British Queens Consort and Queens Regnant

A blog about Britain's Queens, Consort or Regnant, and basically just everything related to them. I'm not a monarchist, I'm just interested in history.

[teatimeatwinterpalace]

July 6, 1893 – Wedding of George, Duke of York and Mary of Teck

The wedding was set for July 6, 1893 at the Chapel Royal, St. James’ Palace. St, George’s Chapel, Windsor, had been the choice for Mary’s planned marriage to Eddy, but it was considered inappropriate because it had been the site of Eddy’s funeral. There was much excitement about the upcoming wedding. Women’s magazines produced special editions detailing Mary’s trousseau. Crowds visited London’s Imperial Institute where royal wedding gifts were displayed for the first time. The summer of 1893 had been hot and July 6, the wedding day, was no different. Crowds gathered in the morning along the bridal procession route on Constitution Hill, Piccadilly and St. James Street. At 11:30 a.m., the first of the carriage processions left Buckingham Palace. Royalty from Britain and abroad rode in twelve open state landaus driven by cream-colored horses. The bridegroom and his father left the Palace at 11:45 a.m. followed by Queen Victoria in the Glass Coach. Accompanying the Queen was her cousin, the beaming Princess Mary Adelaide, the mother of the bride. The bride’s procession came last. Mary was accompanied by her father and her brother Adolphus. As Mary walked down the aisle of the Chapel Royal towards George, she leaned stiffly on her father’s arm and smiled at those guests she recognized. While exchanging vows, George gave his answers distinctly while Mary spoke quietly. After the wedding service, the royals returned in state to Buckingham Palace. The royals feasted at round tables covered with food in a room separate from the other guests. The guests enjoyed themselves in the Ballroom where large buffet tables were set up. After the meal, there was a royal wedding “first.” Queen Victoria led George and Mary out onto the balcony at Buckingham Palace and presented them to the cheering crowds.

[history-be-written]

11 June, 1560: Marie de Guise dies at around 1:00 in the morning in Edinburgh Castle, in Scotland

Fancast: Joanne Whalley as Marie de Guise

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[haticesultanas]

HISTORY MEME | eight moments: the execution of anne boleyn  

“If we are to believe Thomas Cromwell — and there is no good reason not to — he moved against Anne Boleyn only when the king’s behaviour on Easter Tuesday 1536 had finally convinced him that so long as she was queen, Henry would obstruct what was safest both for his kingdom and for his secretary. From that point twelve days turned decision into action, and on Sunday, 30 April, the first suspect was under arrest. Less than three weeks later Anne was dead. A month and a day — from Chapuys’ acknowledging her in the Chapel Royal at Greenwich on Tuesday, 18 April, to her burial in the Tower on Friday, 19 May — this is all the time it took for the most romantic, the most scandalous tragedy in English history. It was a tragedy which took the life of a queen, her brother George, Henry Norris — the closest to a friend Henry VIII had — Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeton (all of the privy chamber), and left yet another of the privy chamber staff, Sir Richard Page, in prison in the Tower, along with Sir Thomas Wyatt.” – Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn

[ganondorf-suavemente]

Anne Neville died on 16 March 1485, probably of tuberculosis, at Westminster. The day she died, there was an eclipse, which some took to be an omen of her husband’s fall from heavenly grace. She was buried in Westminster Abbey in an unmarked grave to the right of the High Altar, next to the door to the Confessor’s Chapel. Richard III is said to have wept at her funeral.

[teatimeatwinterpalace]

March 10, 1863 – Wedding of Prince Albert Edward and Princess Alexandra of Denmark 

The wedidng was set for a date in Lent, the season of sackcloth and ashes; the dress code for the court was half-mourning colours of grey, silver and lilac, and the Queen commanded that it should take place at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, rather than London. She insisted that this had been Albert’s wish, but insiders thought the Queen’s real reason for cheating London’s show-loving crowds of a royal wedding was the fact that in St George’s Chapel she could watch the ceremony unseen from Catherine of Aragon’s closet.

Inside the chapel was packed. The Queen insistence on inviting her entire household left few seats for the great and the good, and invitations were highly prized. Bertie himself was allowed only four friends. When the Queen entered the box, the entire congregation bowed. As Vicky processed up the aisle, magnificient in white satin trimmed with ermine, she caught sight of her mother and (wrote the Queen) ’made a very low curtsey, with an inexpressible look of love and respect, which had a most touching effect’. Next Bertie entered, wearing Garter robes and flanked by his supporters, his brother-in-law Fritz and his uncle Ernest of Saxe-Coburg. He seemed pale and nervous but, some said, ’more considerable’ than usual. He bowed to his mother and kept looking up at her, Victoria thought, ’with an anxious clinging look’. Bertie stood waiting for what seemed an eternity, ten or twenty minuts, until at last Alix appeared. Instead of the magnificent wedding dress of Brussels lace given to her by King Leopold, she wore Honiton lace patterned with roses, shamrocks and thistles and garlanded with orange blossom - a last minute change of plan which signalled her role as ambassador for English fashion. She was pale and trembling and red-eyed, having cried all morning at leaving her mother. Not that she was doubtful about marrying Bertie; she said to one of his sisters : ’you perhaps think that I like marrying your Brother for his position but if he was a cowboy I should love him just the same and would marry no one else’.

When the marriage was over, the Queen recorded ’I gave them an affectionate nod and kissed my hand to sweet Alix’. Afterwards, Bertie and Alix lunched with thirty-eight royal relations, while five hundreds wedding guests caroused elsewhere. They departed for the honeymoon to Osborne. Neither Bertie nor Alix wrote accounts of the wedding.    {Bertie a Life of Edward VII}

[glorianas]

❝ She was a king’s daughter she was a king’s sister she was a king’s wife she was a queen and by the same title a king also”

John White, Bishop of Winchester at Mary I’s funeral, 1558

[thewhitequeendaily]

11th February: The Birth & Death of Elizabeth Of York

[glorianas]

“By Whose hand was first tied together the sweet posy of the red and white roses”

The first royal marriage of the Tudor dynasty took place on the 18th of January 1486 between Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Henry had pledged to marry Elizabeth in Rennes Cathedral on Christmas day 1483. In 1485 Henry was the victor of the Battle of Bosworth and became the next king of England. Henry and Elizabeth’s marriage was seen as the joining of the warring houses of Lancaster and York and a symbolic end of the dynastic conflict that had raged for 30 years. Elizabeth soon became pregnant and their first child, a boy called Arthur, was born in Winchester in September of 1486. Seven children followed, with only four living to adulthood. Elizabeth died in childbirth in 1503 at only 37, Henry never married again and died in 1509.

[feuillesmortes]

On 18 January 1486, a wedding was celebrated in London’s Westminster Abbey. The bride, not yet twenty, was tall and slender and blonde. Her pink-and-white Plantagenet beauty would become legendary, celebrated in art and sculpture, verse and prose: chroniclers of the present and future would define her by her long flowing golden locks and regular features. The eldest child of notoriously good-looking parents, she would set the standard of beauty for an age.

Amy Licence, In Bed With the Tudors: The Sex Lives of a Dynasty From Elizabeth of York to Elizabeth I.  (via feuillesmortes)

[coraofwales]

Prince George being an absolute cutie whilst making Christmas puddings with Her Majesty The Queen, The Prince of Wales and The Duke of Cambridge at Buckingham Palace as part of a Royal British Legion initiative | December 18, 2019 

[juliacaesaris-deactivated202109]

[youlooklikearealbabetoday]

“The meaning of this scene was really about Queen Anne’s jealousy of my character and of all the characters who are dancing because she’s crippled by gout and in a wheelchair; it became about the emotions on Olivia Colman’s extraordinary face.” -Rachel Weisz

The Favourite (2018) dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

[history-be-written]

“With her usual charm, good sense and genuine interest in people, Marie won hearts wherever she went; pleasing and impressing everyone with her kindness, unfailing friendliness and gracious manner as well as the intelligence of her questions and responses.

Before her departure for Scotland, Marie had been warned that she would find her new home a ‘barbarous country, destitute and void of all commodity’. Instead, she was delighted to find that, although lacking the polish and wealth of her native France, it was nowhere near as primitive as she had been led to believe. In fact it was just as civilised, bustling and pleasant as any other nation in Europe. She was particularly taken with the attractiveness of the people, informing her husband that ‘she never saw so many fair personages of men and women and also young babes and children’.

Never a great or diligent letter writer, a tendency she seems to have inherited from her father and one that she would need to overcome now that she lived so far from her family, Marie managed to send some letters to her mother after her father and sister set out on their return journey. Sadly her missives have not survived, but it’s clear from her mother’s affectionante and relieved response that she had been full of praise for Scotland and her new husband.” - Melanie Clegg, “Scourge of Henry VIII: the Life of Marie de Guise”

[glorianas]

“But for her sex she could have surpassed all the heroes of history.”

—Thomas Cromwell

[mandy-lane]

[edwardslovelyelizabeth]

A man’s love is worthless. Our mother’s loved, look where it got her, a feeble husband. Love is of no value without power and position. If I gave the king a son, he would not be a bastard.

Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn in “The Other Boleyn Girl” (2019) dir. Justin Chadwick 

[harry-leroy]

Sophie Okonedo as Margaret of Anjou in The Hollow Crown: Henry VI Part I (2016) 

(for Histories Appreciation Week 2019 - Day 2: Queen’s Day)