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To South Africa, soon after Sir George Grey had resumed duty there, came a member of the Royal family. This was Prince Alfred, later the Duke of Edinburgh, now the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Sir George suggested the visit, and he believed it had excellent results. It delighted the colonists to have a son of the Queen among them.
Prince William of Wied, the first Prince of Albania, is a member of one of them, and is thus entitled to rank with the royalties of Europe: the father-in-law of ex-King Manoel of Portugal, the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a branch of the Kaiser's own family, is another familiar recent instance. And every one remembers Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the husband of Queen Victoria.
On the death of Duke Ernst of Coburg-Gotha, brother of the Prince-Consort, he succeeded to the ducal throne on August 24, 1893, as Duke Alfred of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. He died in 1900. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, wedded the daughter of Prince Charles, 'the Red Prince' of Prussia; and Leopold, Duke of Albany, took for his wife Princess Helena of Waldeck.
Russia then abducted Prince Alexander, but later was forced to restore him. However, Russian intrigues, and his failure to obtain support from one of the great powers, forced his abdication in 1886. In 1887 Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became the Prince of Bulgaria. He, also, was a remarkable man, but not the romantic of his predecessor. He seems to have been a sort of a parody of a king.
For some time after it was difficult to find a Prince for Bulgaria. The Crown was offered in turn to Prince Waldemar of Denmark and King Carol of Roumania. Finally, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha consented to embark on the great adventure of ruling Bulgaria.
Descended from Orleanist Bourbons on the mother's side and from the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha on the father's, he was purely Prussian in his realpolitik, and observed no principle in his conduct save that of aggrandizement for his adopted country and himself.
There it was discovered that he was one Ott, a Frenchman, and one of the chefs of Queen Victoria, momentarily detached from his duties at Windsor Castle, in order to attend her majesty's second son, the Duke of Edinburgh, now the reigning sovereign of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, during his stay on the continent.
To both of these men the war was more than a great personal sorrow: it was a tragedy. Mensdorff, the Austrian Ambassador, had long enjoyed an intimacy with the British royal family. Indeed he was a distant relative of King George, for he was a member of the family of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a fact which was emphasized by his physical resemblance to Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria.
It may console them too, perhaps, with a more ironical consolation, to know that the greatest enthusiast about all things connected with the House of Stuart, the most eager collector of all Stuart relics, is the very sovereign who is the direct descendant of the Hanoverian electors against whom the clans were hurled at Sheriffmuir and at Culloden, the lady and queen whom it affords a harmless gratification to certain eccentric contemporary Jacobites to allude to as "the Princess Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha."
Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, widower of Princess Charlotte, was practically an English Prince, having spent most of his life in England; he was of German extraction, and a marriage was contemplated between him and Princess Marie Louise, Louis Philippe's daughter. He had already acquired a great reputation for wisdom, which gained him later the title of the "Nestor of Europe."
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