Early Life
Prince Christian was born in Augustenborg, Denmark. He was the second son of Christian August, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg and his wife, Countess Louise of Danneskjold-Samsøe.
Prince Christian was perhaps, by descent, the most Danish Prince of the Danish Royal Dynasty in his generation (which was the generation when Denmark came to its most recent succession crisis, cf details accounted at his cousin's article: Louise of Hesse). His family, of course, belonged to the House of Oldenburg, the royal house which numbered all medieval Scandinavian royal dynasties among its distant forefathers. Christian's paternal grandfather happened to have both grandfathers who were "Royal" dukes from the Oldenburg dynasty. What was different compared with ancestries of their rival relatives, was Christian's specific ancestry among current Danish high nobility. His mother was from an ancient Danish family (Danneskiold-Samsoe), and his paternal grandmother Louise Auguste of Denmark was its Royal Princess. His paternal grandfather Frederik Christian II, Duke of Augustenborg numbered two ladies of Danish high nobility as his grandmothers (Danneskiold-Samsoe and Reventlow), and one Danish Countess as paternal great-grandmother (Ahlefeldt-Langeland). Christian's parents had high hopes that in the then-rising era of nationalism, this ancestry would be viewed with favor by necessary supporters when Danish succession comes to be solved. The family groomed Christian's elder brother Frederick to become king of Denmark, however, the Danish succession crisis was resolved in favor of others.
In 1848, young Christian's father, Duke Christian August, placed himself at the head of a movement to resist by force the claims of Denmark upon the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, two personal possessions of the Kings of Denmark, of which Holstein also was a part of the German Confederation. A year earlier, King Frederick VII acceded to the Danish throne without any hope of producing a male heir. Unlike Denmark proper, where the Lex Regia of 1665 allowed the throne to pass through the female royal line, in Holstein Salic Law prevailed. The duchy would most likely revert to the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg family, their cadet branch of the house of Holstein-Sonderburg. During the 1852 First War of Schleswig, Prince Christian briefly served with the newly-constituted Schleswig-Holstein army before he and his family were forced to flee the advancing Danish forces (see history of Schleswig-Holstein). After the war, he attended the University of Bonn, where he befriended Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia (later the German Emperor Frederick III).
Read more about this topic: Prince Christian Of Schleswig-Holstein
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