Royal Intermarriage - Morganatic Marriage

Morganatic Marriage

The entrenchment of the distinction between royalty and nobility gave rise to royal house laws among the sovereign houses of Europe and, particularly, among the semi-sovereign dynasties which reigned directly under the Holy Roman Emperor and held voting seats in his Imperial Diet. These laws either required the monarch's authorization for a dynastic marriage, or stipulated with whom a dynast must marry to comply with the principle of Ebenbürtigkeit, i.e., to contract an equal marriage, or both. Marriages which did not comply with this standard were considered non-dynastic, either being a mismarriage (inherently unequal, thus non-dynastic) or a morganatic marriage (unequal by mutual consent of the spouses or non-dynastic by monarchical decision).

If a member of a royal family marries someone of inappropriate status, that prince or princess often loses succession rights, titles, or various other royal privileges since nearly all monarchies impose legal restrictions on marriages of dynasts. A frequent occurrence in the past was for the spouse and any children to be denied any prospect of inheriting the dynasty's throne, and to be assigned lesser rank and titles than if the marriage had complied with the dynasty's norms: this was the morganatic marriage.

Sometimes these disinherited branches were deemed suitable for marriage into other families. This happened when Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine married the lesser Countess Julia von Hauke. Julia and the morganatic children of this union were given the style of Serene Highness and title of Prince(ss) of Battenberg. The Battenberg family later married into the royal families of Sweden and Spain, and descendants into the royal families of Britain, Greece, Denmark, and other countries. Similarly, the Teck family, from which Queen Mary of the United Kingdom came, was a morganatic branch of the royal House of Württemberg.