Eurohistory. The European Royal History Journal, Vol. 18.2, April 2015

I was pleased to find the latest issue of the European Royal History Journal – in my mailbox last Sunday when I returned home from the first part of my summer vacation. Great to have good reading material on my way to and home from work.

The latest issue's first article is the traditional The Who Is In the Photo series, this time a photo of the Battenberg family taken around 1895 – Princess Louise, Princess Alice, Princess Victoria, Prince George and Prince Louis (Ludwig) of Battenberg. The one missing is Prince Louis the younger, later Earl Mountbatten of Burma, obviously because he had not been born yet. Ilana D. Miller outlines the history of this branch of the Battenbergs.

The next one out is the Part II of An Interdisciplinary Discussion. The Nassaus of Luxembourg by Roberto Cortez Gonzáles, and yet again we get a thorough presentation of the history of the Grand Ducal family of Luxembourg, with many details I either didn't know or have forgotten about. I have 2-3 books on the Luxembourgs in my collection, but it has been a while since I have read them.

The author and Queen Victoria Descendants genealogist Marlene A. Eilers Koenig has this time contributed with an article titled Frederica of Hanover. A Pasionate & Obstinate Princess. Frederica (Friederike) (1848–1926) was the 2nd child of King Georg V of Hannover and Queen Marie, née Princess of Saxe-Altenburg.The article stops well before Frederica's marriage to Baron Alfons von Pawel-Rammingen (1843–1932), but fortunately the article is "to be concluded", so the readers have more to look forward to. Royals who go against the flow are always interesting to read about. Thinking about royals often listed as examples of enterring "non-equal marriages", it seems that Frederica most often is not mentioned.

Coryne Hall has contrbutied to many articles in both ERHJ and Royalty Digest Quarterly over the years, and this time she focuses on the Danish Royal Family with the article titled The Descendants of King Christian IX of Denmark. APAPA. Even if the title suggests otherwise, she has limited her work on the Danish. The article doesn't suggest that this is is "only" the first part of a series on the KCD (does this abbreviation work as well as QVD (Queen Victoria's Descendants), by the way?), but let's hope so!

I really enjoyed reading part I of Janet Ashton's article "Our ally has shamefully betrayed us". Italy Enters the Great War in volume 18.1, and the second and final part included in the April issue was as enjoyable. Now also with a full bibliography, so I can understand better the notes from last and current issues! The two-part article more or less covers the great war up to 1916, so I wonder if Janet Ashton will write more about Italy's role in WW1 later on?

The latest issue also has a book review column, and Coryne Hall returns with her review of Royal Gatherings. Volume II. 1914-1939 by Ilana D. Miller and Arturo E. Beéche, the latter being the ERHJ editor and publisher. As Hall contributes so often to the ERHJ, one wonders if the task could have been left to someone "outside the circle". Not that there is anything wrong with the review itself, but I sometimes feel that the world of royalty writers is too small. Anyway, here is Marlene A. Eilers Koenig's review in her blog Royal Book News.

Finally, we get the traditional Royal News section, which this time includes news from Brazil, Bulgaria, Reuss, Saxe-Coburg & Gotha, Two Sicilies, Prussia, United Kingdom, Hohenlohe-Oehringen and Wied. Of course, when you read these genealogical news they are already old, but considering the fact that many websites come and disappear again, it is useful to have these news on paper for the record.

The publisher of The Europan Royal History Royal can be reached at erhj [at] eurohistory.com.

For earlier articles on the magazine, please go here.

Grave of Lorene Yarnell Jansson (Sandar Church and Cemetery, Sandefjord, Norway, Part III)

I was pleased to receive several comments to my articles about Sandar Church and Cemetery, Sandefjord, Norway (part I and part II), of 2010, both in the message field and by e-mail. Earlier this year I received among others a request to take a photo of the grave of the California-born mime dancer and Muppet Show particpant Lorene Yarnell Jansson (1944-2010) and publish it at Findagrave.com, a website dovoted to graves and cemeteries all over the world. According to its FAQ, its mission "is to find, record and present final disposition information from around the world as a virtual cemetery experience".

Earlier this month I finally got the time and opportunity to visit Sandar kirkegård (churchyard/cemetery) again, and last Sunday I published two photos on the said website.

Yarnell married the Norwegian Bjørn Jansson - her fourth husband - and in early 1998 moved with him to his hometown Sandefjord. She died there of a ruptured cerebral aneurysm in 2010. I must admit that I had never heard about her before, but at least the local newspaper Sandefjords Blad knew about her claim of fame, as it made a portrait interview with her and also covered her death. For more details, see the Wikipedia article.

Royalty Digest Quarterly no. 2, 2015

The second issue this year of Royalty Digest Quarterly arrived in my mailbox in early July, just before I left for the first part of my summer vacation. Always nice to bring great reading material with you on your travels!

Most articles this time are devoted to Italy and/or the Italian Royal Family (House of Savoy), and the photo on the front page shows four generations of the royal family: The later King Umberto II as baby, being held by his mother, Queen Elena, née Princess of Montenegro. To the left Umberto's great-grandmother Elisabeth, and to the right the baby's grandmother Queen Margherita.

Not surprisingly the editor and publisher of RDQ,  Ted Rosvall, spends his Editor's Corner on the major royal events in Sweden earlier this year - Prince Carl Philip's marriage to Sofia Hellqvist and the birth of Prince Nicolas.

In my article about the first issue of RDQ this year, I mentioned that I wouldn't be surprised if Coryne Hall, author of Princesses on the Wards. Royal Women in Nursing Through Wars and Revolutions (2014) would continue to cover more royal nurses in future issues of the RDQ. Queen Elena of Italy, née Princess of Montenegro, was not a trained nurse, but she nevertheless made great efforts in setting up hospitals during the wars and other national catastrophes, and in Hall's article Elena - the "Shepherdess" Queen of Italy, we can for instance read about how she nursed the injured after the earthquake in Messina in 1908.

The next article out is written by the periodical's historical consultant, Charlotte Zeepvat, finishing the story about Princess (Helena) Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, 'So loyal and strong in her affections...'. She was quite an character, and the article is well written. One could perhaps have wanted more details about the last part of her life, but maybe it was not as eventful as the first part.

If you are interested in royal history, you can literally spend all your vacations in Germany, as there are so many royal palaces, castles, lodges and other buildings to explore! One example is Kranichstein, the hunting lodge of the Hesse-Darmstadt family. Elizabeth Jane Timms has written a nice presentation of the lodge and its history.

Then Charlotte Zeepvat returns with her traditional family albums, this time the Royal House of Italy gets all the attention. Besides a two pages' long introduction, the reader can enjoy 108 illustrations, most are of various members of the Savoy dynasty, while the first photo is of Castello di Racconigi (yet another castle I have to visit one day). Finally, as always, Zeepvat brings 3 pages showing the family genealogy.

The next one out is the short article Getting the Message about how royal postcards "were the emails of the early twentieth century", written either by the royals or by other people on cards of royalty. The article is just signed "CMZ". I gather the author is Zeepvat once again. :-)

Richard Thornton has contributed to the last article of this issue, titled With the Tecks and friends in Florence. Unfortunately there are no book reviews this time either (I hope that Rosvall has not dropped including book reviews altogether). But as usual we are treated with The World Wide Web of Royalty, this times with news from Austria, Bulgaria, Fugger von Babenhausen, Erbach-Schönberg, Great Britain, Hannover, Prussia, Saxony, Sweden, Two Sicilies and Ysenburg and Büdingen.

Information on Royalty Digest Quarterly can be found at its editor's website Royalbooks.se. See earlier presentation of RDQ here. See also its Facebook page.