Sex with the Queen

by Eleanor Herman

  In 1902 King Albert died, and her tyrannical father-in-law became King George. Knowing his health was poor and he would not live long, George felt his blood pressure rise at the thought of Louisa becoming queen, and he vowed to get rid of her before he drew his last breath. Louisa aided and abetted him with her temper tantrums and love affairs. In November 1902 a palace servant told Louisa that her relationship with her sons’ tutor, Monsieur Giron, was noticed at court. The tutor promptly resigned and left the country. Soon after, according to Louisa, the king informed her that he would commit her to an insane asylum to prevent her from becoming queen at his death.

  In the dead of night Louisa packed a bag and fled. Perhaps she would not have taken this step had she known that she was pregnant by Monsieur Giron or another lover, and her daughter would be forever tainted by the questionable circumstances of her birth. Louisa took the train first to her parents in Salzburg looking for refuge, which they refused her; then she traveled to Zurich where she met up with her lover Monsieur Giron.

  If the Saxon royal family was relieved at her flight, the Saxon people were furious. As in Britain ninety years later, public opinion was firmly against the stodgy, heartless royal family and completely supportive of the beautiful, wronged princess. The press had a field day; politicians roared of the impending downfall of the unpopular royal family which had driven out the people’s princess. In return King George paid some journalists to insinuate that the crown princess had gone mad. He then divorced his son from Louisa immediately.

  Shortly afterward, her lover Monsieur Giron left her. Perhaps he could not stand the scandal, or perhaps her emotional outbursts repelled him. Louisa found herself penniless, exiled, alone, and emotionally distraught. Ironically, she committed herself to an insane asylum for several months. In May 1903 Louisa gave birth to a girl she named Pia Monica.

  She must have been surprised when Frederick Augustus claimed Pia Monica as his own. Yet in August of 1902 when she was conceived—and a month before and afterward—the prince had been making official visits to the courts of Berlin, Vienna, and Munich without his wife. A man of relentless duty and stiff honor, Frederick Augustus wanted to avoid bringing shame on his country and his children by admitting that the crown princess of Saxony had conceived a bastard with a commoner. Every year the king sent Louisa a request for her daughter, and for several years she refused, even after her ex-husband became king in 1904.

  Finally in 1906, realizing that Pia Monica would have a far brighter future as a princess of Saxony than as the illegitimate child of a fallen woman, Louisa gave her up. Frederick Augustus raised the child as if she were his own. Given the uncertain nature of his divorce, he never remarried. He was a popular king, good-natured if a bit thickheaded, and beloved by his people.

  In 1907 Louisa, who had been groomed as the future queen of Saxony, irreparably demeaned herself by marrying an Italian pianist, Enrico Toselli, with whom she had a son. But though she had blamed all her difficulties on palace life, neither could she find peace and happiness in the mediocre apartment of a commoner. The couple separated in 1912, Louisa abandoning her young son. Ever restless, never satisfied, throughout her life rumors of love affairs wafted around her like perfume.

  In 1911 Louisa further shocked the world with her autobiography, My Own Story. Like Princess Diana in her covert autobiography, Diana: Her True Story, penned by Andrew Morton in 1992, Louisa portrayed herself as the innocent victim of an ice-cold royal family jealous of her popularity and making noise about her mental imbalance.

  She must have laughed in 1918 when the German monarchies fell, the kings and queens were exiled, and their viperous courts dismantled. Frederick Augustus lived the comfortable life of a wealthy private gentleman and died of heart disease in 1932 at the age of sixty-seven. His children married the scions of other toppled European royalty, Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns. Even the illegitimate Pia Monica—who grew up painfully aware that she resembled her siblings neither in looks nor in temperament— married Archduke Josef Franz of Austria. Louisa, who had fleeting contact with her children over the years, slid into poverty and obscurity. Very little is known about her after she separated from Toselli. She died in 1947 in Brussels at the age of seventy-seven.

  MARIE OF BRITAIN, QUEEN OF ROMANIA

  “I Rejoice in My Beauty. Men Have Taught Me To”

  Marie, princess of Edinburgh, was Queen Victoria’s granddaughter by a younger son. When the seventeen-year-old married the bumbling heir to the Romanian throne in 1893, Marie soon found herself in a kind of prison with grouchy King Carol I, her husband’s uncle, as her jailer. He forbade her to form friendships with anyone, to attend parties and balls, even to leave her rooms for days on end. Her husband, Prince Ferdinand, was too weak to stand up for his wife and visibly trembled when even thinking about the king. “When he spoke of him something like anxiety and not far removed from dread came into his eyes,” Marie wrote. “One felt that a shiver ran down his spine.”4

  King Carol did permit Marie to attend the festivities celebrating the coronation of Nicholas and Alexandra in Moscow in 1896 as Romania’s representative. Clad in gorgeous new gowns and dazzling jewels, the princess suddenly came alive, a magnificent butterfly bursting forth from her drab cocoon. Her large blue eyes sparkled with greater intensity than her glistening sapphires as princes, prime ministers, and generals, their strong hands tight against the back of her slender waist, took turns sweeping her around the ballroom. For twenty-one-year-old Marie this was a moment of sexual awakening, a sudden awareness of her power over powerful men. “Russians catch fire easily,” she wrote years later in her autobiography, “and Slav tongues are soft.”5

  No longer the shy and awkward girl who had married the crown prince, after her success in Moscow she told an admirer, “I rejoice in my beauty. Men have taught me to.”6 Tall and slim, with a dazzling fair complexion and blond hair, Marie was described by many as the most beautiful woman they had ever seen.

  Suddenly empowered with her sensuality, Marie embarked on numerous love affairs, often arranging for her lovers to work in the palace for easy access to her rooms, or meeting them while visiting health spas in Germany on trips to see her mother. Hearing the rumors, Marie’s English relatives were worried sick that her scandalous lifestyle would result in divorce. In between his stern lectures to her on the subject, King Carol must have considered the possibility. After all, by 1903 the crown prince of Saxony had divorced his adulterous Louisa. But Romania’s dynasty, founded in 1866, was new and fragile, whereas the house of Wettin had sat solidly on the Saxon throne for a thousand years. Moreover, while Louisa’s family were dispossessed dukes of Tuscany now living on the charity of the Austro-Hungarian emperor, Marie’s close relatives were the British royal family.

  If her family looked with horror at her love affairs, the Romanian people admired her for them. They pointed with pride to their crown princess as the most sensual woman in Europe. And indeed, early-twentieth-century Romania reveled in a sexual equality among the aristocracy that was unheard of in other nations. A beautiful married woman who took handsome lovers was admired for her panache and sense of style, not chastised for immorality. Marie’s reputation was enhanced by her amours, much as that of a virile king was gilded by his numerous fragrant mistresses.

  In 1907 Marie began a love affair that would last until her death thirty years later. Two years older than Marie, Barbo Stirbey came from an ancient aristocratic family and was one of the richest men in Romania. A dapper dresser, Stirbey had a noble brow, intense brown eyes, Slavic cheekbones, and a full dark moustache that almost hid his sensual lips. Sophisticated, tall, and slender, Stirbey carried himself with quiet confidence. Despite his loving wife and four children, he was reputed to be quite a lady-killer, and many Bucharest socialites spoke dreamily of the “strange hypnotic quality” of his eyes.7

  Stirbey was forever cool and unruffled. “No one had ever guessed what passions lay beneath his unbendable pride,” Marie wrote later.8 “
His manner was unassuming, yet full of charm,” Princess Anne-Marie Callimachi wrote. “He spoke little, but a gift of persuasion and instinctive psychological insight made him rarely miss his aim whenever he set himself one. Extraordinary was the way he always struck the right note.”9

  Marie visited Stirbey’s estate at Buftea often, going on horseback rides with him. In 1913 King Carol, well aware of the love affair, unofficially gave it his blessing by appointing Stirbey superintendent of the royal estates. This gave the lovers an excuse to work together every day. It was rumored that Marie’s fourth child, Ileana, born in 1909, was fathered by Stirbey. It was fairly certain that her last child, Mircea, born in 1913, was his.

  But Stirbey was not simply her lover. It was through him that Marie first developed a serious interest in politics; from him she learned of defense, agriculture, foreign affairs, and trade. He became her chief political adviser, and even poor doddering Ferdinand grew to rely heavily on Stirbey’s wisdom. Although Stirbey was one of the most powerful political figures in Romania during the first three decades of the century, he was not one to seek the limelight, preferring to play the role of gray eminence.

  In October 1914 old King Carol died and Marie, who had been crown princess for over twenty years, was finally queen of Romania. She had just inherited World War I. After two years of uneasy neutrality, Romania finally sided with the Allies; within hours of the declaration, the German Kaiser sent warplanes to bomb Bucharest. Throughout the war, stammering King Ferdinand wrung his hands while Marie ran the show with Stirbey’s political advice. “There is only one man in Roumania and that is the Queen,” said one French nobleman.10

  When Communists deposed and murdered Marie’s cousin Czar Nicholas II of Russia in 1918, many Romanians feared the revolution would swoop down upon them. One reason it did not was because of Queen Marie’s popularity; unlike the frivolous and haughty Marie Antoinette of France, unlike the stiff and stubborn Empress Alexandra of Russia, Marie wisely guided her country through the shoals of the war. Moreover, she was always available to her people; a farmer seeking justice had only to walk into the palace and ask for her.

  One young guest at the palace in the 1920s carefully observed the queen and her lover, both in their early fifties. “She had a dress, a very long dress with a train in black velvet with all her magnificent pearls. She was in a corner of the throne room, and Barbo Stirbey was next to her discussing something. They were not looking at each other, they were looking at the crowd. It was an extraordinary sight…. They were such a magnificent pair. She was so beautiful and he was so handsome. They had such extraordinary allure and grandeur and distinction…. The best proof is that after more than fifty years I can still see them as if it happened last night.”11

  In the 1920s Romania’s economy was booming. Bucharest became known as the Paris of the East. In 1925 Marie’s oldest son, the erratic Crown Prince Carol, abdicated his rights to the throne and moved to Paris with his mistress. His father, who had been ailing, was devastated; his death eighteen months later was probably hastened by the scandal. Carol’s five-year-old son, Michael, became king with Stirbey as his prime minister.

  But in 1930 Carol, bored with stewing in France on little money, swooped back to Romania and proclaimed himself King Carol II. He marginalized his mother, whom he had resented for her affair with Stirbey since he first learned of it at the age of thirteen. Suddenly Marie found herself transported back forty years to the time of her imprisonment under King Carol I, restricted in her communication, her freedom of movement, and her finances. Her servants were spies who opened her mail and listened in on her telephone calls.

  Stirbey, ever discreet and dignified, retired to his estates and out of Marie’s life. When Carol banished him from Romania in 1934, he took his family to Switzerland. At the end of Marie’s life, the loss of Stirbey afflicted her most. Since her first step onto Romanian soil in 1893 she had endured ups and downs; but since 1907 Stirbey had always been there to advise her, to help her make it through. Now he was gone.

  Years earlier, Stirbey had predicted that Romania would fall to wrack and ruin under King Carol II. Casting her glance into the near future, Marie sadly agreed and saw a lifetime of work coming undone. She began to suffer from internal hemorrhaging, perhaps from a liver ailment. In 1938, her condition deteriorating, her son refused her permission to visit the world’s leading expert in Dresden.

  Hearing of her serious illness, Stirbey managed to smuggle a letter to her. “My thoughts are always near you,” he assured her. “I am inconsolable at being so far, incapable of being any help whatsoever to you, living in the memory of the past with no hope for the future…. Never doubt the boundlessness of my devotion.”12

  Dying, Marie wrote one last letter to her lover. She deeply regretted that she must leave “so much unsaid, which would so much lighten my heart to say: all my longing, my sadness, all the dear memories which flood back into my heart…. The woods with the little yellow crocuses, the smell of the oaks when we rode through those same woods in early summer—and oh! so many, many things which are gone…. God bless you all and keep you safe….”13

  Then Marie turned to her other love, Romania, and wrote her final letter. “I have become yours for joy or sorrow,” she wrote. “When I look back, it is difficult to say which was greater, the joy or the sorrow. I believe the joy was greater, but too long was the sorrow.”14

  ALEXANDRA OF HESSE-DARMSTADT, EMPRESS OF RUSSIA

  “Rasputin Is a Messenger of God”

  Aping Queen Victoria’s devotion to John Brown, Empress Alexandra of Russia, wife of Czar Nicholas II, was equally devoted to a blunt-spoken peasant. But unlike her wise grandmother, the foolish Alexandra made a choice that was politically explosive. Alexandra fell in love with a sexual satyr, a con man, and a lunatic, the man who lit the spark of the Russian Revolution. His name was Gregory Rasputin.

  Alexandra, a German princess, had come to Russia as a bride in 1893. Haughty, stubborn, and loudmouthed, she won the immediate dislike of many who met her. Upon hearing the news of her betrothal to the future czar, an official from her native land of Hesse whispered to a Russian diplomat, “How lucky we are that you are taking her from us.”15

  Tall and slender with rich chestnut hair and large blue-gray eyes, she completely overwhelmed her indecisive husband who signed himself “Your poor, weak-willed little hubby.”16 Nicholas’s handsome features were marred by his insipid expression. His cousin Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany thought he should have been “a country gentleman growing turnips.” When his tutor tried to teach him about governing a nation, Nicholas “became actively absorbed in picking his nose.”17

  Believing herself to be a political genius, Alexandra pushed her weak husband out of the way and ruled one-seventh of the surface of the globe herself. Nicholas’s old tutor remarked that Alexandra was “more autocratic than Peter the Great and perhaps as cruel as Ivan the Terrible. Hers is a small mind that believes it harbors great intelligence.”18 One court official described her as having “a will of iron linked to not much brain and no knowledge.”19 She knew she was detested at all levels of society, but thought the root cause was jealousy of her intellectual brilliance and steely resolve not to change her mind merely because the Russian people objected.

  Increasingly isolated as the years passed, gullible Alexandra fell prey to various charlatans and psychics. As the mother of four daughters who were not allowed to rule the Russian Empire by virtue of their gender, her main objective was to have a son. But Czarevich Alexis, born in 1904, suffered from hemophilia, a disease which always resulted in death at a very early age. Desperate for a cure, the empress agreed to meet a Siberian holy man who had come to St. Petersburg.

  Gregory Rasputin had grown up on a farm and stumbled into the Russian capital to obtain sex, which he needed several times a day. Siberian farms offered a limited number of women, and many of their fathers and husbands objected to his ravishing them. But in the decadent, overripe world of St. Petersb
urg, he reflected, there would be countless women ready to sleep with him.

  Though only of medium height, Rasputin gave the impression of being incredibly tall. He had a shaggy, dirty beard and wild unkempt hair; his teeth were black stumps. He wore silk peasant blouses of blue or red, embroidered with flowers, and baggy black pants tucked into thick high peasant boots.

  Rasputin’s most striking feature was his eyes. They were a gray so light that they often appeared to be white—burning white eyes, pinpricks of fiery light shooting out relentlessly from beneath a Neanderthal brow. “The eyes of a maniac,” said one Russian who met him.20 “He looked like a lascivious, malicious satyr,” said another. One had the impression of being “pierced by needles rather than merely of being looked at.”21

  When Rasputin was a child, his daughter later reported, he had the unique ability to heal sore and injured farm animals. He knew when unheralded visitors would come calling, found lost objects, and predicted village deaths. At the age of eighteen, he claimed to see a vision of the Virgin which led to a spiritual awakening. Yet his fervent prayers were usually mixed with drunken debauchery and ribald orgies.

  Wrapped in a heavy mantle of ancient Russian spirituality, Rasputin became a living icon, a pallid face with burning eyes, the symbol of primitive Christianity. His unique religious outlook won him many lovers, even as it outraged the Russian Orthodox Church. The only way to become close to God, Rasputin argued, was through the redemption of sin. Therefore, if one remained sinless, one could never join with God. True believers must sin—preferably sexually and with Rasputin—to become close to the Creator. Making love to him, he assured gullible women, would actually purify them of sin. One woman expressed shock at how sinful she had been; Rasputin had needed to purify her several times.

  He was only attracted to pretty women. When the not-so-pretty ones thronged about him, hoping to be purified, he would say, “Mother, your love is pleasing, but the spirit of the Lord does not descend on me.”22