Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg is the link of the Spanish Royal Family with Queen Isabell II as she is the granddaughter of Queen Victoria and managed to get crowned Queen of Spain.
She was one of the most beautiful princesses of her time. She came from England to marry, in 1906, a young King Alfonso XIII, who had been deeply impressed with her after meeting her on a visit to Buckingham Palace, on her first official trip to the United Kingdom. Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and is the link of the Spanish Royal Family with Queen Elizabeth II.
At the Spanish court, with a certain sad and closed air, she tried to establish new airs in the way she dressed and displayed her jewelry and softened the rigid protocol of the Bourbons, attempts often misunderstood. She for many years was considered "the foreign queen." But she was the queen of Spain and, little by little, she won her game, even though she ended up going into exile and separating from her husband.
Victoria Eugenia's childhood
Victoria Eugenia Julia Ena (a Scottish name that her parents liked because it means Eve and became her family name) was the daughter of Henry of Battenberg and his wife, Princess Beatrix, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria. from the United Kingdom. She was born at Balmoral Castle in 1887 and grew up at Windsor, with Queen Victoria.
When she was six years old, she suffered a serious concussion when she fell from her pony at Osborne Castle and hit her head on the ground. Queen Victoria's doctors detected signs of intracranial hypertension and a probable brain hemorrhage, but she Ena overcame without sequelae. Her childhood was spent with her grandmother, learning the strict Victorian etiquette.
Victoria Eugenia's relationship with King Alfonso XIII
Victoria Eugenia was not the princess chosen, at first, for King Alfonso XIII. Three candidates had been proposed to her: the British Princess Patricia of Connaught; the German Duchess Marie Antoinette of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and the Austrian Archduchess Maria Gabriela.
King Edward VII organized a reception, for Alfonso XIII, and invited Patricia of Connaught. It was Patricia herself who did not want to go further with the young king because she had no intention of being queen. However, at that same reception, Alfonso noticed another young woman who immediately dazzled him: Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg, who was 18 years old and was the goddaughter of Empress Eugenia de Montijo.
It was said that she was Queen Victoria's favorite granddaughter. Blonde, with very clear eyes and a pale complexion, fascinated the young king, who asked her if she collected postcards, something common among aristocratic young women, to which she answered yes. And when they said goodbye, she asked him: "Will she remember me?" And they say that she replied: "The visit of a King is never forgotten." Looks like it was a real crush. Alfonso began to send him postcards and letters and the two maintained a long epistolary relationship for months.
The hard beginnings of Victoria Eugenia in the court
However, many at the Spanish court did not see her as suitable, because she was not a Catholic. After all, she was not a royal princess, and she appears to have had Jewish ancestry through her paternal grandmother, the Countess of Haucke. The King's aunt, the Infanta Eulalia, did everything she could to thwart the marriage, gossiping at gatherings to which she was invited in London.
Queen María Cristina, the mother of Alfonso XIII, was not in favor of this union either, especially due to the family's history of hemophilia. The ABC newspaper, however, called a contest among its readers to see which princess they preferred as the wife of King Alfonso and Victoria Eugenia won by an overwhelming majority.
Despite their epistolary relationship, the reality is that Alfonso and Ena barely knew each other. It is a mystery if King Alfonso was unaware that his fiancée could transmit hemophilia or if, despite knowing it, he ignored it. It was even said that Victoria Eugenia hid it, but the reality is that the King's mother, María Cristina, was aware of it, even though the English royal family kept it a secret.
King Alfonso's jewels
King Alfonso gave her numerous pieces of jewelry to celebrate their union, such as a diamond chaton necklace, which was enlarged over time, matching earrings, and one of the most valuable tiaras from the royal jeweler, the Flor de Lis. , diamonds and platinum. Many of these jewels are today part of the jewels "to pass" that Doña Letizia wears.
The tragic wedding of Victoria Eugenia and Alfonso XIII
The wedding took place on May 31 at the Church of San Jerónimo el Real, in Madrid. The bride's dress was made of white satin and lace brought from England by Julia de Herce, one of the most important dressmakers of the aristocracy. It had a tail of four meters and had been made by 40 officers. The veil she wore had belonged to her mother-in-law, Queen Maria Christina, and was embroidered with fleurs-de-lys and the imperial eagle, a symbol of the Austrian imperial family. The bride wore it tied with the Flor de Lis tiara.
However, the wedding day turned out to be a fateful day: when the bride and groom had left the Church to return to the Royal Palace, the anarchist Mateo Morral threw a bouquet of flowers into the newlyweds' carriage as it crossed Calle Mayor.
The bride and groom escaped unharmed, but 23 people died and 104 were injured. Blood splattered on the bride's dress. Her wedding was the last royal wedding held with all the display of wealth and pomp, before World War I. It was another sad memory for Victoria Eugenia.
However, the banquet that was to be held at night was not canceled and diners were able to enjoy the first wedding cake, that is, the wedding cake, which was served in Spain. It was an English tradition that had never been seen here and it raised so much expectation that even the newspapers dedicated special chronicles to it. Since then, there has been no wedding without a wedding cake in Spain. The couple spent their honeymoon at the La Granja de San Ildefonso palace in Segovia. They were very much in love.
