As the world holds its breath for news of the Baby Cambridge, it seems appropriate to look at the births of two royal babies who were both related to Queen Victoria but were born in 1914 just as the tightly woven familial bonds and marriage alliances among European royal familes, were about to be rent apart.
In May 1913, the marriage of Prince Ernest Augustus of Cumberland, later Duke of Brunswick, to Princess Viktoria Luise, youngest child and only daughter of the Kaiser, was famously the last great gathering of European royalty before the outbreak of war, with the Tsar, King George V (dressed in the uniform of a Prussian general) and Queen Mary all in attendance. In March the following year, the new Duchess of Brunswick gave birth to her firstborn, a bouncing baby boy named Ernest Augustus after his father. With the baby's father a nephew of Queen Alexandra (via his mother, Princess Thyra, Duchess of Cumberland, who was the Queen's younger sister) and his mother a great-grandaughter of Queen Victoria, it was natural that among his godparents was King George V who decreed that all children born to the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick would enjoy the style of His (or Her) Royal Highness, Prince of Princess of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Little Ernest Augustus was the subject of countless photographs; as the first child of the Kaiser's only daughter, he enjoyed a special place in the German public's affection and postcards of the plump and robust baby, wearing a frilled dress, as was traditional at the time, were sold in their thousands in aid of the soldiers of Brunswick. But by 1917, he was no longer a Prince of the United Kingdom, the Titles Deprivation Act ensuring that any Germanic relatives were erased from the Windsor family tree.
Over in Britain, another royal baby had been born just four and a half months after Ernest Augustus. Alastair, Earl of Macduff, was the baby son of Prince and Princess Arthur of Connaught, born on 5 August 1914, the day after Great Britain had declared war on Germany. Alastair's mother, the former Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife,
grandaughter of King Edward VII, and so also a great-grandaughter of Queen Victoria, had married her cousin Prince Arthur of Connaught, son of the Duke of Connaught, in October 1913. Alastair was to be their only son.
The Earl of Macduff was also the subject of numerous photographs, though his parents, and particularly his mother, who spent the war nursing, were naturally more shy and reticent when it came to publicity. Nevertheless, the pictures of Alastair in his kilt, or holding a picture of trains are endearingly sweet.
Meanwhile, the two boys' fathers were serving their respective countries during the war. The Duke of Brunswick, who had joined the Black Hussars on succeeding to the dukedom, rose to the rank of Major-General in the Prussian Army though in 1918 was forced to abdicate and resign his commission . Prince Arthur of Connaught served as aide-de-campe to General Sir John French and then on staff at General headquarters until 1919. He was twice mentioned in despatches.
Alastair, Earl of Macduff never married and became the Duke of Connaught in 1942 on the death of his long-lived grandfather (his father had died prematurely of throat cancer in 1938). But just a year later, he died suddenly, at the age of just twenty-eight during a visit to Government House in Canada. With no heirs, the dukedom of Connaught and Strathearn became extinct.
Ernest Augustus, who had lost his hereditary title at the age of four, became head of the House of Hanover, marrying Princess Ortrud of Schleswig-Holstein with whom he had six children. He died in 1987.
Had it not been for the First World War, it is very likely these two boys may have grown up knowing each other, meeting at family gatherings in Germany and England through the years. As it was they remained distant cousins, born into the opposing sides of one huge, extended family.
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Luci Gosling