Princess Michael of Kent (Marie Christine; née
Baroness Marie Christine Agnes Hedwig Ida von Reibnitz, 15 January
1945), is a member of the
British
Royal Family. She is married to
Prince Michael of Kent, who is a
grandson of
King George
V.
Princess Michael is an
author, and has
published several books on the royal families of Europe. She also
undertakes lecture tours, and supports her husband in his public
work. The Kents do not officially carry out royal duties, although
they have on occasion represented
Queen Elizabeth II at
functions abroad.
Early life
Princess
Michael of Kent was born on 15 January 1945, in Karlovy Vary
(formerly Carlsbad), in then-German-populated
Sudetenland, in what is now the Czech Republic
, near the family estates of her Austrian maternal
grandmother, Princess Hedwig Windisch-Graetz. Princess
Michael is the only daughter of
Baron Günther Hubertus
von Reibnitz (of German descent) and his
Austro-Hungarian wife, Countess Maria Anna
Carolina Franziska Walpurga Bernadette Szapáry von Muraszombath,
Széchysziget und Szapár. The Princess's father also had a daughter
named Margarita, born on 18 January 1924, from his first marriage
to Margherita,
Countess
von Seherr-Thoß.
Through her mother, the Princess is a
great
14-granddaughter of
Diane de Poitiers, mistress of
Henry II of FranceAnd to add further,
great
16-granddaughter of
Agnes
Sorel., and a great
12-granddaughter of
Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France
(his wife), and also of
painter Peter Paul Rubens.
After her parents'
divorce, her father, a Nazi party member who
had held the rank of Sturmbannführer or “Assault (or Storm)
Unit Leader” in the SS
during the
Second World War, moved to Maforga, Mozambique
. Marie Christine, her mother, and her brother,
Baron Friedrich (Fred) von Reibnitz (now living in Canberra
), moved to
Australia, where her mother ran a beauty
salon. Friedrich became an Australian Government
official. He has a daughter, Princess
Michael's niece
Maya Scott, born 1978 in
Canberra to a fellow civil servant, Mary Scott. Maya Scott is a
photographer and artist based in Western Australia.
In
Sydney
, Baroness Marie Christine von Reibnitz attended
Rose Bay Convent
, a private Roman Catholic girls' school, run by
nuns of the Sacred Heart (Sacré Coeur)
order. She is approximately six feet (1.83 m) tall.
Marriage
Her first husband was the English banker
Thomas Troubridge, the younger
brother of
Sir Peter Troubridge, 6th
Baronet. They met during a boar hunt in Germany.
They were married on
14 September 1971, at Chelsea Old Church, London
. The
couple separated in 1973, were divorced in 1977, and the marriage
was formally annulled by the
Roman
Catholic Church in May 1978 for undisclosed reasons.
One month
after the annulment, on 30 June 1978, in a civil ceremony in
Vienna,
Austria
, she married Prince Michael of Kent, the son of
Prince George, Duke of
Kent (1902-1942) and Princess Marina of Greece
and Denmark (1906-1968). Prince Michael is a first
cousin of the current British monarch, Elizabeth II. Upon marriage,
she assumed the style and title of
HRH Princess Michael of
Kent, she took the Christian name of her husband because
she was born a
commoner. After receiving
the Pope's permission, the couple later married in a Roman Catholic
ceremony on 29 June 1983, at the Archbishop's House, London.
Since the
Act of Settlement
1701 prohibits anyone who has married a Roman Catholic from
succeeding to the throne, Prince Michael of Kent (at the time, 15th
in the line of succession) lost his succession right upon his
marriage to Marie Christine. However, their children retain their
rights of succession because they are in communion with the
Anglican Church.
TRH Prince and Princess Michael of Kent have two children:
Career
Royal duties
As the second son of King George V's fourth son, Prince Michael of
Kent was never expected to undertake royal and official duties.
Prince Michael has never received a
parliamentary annuity or an allowance from the
Privy Purse.
Even so, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent
represented The Queen at the independence celebrations in Belize
and at the
Coronation of King Mswati III of
Swaziland. Prince Michael also supports a large number
of different charities and organisations, and Princess Michael
supports him in this work.
The couple
have the use of a grace and favour
apartment at Kensington
Palace
. On their behalf, The Queen is paying the
rent for Prince and Princess Michael of Kent's apartment at a
commercial rate of £120,000 annually from her own private funds.
The rent goes to the Grant-in-aid, provided by the Government for
the maintenance of the Occupied Royal Palaces. The rent is based on
the current rate for commercially rented properties at Kensington
Palace, and is recorded in the overall figures for commercial
rents, in the Grant-in-aid annual report. This rent payment by the
Queen is "in recognition of the Royal engagements and work for
various charities which Prince and Princess Michael of Kent have
undertaken at their own expense, and without any public funding,"
according to a statement released by the British Monarchy Media
Centre.
In 2008, it was announced that to continue living from 2010 in
their previously-subsidised Apartment 10, Prince and Princess
Michael would be required to begin paying rent of £120,000 a year,
the market rate of the five-bedroom, five-reception flat and many
times more than the nominal amount of £70 per week they had been
paying for the previous seven years.
Queen Elizabeth II had previously been
subsidising the £10,000 a month cost for the Kents to use their
flat. Members of Parliament on the palace's committee had demanded
the change after the Kents' rent had come to light. The Kents have
lived in the apartment since 1979, only paying their utility bills
prior to 2002.
Author
The princess is the author of three books,
Crowned in a Far
Country: Eight Royal Brides (Weidenfeld), and
Cupid and
the King - Five Royal Paramours (Harper Collins) and in 2004
released
The Serpent and The Moon, a true sizzling story
of love and betrayal in a royal family. She also writes a society
column for www.bestselections.com, an on-line shopping
website.
Before her marriage to Prince Michael, she was an interior
decorator. According to a report in The Observer's Pendennis column
in September 2007, she has taken up this career again due to
looming financial pressures. Since early 2007 the Princess has been
President of Partridge Fine Art, a gallery in London's New Bond
Street.
Media coverage
Princess Michael of Kent has received considerable media attention
in the years since her marriage to Prince Michael, much of it
critical, although she does get sympathetic coverage in celebrity
magazines. The media have attached to her
the derogatory nickname "Princess Pushy". As an example of her
sense of self-importance and by way of justification, they claim
she once declared to an American fashion magazine that she had.
"more royal blood in her veins than any person to marry into the
royal family since Prince Philip" (which is, in fact, perfectly
true). She is also reported to have said she was "probably the
first tall person to marry into the clan" (also true if males are
discounted). (The Queen reportedly has referred to her as "Our
Val," a reference to the warrior-like
Valkyries, and - sarcastically - as "a bit too
grand for" the rest of the royal family.). She is the only royal
cat-lover, owning a pedigree
Siamese
cat.
With the arrival of younger royals such as
Diana, Princess of Wales, and
Sarah, Duchess of York, the
princess' public profile was lowered.
However, in May 2004
she was in the news when a group of black diners in a New York
restaurant alleged that the Princess had told them
to "get back to the colonies" when complaining about their noise -
an accusation she denied, however it made headlines around the
world.Her account of the story was that she remarked to one
of her fellow dinner guests that she would be glad to go back to
the colonies in order to escape her noisy neighbours. A remarks
which made no logical sense. She later described her accusers as a
"group of
rappers".
In September 2005, she appeared in the news again, after the
News of the World
reporter
Mazher Mahmood apparently
gained her confidence and claimed that she made a number of
intemperate remarks, including calling
Diana, Princess of Wales, "bitter"
and "nasty".
In April, 2006, she was photographed in Venice with Mikhail
Kravchenko, a Russian millionaire tycoon, 21 years her junior,
holding hands, kissing and taking a gondola ride with him. In the
Daily Mail, "sources close to the
Princess" said that they were discussing business together.
Her latest newsmaking statement came in October 2006, in an
interview for US TV, in which she claimed that her children were
the brightest royals with the best university degrees. Like most of
her remarks, the statement's truth was not disputed, only that she
failed to exert a degree of politeness and discretion when making
them.
On hearing that the research of
Dorothy Cheney and
Robert Seyfarth seems to indicate that rank
among female baboons is hereditary, the Princess said, "I always
knew that when people who aren’t like us claim that hereditary rank
is not part of human nature, they must be wrong. Now you’ve given
me evolutionary proof!"
Ancestry
The Princess is of mixed German, Austrian, Czech, and Hungarian
aristocratic ancestry.
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Titles
- 15 January 1945 – 14 September 1971: Baroness
Marie Christine von Reibnitz
- 14 September 1971 – 30 June 1978: Baroness
Marie Christine von Reibnitz, Mrs Thomas
Troubridge
- 30 June 1978 –: Her Royal Highness
Princess Michael of Kent
In full:
Her Royal Highness Princess Michael George Charles
Franklin of Kent
See also
External links
Notes
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