Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was born on 28 March 1785. His elder brother Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was the father of Prince Albert, Queen Victorias consort; his younger sister Victoria was the mother of Queen Victoria; and his younger brother Leopold became King of Belgium. Ferdinand was a general in the Austrian army. He married the Hungarian heiress Maria Antonia Koháry de Csábrág, with whom he had four children, Ferdinand (who became King of Portugal), August, Victoria, and Leopold. Prince August married Princess Clémentine of Orleans, daughter of Louis Philippe, King of the French, with whom he had five children, the eldest being Prince Philipp, who was born on 28 March 1844. Philipp married Princess Louise of Belgium, daughter of Leopold II (son of the above-mentioned Leopold, brother of Prince Ferdinand). The marriage was scandalously unhappy, with Princess Louise running away with her lover Count Geza Mattachich, and eventually ended in divorce. Philipp and Louise had two children, Prince Leopold Clement and Princess Dorothea; Prince Leopold, who was the heir to the fortune of his Hungarian great-grandmother Maria Antonia Koháry de Csábrág, died after being shot and attacked with acid by a lover who then shot herself (the attack was brought on by his refusal to marry her). Leopolds mother was a sister of Princess Stephanie of Belgium, wife of Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria; like Leopold, Rudolph also died in a murder-suicide with his lover Marie Vetsera, although that was thought to be a suicide pact rather than an attack.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 06:44:21 +0000
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