A
morganatic marriage is a type of
marriage which can be contracted in certain
countries, usually between people of unequal
social rank, which prevents the passage of the
husband's titles and privileges to the wife and any
children born of the marriage. It is also known as a
left-handed marriage because in the wedding
ceremony the groom holds his bride's right hand with his left hand
instead of his right.
Generally, this is a marriage between a male of high birth (such as
from a royal or reigning house), and a woman of lesser status (such
as from a non-royal or non-reigning house, or with a profession
that is traditionally considered lower-status). Neither the bride
nor any children of the marriage has any claim on the groom's
titles, rights, or
entailed property. The
children are considered legitimate on other counts and the
prohibition of
bigamy applies. Morganatic
marriage was also practiced by the polygamous
Mongols as to their non-principal wives.
It is possible for a woman to marry a man of lower rank
morganatically, but this is extremely rare because, in the past,
women of high rank often did not have titles that they could pass
to their children, and in most cases did not choose their own
husbands.
Etymology
Morganatic, already in use in English by
1727 (according to the
Oxford English Dictionary), is
derived from the
medieval Latin
morganaticus from the
Late Latin
phrase
matrimonium ad morganaticam and refers to the gift
given by the groom to the bride on the morning after the wedding,
morning gift, i.e.
dower. The Latin term, applied to a Germanic custom,
was adopted from a Germanic term,
*morgangeba (compare
Early English
morgengifu and German
Morgengabe).
The literal meaning is explained in a 16th century passage quoted
by
Du Cange: a
marriage by which the wife and the children that may be born are
gift.
Meyers
Konversations-Lexikon of 1888 gives an etymology of the German
term
Morganitische Ehe as a combination of the ancient
Gothic
morgjan, to limit, to restrict, occasioned by the
restricted gifts from the groom in such a marriage and the morning
gift.
Morgen is the German word for morning, while the
Latin word is
matutinus.
The
morning gift has been a customary property arrangement
for marriage present first in early medieval German cultures (such
as
Langobards) and also of ancient
Germanic tribes, and the church drove its adoption into other
countries in order to improve the wife's security by this
additional benefit. The bride received a settled property
from the bridegroom's clan — it was intended to ensure her
livelihood in widowhood, and it was to be kept separate as the
wife's discrete possession. However, when a marriage contract is
made wherein the bride and the children of the marriage will not
receive anything else (than the dower) from the bridegroom or from
his inheritance or clan, that sort of marriage was dubbed as
"marriage with only the dower and no other inheritance", i.e.
matrimonium ad morganaticum.
German-speaking Europe
The practice of morganatic marriage was most common in the
German-speaking parts of Europe, where
equality of birth between the spouses was considered an important
principle among the reigning houses and high nobility. The German
name was
Ehe zur linken Hand (marriage by the left hand)
and the husband gave his left hand during the wedding ceremony
instead of the right.
Morganatic marriage is not, and has not been, possible in
jurisdictions that do not allow for the required freedom of
contracting with regard to the marriage contract, as it is an
agreement containing a pre-emptive limitation to the inheritance
and property rights of the spouse and the children.
Perhaps the most famous example in modern times was the marriage of
the heir to the
Austro-Hungarian
Empire,
Franz
Ferdinand, and Bohemian aristocrat
Countess Sophie Chotek von
Chotkowa. The marriage was initially resisted by
Emperor Franz Joseph I, but after
pressure from family members and other European rulers, he
eventually relented in 1899 (but did not attend the wedding
himself). The bride was made
Princess
(later Duchess) of
Hohenberg, their
children took their mother's name and rank, and were excluded from
the imperial succession. The couple was assassinated in 1914 (an
event that triggered the
First World
War).
Although the children, or issue, of morganatic marriages were
ineligible ever to succeed to their families' respective thrones,
some morganauts did go on to achieve dynastic success elsewhere in
Europe.
The marriage of Prince Alexander of Hesse
and by Rhine and German-Polish noblewoman Countess Julia von Hauke (created
Princess of Battenberg), provided a
sovereign prince of Bulgaria,
and queen-consorts for Spain
and Sweden
, as well as
(through female descent) the consort of the current Queen of the
United
Kingdom
. Likewise, the marriage of
Duke Alexander of
Württemberg and
Claudine Rhédey von
Kis-Rhéde (created "Countess of Hohenstein") resulted in the
House of Teck. That family's most
famous member,
Mary of Teck, married
George V of the United
Kingdom, and the present British Royal Family traces descent
from her.
Occasionally though, morganauts would attempt to overcome their
social origins, and succeed to their family's estates.
Leopold, Grand Duke of Baden
succeeded to the throne of Baden despite being born of a morganatic
marriage. The son of
Karl Friedrich, Grand Duke
of Baden by his second, common-born wife Luise Karoline, Freiin
Geyer von Geyersberg, he only became a Prince in 1817 (aged 27), as
part of a new law of succession. With Baden's royal family without
a male heir, Leopold was enfranchised and married to a Princess of
Badenese descent, ascending the throne in 1830. His descendants
ruled the Grand Duchy until the abolition of the monarchy in
1918.
This, however, was an exception.
When the Grand Duchy of
Luxembourg
also found itself without a male heir at the
beginning of the 20th century, the morganatic Counts of Merenberg proposed themselves
as heirs. Grand Duke William IV,
however, chose to alter the laws of succession to allow a female
successor (his own daughter
Marie-Adélaïde)
instead.
Duke Georg of
Mecklenburg, Count of Carlow, morganatic son of Duke George
Alexander of Mecklenburg and commoner Natalia Vanljarskaya, claimed
the throne of the
Grand Duchy of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz as heir to his childless uncle,
Duke Charles Michael.
The abolition of the monarchies of Germany in 1918, however, meant
the validity of this claim was never put to the test. Nevertheless,
the Count of Carlow's descendants still style themselves as the
head of the Grand Ducal house of Mecklenburg.
Russia
Paul I of Russia promulgated a
strict new
house law for Russia in 1797.
Based on the German
Salic Law, the new
rules established a clear requirement to marry persons with equal
status of nobility at their births (Ger.
Ebenburtigkeit).
The
issue of an unequal marriage would be
excluded from the succession.
An early victim was
Grand Duke
Constantine Pavlovich, grandson of
Catherine the Great, and viceroy of
Poland. In 1820, his marriage to German Princess
Juliane of
Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was annulled to allow him to marry Polish
noblewoman
Joanna Grudzińska.
She was known as "
Duchess of Łowicz" during her
marriage, which produced no children.
One Tsar, Emperor
Alexander II of
Russia married morganatically in 1880. Princess
Ekaterina Mihailovna
Dolgorukova, Alexander's second bride, had previously been his
long-term mistress and mother of his illegitimate children (who
received the titles
Prince
Yurievsky and Princess Yurievskaya). One of their daughters
married a German morganaut, the
Count
of Merenberg.
Another victim of the new laws was
Grand Duke Michael
Mihailovich of Russia (October 4, 1861 - April 26, 1929), the
third child of Grand Duke Michael Nicolaievich of Russia and his
wife Olga Fedorovna (born Princess Cecilie of Baden). He attracted
the displeasure of the Tsar by marrying another member of the
morganatic
Merenberg Dynasty. As
a result, he was exiled from Russia, which ensured that his family
avoided the Russian Revolution. His daughters married into the
British Aristocracy. Less fortunate was
Grand Duke Paul
Alexandrovich of Russia who went into exile in Paris to marry a
commoner,
Olga Valerianovna
Karnovich. Paul returned to serve in the Russian army during
the First World War, and
Nicholas
II rewarded the family by making Olga and her children Princes
and Princesses Paley. Paul's patriotism, however, had sealed his
fate, and he died at the hands of Russia's revolutionaries in
1917.
However, Nicholas II permitted his brother,
Grand Duke Michael
Alexandrovich of Russia, to marry twice-divorced noblewoman
Natalya Sergeyevna Wulfert (née Sheremetevskaya), making the bride
Countess Brassova. The son of
Michael and Natalya,
George,
took his mother's name and rank. In the throes of the First World
War, Nicholas II allowed his sister
Grand Duchess Olga
Alexandrovna of Russia to end her loveless marriage to her
social equal,
Duke
Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, to marry commoner Colonel
Nikolai Alexandrovich Kulikovsky. Both Michael's and Olga's
descendants from these marriages were excluded from the
succession.
After the assassination of Nicholas II and his children, the Royal
Family's morganatic marriages restricted the number of possible
heirs.
Grand
Duke Cyril Vladimirovich, Nicholas's cousin, proclaimed himself
as Emperor in exile. Controversy accompanied the marriage of his
son
Grand
Duke Vladimir Cyrillovich to
Leonida Georgievna
Bagration-Mukhransky, a descendant of the Royal House of
Georgia. Leonida's family had sometimes been considered to be
nobility in Imperial Russia, rather than Royalty, leading to claims
that the marriage was unequal. As a result, some factions within
Russia's monarchist movement do not support the couple's daughter
Grand
Duchess Maria, as the rightful heir to the Romanov dynasty (see
Line of
succession to the Russian throne for further details of the
controversy).
Denmark
Succession to the Danish throne followed the
Salic Law until the
Danish Act of Succession of 1953.
Prominent morganatic marriages include the 1615 marriage of King
Christian IV of Denmark and
minor noblewoman
Kirsten Munk. Kirsten
was styled 'Countess of Schleswig-Holstein' and bore the King 12
children (all styled 'Count/Countess of Schleswig-Holstein').
King Frederick VII of
Denmark married the ballet dancer
Louise Rasmussen, who was styled 'Countess
Danner', in 1850. There were no children of this marriage.
The abolition of the Salic Law allowed members of the Danish Royal
Family much greater freedom in their choice of spouses, and none of
the children of Denmark's present Queen have married a person of
either Royal birth, or from the titled aristocracy. Members of the
Royal Family may still lose their place in the line of succession
for themselves and their descendants if they marry without the
Monarch's permission.
France
There has never been morganatic marriage in France and morganatic
marriage never existed in French laws. Equality of birth is not so
important in France because antiquity of nobility in the male line
is only taken into account: a Frenchman should have
cent ans de
noblesse (100 years in the male line) to become a
Knight of Malta. A German should have
quatre quartiers de noblesse (all four grandparents being
noble) for the same purpose.
There was,
however, a French
practice,
somewhat different than morganatic marriage, sometimes used in
situations of inequality between the spouses: an "openly secret"
marriage - that is, the marriage ceremony took place in private
(with only a priest, the bride and groom, and a few witnesses in
attendance) and the marriage was never officially announced
(although it might be widely known), and thus the woman never
publicly shared in her husband's titles and rank. Louis XIV married
Madame de Maintenon, his second wife,
this way. Madame de Maintenon was too old to bear children in this
marriage. However, because of the similar definitions between a
secret marriage and a morganatic marriage, this marriage is
sometimes mistakenly included in an example list of morganatic
marriages.
A rumour also exists about a secret marriage between
Anne of Austria and Cardinal
Mazarin, which is considered a morganatic marriage
by those who accept this version.
United Kingdom
The
concept of morganatic marriage has never clearly existed in any
part of the United
Kingdom. All four of
Elizabeth II's
children have married untitled commoners, with no effect on the
order of succession. Wives of
British princes are entitled to use the feminine form of their
husbands' peerage and hereditary titles.
Camilla, second wife of
Charles, Prince of Wales,
legally holds the title "Princess of Wales", but at the time that
the engagement was announced, it was declared that she would be
known by the title "Duchess of Cornwall" (derived from one of the
other titles her husband held as
heir
apparent) in deference, it has been reported, to public
feelings about the title's previous holder, the Prince's first wife
Diana. It was
simultaneously stated that upon her husband's accession to the
throne, it is intended that she be known as "
Princess Consort" rather than 'Queen',
although as the King's wife she would legally be Queen. The use of
these lower titles does not denote a morganatic marriage.
It has
been suggested that William,
Prince of Orange, expected to have a strong claim to the throne
of England
after the
Duke of York during the
reign of Charles
II. In fact, the Duke's two daughters from his first
marriage,
Princess Mary and
Princess Anne, were
considered to have the stronger claim by the English establishment.
William's expectation was based on the continental practice of
morganatic marriage, since the mother of both princesses,
Anne Hyde, was a commoner and a lady-in-waiting to
William's mother,
Princess Mary
Stuart. It was by his mother, a sister of Charles II and the
Duke of York, that William claimed the throne, because, to his
mind, the son of a princess had a stronger claim than the daughter
of a commoner. It was to shore up his own claim to the throne that
he agreed to marry his first cousin, Princess Mary. When James II
fled at the
Glorious Revolution,
William refused to accept the title of
king
consort (which
Philip II of
Spain had been granted under
Queen
Mary I in the 1550s) and insisted on being named King in his
own right. The compromise solution involved naming both to the
crown as the only joint rulers in the history of England.
The marriage of King
Edward VIII and
Wallis Simpson was not to be morganatic,
although Edward had proposed this expediency to Prime Minister
Stanley Baldwin, who rejected the
idea after consultations with the governments of the Dominions.
Ultimately, Edward renounced the throne for himself and his
descendants, which was given effect by
His Majesty's
Declaration of Abdication Act 1936, and he was created
Duke of Windsor on 8 March 1937.
Another marriage which might arguably be regarded as morganatic was
between
John of
Gaunt and
Katherine Swynford.
When they married after co-habiting for several years all children
born previously were subsequently legitimated by Act of Parliament,
but
King Henry IV later declared
that they could not inherit the crown, but it is not clear that he
had the right to do this. This marriage was important, as
King Henry VII was descended from it,
but Parliament declared that he was king by "right of conquest", so
some issues remained unresolved.
The
Royal Marriages Act of
1772 made it illegal for all persons born into the British
royal family to marry without the
permission of the Sovereign, and any marriage contracted without
the Sovereign’s consent was considered illegal and invalid. This
led to several prominent cases of British princes who had gone
through marriage ceremonies, and who
cohabited with their partners as if married, but
whose relationships were not legally recognised. As a result, their
partners and children (the latter considered illegitimate) held no
titles, and had no succession rights. This differs from morganatic
marriages, which are considered legally valid.
Travancore
In the
erstwhile princely state of Travancore, in India
, the male
members of the Travancore Royal
Family were, under the existing matrilineal Marumakkathayam system of inheritance and
family, permitted to contract marriages with women of the
relatively inferior Nair caste only. These were morganatic marriages
called
Sambandhams wherein the children
gained their mother's caste and family name, due to
Marumakkathayam. While due to reasons of
caste and the nature of the marriage they could not inherit the
throne, they did indeed receive the royal title of
Thampi and were members of the
Ammaveedus which ensured a comfortable living and
all royal luxuries for them.
Examples
Royal men who married morganatically:
- King Erik XIV of Sweden
married the servant Karin
Månsdotter morganatically in 1567, and later secondly, but this
time not morganatically, in 1568.
- Ludwig Wilhelm, Duke
in Bavaria and (actress) Henriette
Mendel. She was created Freifrau von Wallersee, and their
daughter, Marie Louise,
Countess Larisch von Moennich, was a confidante of Empress
Elisabeth of Austria.
- Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria, ruler of
the Tirol
married
firstly Philippine Welser, a
bourgeois girl though very wealthy.
Their children were given a separate title and the issue of
Ferdinand's second (and equal) marriage were preferred.
- Victor Emmanuel II of
Italy in 1869 married morganatically his principal mistress
Rosa Teresa Vercellana
Guerrieri (3 June 1833–26 December 1885). Popularly known in
Piedmontese as “Bela Rosin”, she was
born a commoner but made Countess of Mirafiori and Fontanafredda in
1858.
- Late in his life, the widowed ex-king Fernando II of Portugal married the
opera singer Elisa Hendler, who was
created countess of Edla.
- A list of Morganatic
branches of the Russian Imperial Family
- Genghis Khan followed the
contemporary tradition by taking several morganatic wives in
addition to his principal wife, whose property passed to their youngest son, also
following tradition.
Royal women who married morganatically:
- Marie Louise, Duchess
of Parma (by birth an Archduchess of
the Imperial House of Habsburg,
and by her first marriage an Empress
of France) contracted a morganatic second marriage with a count
after the death of her first husband Napoleon
I.
- Queen Maria
Christina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, regent of Spain after her
husband's (Ferdinand VII) death while
their daughter, the future Isabella II
was a minor. She married one of her guards in a secret
marriage.
- Princess Stéphanie of
Belgium, the widow of Crown Prince Rudolf of
Austria, married Count Elemér Lónyay de Nagy-Lónya et
Vásáros-Namény after the death of her first husband, to the disgust
of her family. In 1917, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, Stéphanie's
former father-in-law, elevated Lónyay to the rank of Fürst (Prince).
See also
References
- Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition
- Meyers Konversations-Lexikon
4th Edition
- Van der zee and Van der zee, 1688: A Revolution in the
family. Viking, Great Britain: 1988. p 52
- Taylor, A.J.P., English History, 1914-1945, Oxford
University Press, 1965, p. 401.
- Travancore State Manual Vol ii 1940 by TK Velu Pillai
- Travancore State Manual Vol ii 1940 by TK Velu Pillai and TSM
Vol II 1906 by V Nagam Aiya
Further reading
- Crawford, Donald. Michael and Natasha, Scribner
(1997). ISBN 0-684-83430-8
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