Morganatic Marriage - Examples

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 ("Sissi") 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" (Little Rosa the Beautiful), 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 Elise Hensler, 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 Charles I of Austria, conferred upon Lónyay the non-dynastic title of prince.