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Anna Katharina of Brandenburg, Queen of Denmark & Norway; Credit – Wikipedia
June 26, 1575 – Birth of Anna Katharina of Brandenburg, Queen of Denmark, first wife of King Christian IV of Denmark, in Halle upon Saale, Electorate of Brandenburg, now in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Anna Katharina of Brandenburg married King Christian IV of Denmark in 1597 and they had six children. Anna Katharina was praised for her modesty and piety. She often accompanied Christian IV on his trips but had no influence on the politics of Denmark. Christian IV had affairs during his marriage and Anna Katharina was certainly aware of them. A little more than a year after the birth of her last child, Anna Katharina died on April 8, 1612, at the age of 36.
Unofficial Royalty: Anna Katharina of Brandenburg, Queen of Denmark
June 26, 1726 – Birth of Vittorio Amadeo III, King of Sardinia at the Royal Palace in Turin, Kingdom of Sardinia, now in Italy
Vittorio Amedeo III was a great-great-grandson of King Charles I of England from the House of Stuart. After King James II, a son of King Charles I, lost his throne via the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Jacobite (from Jacobus, the Latin for James) movement formed. The goal of the Jacobites was to restore the Roman Catholic Stuart King James II of England/VII of Scotland and his Roman Catholic heirs to the thrones of England and Scotland. When the line of the deposed King James II of England died out in 1807, the Jacobite claims to the British throne descended from the line of his sister Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orléans whose daughter Anne Marie d’Orléans had married Vittorio Amedeo II, King of Sardinia. In 1807, Vittorio Amedeo’s son Carlo Emanuele IV, King of Sardinia became the Jacobite heir from the House of Savoy
Unofficial Royalty: Vittorio Amadeo III, King of Sardinia
June 26, 1760 – Birth of Prince Johann I Josef of Liechtenstein in Vienna, Austria
Full name: Johann Baptist Josef Adam Johann Nepomuk Aloys Franz de Paula
Because he had an elder brother and was not expected to succeed to the throne of Liechtenstein, Johann Josef chose a military career in the Imperial Army of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Liechtenstein was a constituent state. In 1792, Johann Josef married Landgravine Josefa of Fürstenberg-Weitra, and the couple had fourteen children. Upon the death of his childless brother Alois I, Prince of Liechtenstein in 1805, Johan Josef became the reigning Prince of Liechtenstein. As Prince of Liechtenstein, Johann Josef carried out progressive reforms, and in 1818, however, he approved a new constitution that limited the power of the monarch. He established modern practices in agriculture and forestry and reorganized the government administration to meet modern needs. On April 20, 1836, Johann I Josef, Prince of Liechtenstein, aged 75, died at Liechtenstein Palace in Vienna, Austria.
Unofficial Royalty: Prince Johann I Josef of Liechtenstein
June 26, 1830 – Death of King George IV of the United Kingdom at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England; buried at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, England
Upon the death of King George III on January 29, 1820, The Prince Regent succeeded to the throne as King George IV. At the time of his succession, George IV was obese and probably addicted to laudanum. He suffered from gout, arteriosclerosis, edema, and possibly porphyria and towards the end of his life, he spent more and more time in seclusion at Windsor Castle. Because of his excessive lifestyle, he had become so fat (his weight in 1830 was 130 kg/280 lbs) that he increasingly was an object of ridicule when he appeared in public. George IV’s final illness began in January 1830 with a severe cough. He improved slightly in March 1830 but continued to have respiratory problems, faintness, and urinary tract pain. When George IV died, the throne passed to the next surviving son of King George III, Prince William, Duke of Clarence who reigned as King William IV.
Unofficial Royalty: King George IV of the United Kingdom
June 26, 1878 – Death of Maria de las Mercedes of Orléans, Queen of Spain, first wife of King Alfonso XII of Spain, at the Palacio Real de Madrid; originally buried at the Monastery of El Escorial, reburied at the Cathedral of la Almudena in Madrid, Spain in 2000
In June 1878, six months after her marriage, it was announced that Mercedes was pregnant and the country rejoiced. However, the joy was short-lived as Mercedes suffered a miscarriage. Shortly after the miscarriage, Mercedes became suddenly ill. Within hours, she was at death’s door with typhoid fever. Mercedes died two days after her 18th birthday, on June 26, 1878, at her birthplace, the Royal Palace of Madrid.
Unofficial Royalty: Maria de las Mercedes of Orléans, Queen of Spain
June 26, 1899 – Birth of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia, daughter of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, at Peterhof near St. Petersburg, Russia
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (born Prince Louis of Battenberg, a maternal uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh) was a son of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s eldest sister Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. In his childhood, Lord Mountbatten was close to his aunt Alexandra’s children, his first cousins. At a very young age, he began a “lifelong love affair” with Maria and kept a framed photo of her by his bed until he, like his Romanov first cousins, was also violently murdered. He wrote about Maria: “I was mad about her, and determined to marry her. You could not imagine anyone more beautiful than she was!”
Unofficial Royalty: Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia
June 26, 1914 – Birth of Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark, Princess of Hesse, Princess of Hanover, sister of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Mon Repos on the isle of Corfu, Greece
Sophie married twice, both descendants of Queen Victoria as she was. Her first husband was Prince Christoph of Hesse, the son of Prince Friedrich Karl of Hesse and Princess Margarete of Prussia, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Prince Christoph was killed in a plane crash during World War II. Her second husband was Prince Georg Wilhelm of Hanover, the son of Ernst August III, Duke of Brunswick, a descendant of King George III through his son Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover and Duke of Cumberland, and Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia, the only daughter of Wilhelm II, German Emperor who was a grandson of Queen Victoria.
Unofficial Royalty: Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark, Princess of Hesse, Princess of Hanover
June 26, 1922 – Death of Prince Albert I of Monaco in Paris, France; buried at the Cathedral of Monaco in Monaco
Besides being the Sovereign Prince of Monaco, Albert I left an interesting legacy. He was a pioneer of oceanography and founded the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco which has a world-class aquarium, museum, library, and research facilities in Paris. His interest in the origins of man caused him to found the Institute for Human Paleontology in Paris, which conducted many archeological digs. Because of his quest for world peace, the prince founded the International Institute for Peace, a predecessor of the League of Nations and the United Nations.
Unofficial Royalty: Prince Albert I of Monaco
June 26, 2005 – Birth of Princess Alexia of the Netherlands, daughter of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, at Bronovo Hospital in The Hague, The Netherlands
Full name: Alexia Juliana Marcela Laurentian
Alexia is the second of the three daughters of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.
Unofficial Royalty: Princess Alexia of the Netherlands
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