History isn’t always a reliable guide to the future — and in some ways the modern Royal Family bears little resemblance to those of the past. But, alas, being born third child to a monarch or future monarch has rarely meant a trouble-free life, as these examples illustrate…
1. HUSBAND ‘ONLY MARRIED THE PRINCESS FOR A BET’
Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood
Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood
George V’s third child, Princess Mary, was born in 1897, before the law of primogeniture was changed, so there was never a chance she would ascend the throne. Her two older brothers were Edward VIII and George VI (our Queen’s father) and, as a consequence, she was treated very differently from the start.
Indeed, it was said by a courtier of her ice-queen mother, Mary: ‘Her Majesty hates the whole business of childbirth, from the act which inspires it to the deed itself, and the product of the act and deed.’
As the only girl among five higher-profile brothers, even though two of them were younger than her, Mary was consigned to the role of royal adornment.
Life at home in York Cottage, Sandringham, was cramped and slightly spooky — one room was preserved as a shrine to Prince Albert Victor, her father’s elder brother, who would have become king if he hadn’t died at the age of 28.
It was not a nice place to grow up, nor was hers a happy childhood.
While her brothers wanted to marry swiftly to escape their bullying father, Princess Mary clung to spinsterhood. This was partly because her mother wanted her at home, and partly because it was difficult to find the right kind of man to marry a king’s daughter.
However, at the age of 24 she married the 6th Earl of Harewood, aged 39, who was said to have proposed marriage to her only for a bet.
She died of a heart attack while out walking in 1965, aged 67.
2. SHIPWRECKED OFF THE AFRICAN COAST
Louise, Princess Royal and Duchess of Fife
Louise, Princess Royal and Duchess of Fife
Born in 1867, Princess Louise, third child of the gluttonous, priapic Edward VII, was granted the title of Princess Royal. She, too, grew up at Sandringham — in the main house, not the cottage — and when the time came for husband-hunting she chose an obscure Scottish aristocrat, the Earl of Fife.
Fife was 40 to her 22 when they married, and Queen Victoria balked at the idea of someone of so lowly a rank being married to her grand-daughter — so she promptly made him a duke.
But Louise’s was not a happy life. Her first child was stillborn. And at the age of 34, while sailing with her family to Egypt, she was shipwrecked off the coast of Morocco. Though all aboard were rescued, her husband died soon afterwards from pleurisy.
She returned home to find that her daughter Alexandra wanted to marry her mother’s first cousin, Prince Arthur of Connaught.
After being a widow for more than half her life, she died aged 63 after suffering a gastric haemorrhage — an unhappy end to a troubled life.
3. DAUGHTERS KILLED BY THE BOLSHEVIKS
Alice, Princess of the United Kingdom, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine
Alice, Princess of the United Kingdom, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine
Princess Alice, the third child of Queen Victoria, had no jollier a time of it when she was born in 1843.
At the age of 17 she had to nurse her dying father, Prince Albert, then spent the next year consoling her grief-stricken mother.
Alice escaped to marry a German princeling, Louis of Hesse, but two of her daughters met awful deaths. Both Alexandra, who had married Tsar Nicholas II and became an empress, and Elisabeth, who had married Grand Duke Sergei of Russia, were murdered in 1918 by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution of the previous year.
Alice herself died soon afterwards, never having forgiven her nephew, George V, for failing to rescue her children in Russia.
Sophia, Baroness De L’Isle and Dudley
4. OFFSPRING OF THE KING AND AN ACTRESS
Sophia, Baroness De L’Isle and Dudley
Sophia, daughter of William IV born in 1795, never carried the title of Princess because she was illegitimate. The king lived for many years with the Anglo-Irish actress Mrs Jordan, who bore him ten children after having already given birth to four others by other men.
Eventually abandoned by the king when he wanted a legitimate heir, Mrs Jordan died in poverty when her daughter was 19. Sophia died in childbirth at the age of just 36.
5. SAD SAILOR SON OF A MAD KING
William IV
William IV
William IV himself was a third child (of the ‘mad’ George III). Born in 1765, he was arguably the biggest buffoon to sit on the throne.
He was nicknamed ‘Sailor Bill’, having served in the Royal Navy and later been given the job of Lord High Admiral by George Canning, the prime minister, in 1827. He ascended the throne three years later, as his two deceased brothers failed to leave a legitimate heir. Crowned at the age of 64, he remains the oldest person to inherit the throne.
Even though he later married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen in the hope of producing a legitimate heir, their only offspring were two daughters.
6. THEN THERE’S AIR MILES ANDY…
Prince Andrew, Duke of York
Until yesterday, Prince Andrew was the most recent third royal baby. His birth in 1960 came as something of a surprise, considering Anne had arrived ten years earlier and many believed the Queen had decided to have no more children.
Prince Andrew, Duke of York
A 21-gun salute in Hyde Park and at the Tower of London celebrated the moment when, on February 19, Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward was born.
From second in line to the throne, he has gradually drifted out in the royal pecking order to the position he holds today: seventh in line to the throne.
After tasting glory as a helicopter co-pilot in the Falklands conflict, his life has been dogged by divorce, a scandal over his close friendship with the U.S. billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and the overuse of perks that led him to be nicknamed ‘Air Miles Andy’.
7. AND TRAGIC DI, LOST AND UNHAPPY
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales
There is one more third baby to mention: Princess Diana.
Although she was born the daughter of an earl, Diana was wife to and mother of future kings, and left the greatest legacy of them all. But behind the magic lay tragedy — a child of a broken home, disappointed in love, gone too soon.
THIS unhappy history is most unlikely to repeat itself in the next generation, though. William and Kate, who have zealously devoted themselves to parenthood, will have made provision in their minds for their third child’s future.