Marriage To The Crown Prince of Albania
Susan Cullen-Ward met Crown Prince Leka, the only child of King Zog of Albania, at a dinner party in Sydney. In 1975, they married in a civil ceremony in Biarritz, France. The couple were later married in a religious ceremony in Madrid.
Australian authorities refused to recognise her as a queen but, in a compromise when Andrew Peacock was foreign minister, issued a passport in the name of "Susan Cullen Ward, known as Queen Susan".
She lived a turbulent life after marrying Leka, as they moved from one country to another, having no permanent residence or fixed point of reference. In the first few years of their marriage, the couple lived in Spain before Leka was expelled from the country for illicit arms dealing. They later settled in Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe). After a falling out with the government of Robert Mugabe, the couple moved again, this time to South Africa where their son, Leka, was born in 1982. She also had a stillborn daughter while resident in Rhodesia.
Read more about this topic: Susan Cullen-Ward
Famous quotes containing the words marriage, crown and/or prince:
“Yes, marriage is hateful, detestable. A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequited fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“I often used to think myself in the case of the fox-hunter, who, when he had toiled and sweated all day in the chase as if some unheard-of blessing was to crown his success, finds at last all he has got by his labor is a stinking nauseous animal. But my condition was yet worse than his; for he leaves the loathsome wretch to be torn by his hounds, whilst I was obliged to fondle mine, and meanly pretend him to be the object of my love.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“The prince exults whomever he selects as his consort, but the queen, rather than elevating the subject of her choice, humiliates him as a man. By all that is right, a man is not intended to be the husband of his wife, but a woman is to be her husband’s wife.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)