Related to several royal and noble houses, such as Habsburg, Austria, and Orleans, France, the relationship of the Württemberg family with the House of Windsor and Queen Elizabeth II of England herself is almost unknown.
Duke Carl of Württenberg, heir to the last king of that disappeared German kingdom, died this June 7 at the age of 85 and his grandson, the young Duke William, 27, became the new head of the real home.
Although the dynasty lost the throne in 1918, at the end of the First World War and the abdication of its last king, William II, its descendants today administer a vast financial empire and its heritage includes several ancestral castles in Germany.
Duke Carl and his grandson William come from the Catholic branch of one of the oldest ruling aristocratic houses in the German-speaking world, whose beginnings date back to the 11th century.
Duke and Elector Frederick II achieved royal dignity in 1806 under the influence of Napoleon and the royal house was one of the most important in the German Empire until 1918, when William II of Württemberg abdicated and took the title of duke.
Related to several royal and noble houses, such as Habsburg, Austria, and Orleans, France, the relationship of the Württemberg family with the House of Windsor and Queen Elizabeth II of England herself is almost unknown.
The relationship between the House of Windsor and the House of Württenberg stems from Queen Mary, grandmother of Elizabeth II, who died 69 years ago.
Princess Victoria Mary (nicknamed “May”) was born at Kensington Palace in 1867 and raised in England, where her cousin, Queen Victoria, reigned. But technically her birth title was Princess of Teck, given to her ancestors in the Kingdom of Württemberg.
The Teck family arose from the marriage of Prince Alexander of Württenberg (1804-1885), who married the Hungarian countess Claudine Rhédey von Kis Rhéde, a morganatic marriage that unleashed such a sc--dal at that German court that the prince lost his status and his right to the throne.
Alexander's resignation from the throne altered the order of succession and, after the death of King William I, the crown of Württenberg passed to his cousin, William II, who would be the last monarch.
The Teck family lived in Vienna, because Alexander was bored with the court in Württenberg. In 1839, after becoming a mother for the third time, Duchess Claudine died after suffering a serious fall from a horse during a military review in Vienna.
Alexander then received the title of Duke of Teck and his sons were titled princes. One of them was Duke Francis (1837-1900), later Duke of Teck, who married the British Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge on June 12, 1866 in Surrey, England.
Mary Adelaide, popularly nicknamed “Fat Mary” was, of course, the mother of Mary of Teck, who married King George V in 1893. Her second child, born in 1895, would be King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II.
The Queen died, aged 85, in 1953 at Marlborough House in London after being widowed, experiencing the Second World War and suffering the deaths of her sons George VI and the Duke of Kent.
She was the only queen consort of England to live long enough to see a grandson on the throne.
