5 months. Her daughter May seems to have been able to avoid the disease.
On 10th February 1904, Alice had married her second cousin once-removed (through King George III's son the Duke of Cambridge) Prince Alexander of Teck. He was also the brother of Princess Mary, the Princess of Wales (later Queen Mary, consort of King George V) at St George's Chapel, Windsor. After their marriage, Princess Alice was styled Princess Alexander of Teck. Alice remained a Royal Highness, Alexander was born a Serene Highness.
During the First World War, on 7th November to be precise, Letters Patent were passed to confer the British title of Earl of Athlone (and Viscount Trematon) on Alexander, having been required to drop his Teck/German title. Alexander was a career soldier but he and Alice would become useful to King George and Queen Mary as part of the British Royal Family. At first sight, it is difficult to distinguish the tincture of the Earl of Athlone's Crescent for differencing, being the second son of the Duke of Teck. However, www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk/online/content/athlone1917.htm (the website of Cracroft's Peerage) seems to confirm what can be seen from Athlone's entry in Burke's Peerage, that the Crescent on the Shield is black and those on the Crest and Supporters is white. (Notice how the British/Cambridge Arms come before the Teck Arms.)
After their return, they both tried to help Alice's brother, Charles Edward, who was arrested by the Americans for his involvement in the Nazi Party, even becoming a member of the Reichstag from 1937 to 1945. He was, however, sentenced by a de-nazification court, heavily fined and almost bankrupted.
Alice and Alexander would continue to represent the Royal Family. Alice became Colonel-in-Chief of two British Army units and one Rhodesian Army unit. (During the Second World War, she had been Honorary Air Commandant of the Royal Canadian Air Force Women's Division as shown in the photo at the top.) She became the first Chancellor of the then University of the West Indies in 1950 and visited every year till 1974 when she was succeeded by Sir Hugh Wooding.
In 1966, Princess Alice published her memoirs, For My Grandchildren. And, mainly as part of the Silver Jubilee celebrations in 1977 and having lived through six reigns, she gave a couple of television interviews mainly on her memories of her Grandmother, when she put paid to the idea that Queen Victoria was never amused and showed an amused and amusing side to her own personality.
Princess Alice passed away peacefully in her sleep on 3rd January 1981 as the longest-lived British Princess of Royal Blood and the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria.
Alice was not assigned a Label until as late as 1934, after her return from South Africa. She was given a 5-pointed Label of a grandchild of a sovereign with the addition of a red Heart on each of the two extra outer Points to her Father's Label, making the strange arrangement of a St George's Cross in the middle of 4 red Hearts in total.
Charles Edward
Charles Edward was born after the death of his father, Prince Leopold, and thus became HRH The 2nd Duke of Albany at birth. He studied at Eton as his Mother wanted an English education for him. Kaiser Wilhelm II took a great interest in Charles Edward's education, though. Prince Arthur of Connaught was also at Eton and the Kaiser was making it known that he wanted a German education for the heir to the Dukedom of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. As the then Duke (Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh as was) only had one son, also called Alfred, who died (maybe committed suicide) in 1899, the succession fell to Victoria and Albert's next son, Arthur, Duke of Connaught. As he didn't wish to comply with the Kaiser's wishes, Arthur renounced his rights to the Dukedom for his family. So, when Alfred died in 1900, Charles Edward became the Duke at 15 years of age. The regent was Alfred's son-in-law, Ernst, Hereditary Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the husband of Alfred's third daughter Alexandra, but under the guidance of the Kaiser...
Not long after taking on the full reins of power on reaching his majority at the age of 18, the Kaiser chose Charles Edward's bride - Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein, the niece of Wilhelm's wife, Empress Augusta Victoria. They had five children, amongst them Princess Sibylla who would become the Mother of the present King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf.
World War One brought conflicts but Charles Edward sided with Germany. Although he did not see active service he was on the staff of an infantry division of the German army at the beginning of the War and visited both the western and eastern fronts on numerous occasions. That being the case, King George V removed Charles Edward from the Roll of Honour of the Order of the Garter in 1915 and, as part of the Titles Deprivation Act, Charles Edward was eventually stripped of his British styles and titles. (The titles of Duke of Albany, Earl of Clarence and Baron Arklow have never been re-assigned since.)
At the end of World War One a republic was declared in Germany and Charles Edward was forced to abdicate. He held out longer than others in his situation and, like Emperor Karl VI of Austria, announced that he had "ceased to rule" rather than abdicated.
Looking for a cause, Charles Edward became interested in various right-wing associations and supported Adolf Hitler. He became a member of the Nazi Party and the SA (or Brown Shirts) in 1933. He is alleged to have spied for Hitler whilst attending his cousin King George V's funeral in 1936 when he famously turned up to the ceremony in full Nazi uniform and regalia. Charles Edward played host to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor on their private tour of Germany in 1937.
After the Second World War, even though his sister Alice and her husband couldn't secure his release from the Americans, he was saved any great charge of crimes against humanity when his son-in-law, Gustav Adolf of Sweden died in a plane crash in 1947 and Gustav Adolf's Grandfather, King Gustav V, died in 1950, making Sibylla's son Crown Prince and Charles Edward the Grandfather of a future King of Sweden.
Charles Edward spent the remainder of his life in seclusion, forced into poverty by the fines he had been required to pay by the denazification tribunal and because much of his property had been seized by the Russians. He died of cancer in 1954.
Whilst Charles Edward's Garter Stall Plate would apparently have us believe that his Coat of Arms was purely Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in other words the Arms of the Duchy, as displayed right, other sources show that his Shield followed the pattern of his Uncle Alfred in reversing the pre-1917 British pattern. Not actually having a Label assigned for himself as he left for Germany as a child, Charles Edward placed the Shield of his Father's Coat of Arms as an Inescutcheon on top of the Arms of Saxony. This appears to be confirmed by a number of sources, the foremost of which is the Royal House's homepage (www.sachsen-coburg-gotha.de) which is unfortunately under construction but which has this version at the top. The website www.stadtgeschichte-coburg.de, which is under the patronage of Prince Andreas of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and is a general website for the city of Coburg, has the following version with pavilion but without Supporters or Motto. |