Part 2 of 3 in my series on the Kent family

His Royal Highness Prince Michael George Charles Franklin of Kent was born July 4th, 1942. His parents were Prince George and Princess Marina, the Duke and Duchess of Kent.

Michael’s elder siblings are Prince Edward, the current Duke, and Princess Alexandra. They spent their childhood at Coppins, the Kent family home in the village of Iver in Buckinghamshire. The Duke and Duchess of Kent carried out royal duties on behalf of King George V, but at the start of World War II, the Duke returned to active military service.

The busy schedule was put on hold for the christening of Prince Michael on August 4th, 1942. The baby’s illustrious godparents included Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then President of the United States; King George II of Greece; King Haakon VII of Norway; Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; Lady Patricia Ramsay; The Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven; The Crown Princess of Greece; and the baby’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester.

The littlest Kent would never know his father. Tragically, six weeks after Michael’s birth, Prince George was killed in an airplane crash in Scotland. Michael’s elder brother, Prince Edward, became the new Duke of Kent at only six years old.

Young Michael’s position was very different from that of Edward’s; as a royal duke, Edward would carry out official duties as a representative of Her Majesty. Michael, as the youngest child of King George V’s fourth son, would not take on royal duties nor receive taxpayer funds. The prince was expected to forge his own career after his schooling.

After he completed his studies, the Prince attended Sandhurst Military Academy. Michael was commissioned into the 11th Hussars (Prince Albert’s Own) in 1963 and went on to serve in Germany, Hong Kong and Cyprus, where his squadron formed part of the UN peacekeeping force in 1971. His military career, including appointments on the Defense Intelligence Staff, was intermixed with commercial enterprise.

As a direct descendant of the Romanovs on his mother’s side, Prince Michael took a great interest in Russian culture and business. He is also fluent in Russian and is a qualified interpreter of the language. HRH is Patron of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce and, in 2004, Prince Michael set up his Prince Michael of Kent Foundation in Russia, whose objectives are to provide grants to four sectors of Russian life: Heritage; Culture; Health and post-graduate business education.

Among his patronages Prince Michael has also established his own consultancy company, offering specialist advice on commercial concerns for groups of business representatives from countries such as China, India and of course Russia.

Being so closely connected to Russia through blood and through his work, Prince Michael was invited to be the representative of the British Royal Family at the formal re-interment of the Romanov family’s remains in St Petersburg in 1998. He returned in 2006 for the reburial of Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, mother of the Tsar. HRH has also contributed to two television documentary films for Channel 4 : “The Life and Death of the Last Czar” and “Queen Victoria and Prince Albert”. He also gives occasional lectures on Russia and Queen Victoria.

A Controversial Bride

Prince Michael met the stunning blonde Baroness Marie Christine von Reibnitz in the 1970s. They married in June 1978, a month after the annulment of her first marriage to English banker Thomas Troubridge.

Upon this marriage, Marie Christine became Princess Michael of Kent. Since she was Catholic, her husband had to step out of the line of succession since the 1701 Act of Settlement prevented Catholics or those who married them from succeeding to the throne.

Marie Christine was born January 15th, 1945 in Sudetenland, the German-speaking border area of Czechoslovakia. Her parents were Baron Günther Hubertus von Reibnitz and his Austro-Hungarian wife, Countess Marianne Szapáry von Muraszombath. Through her mother, the Princess can trace her lineage to Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II of France and Catherine de Medici, Queen of France and Henry’s wife.

The Princess’ parents were divorced soon after the end of World War II. Baron von Reibnitz decamped to Mozambique; Countess Maria took Marie Christine and her brother, Friedrich, to live in Australia. In Sydney, the princess attended a private Roman Catholic girls’ school.

Her Royal Highness’ native language is German, but in her childhood she became fluent in both English and French. Princess Michael fondly recalled in an interview that her first books in English were some of the great classics – the Brontës, Jane Austen, Dickens, and George Eliot.

In the 1980s, it was revealed that Baron von Reibnitz had served as an officer in Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (the SS) during the war. Both Princess Michael and the Queen’s press secretary confirmed the report. But it wasn’t divorce or parental scandal that caused grief for the newest member of the Kent clan. Princess Michael’s very loud opinions and love of royal perks earned her the nickname “Princess Pushy” by the Royal Family and the media. Some of her more infamous comments have included ‘I’ll go anywhere for a free lunch,’ and that Prince Charles used Diana Spencer as ‘a convenient womb’.

Though her opinions have landed the princess in hot water on many occasions, she did not argue about her children’s religion; Princess Michael quietly deferred to the tradition of raising royal offspring in the Anglican faith. Prince and Princess Michael’s first child was born April 6, 1979 and named Frederick. Their second child, a girl named Gabriella, was born two years later on April 23rd.

Both Freddie and Ella grew up largely under the media’s radar, and attended private schools away from the public eye. Freddie graduated from Oxford with a 2:1 in Classics, while Ella studied literature at Brown University in Rhode Island, USA. The success of both offspring prompted more infamous quotes from their mother: ‘No children in the family have got as good degrees as they’ve got,’ and that they are ‘more educated than their cousins’.

Even with a good education, the young Freddie was not immune to the pressures of college life and jet-set circles. He was caught up in a storm of controversy over cocaine use and spoke to the Sunday Times in 1999 about the scandal, saying, “I admit it is true. It is very difficult to avoid getting into this sort of thing when you move in these circles, but I don’t blame anyone else for the incident.”

His parents stood behind him. “I brought my children up to be anti-drugs. I am disappointed that he experimented in this way, but he has assured me that he will not do it again, and I believe him,” said Princess Michael.

Despite this setback, Frederick has forged a successful career as a banker for JP Morgan’s private banking division. He married actress Sophie Winkleman in 2009 and they currently reside in Los Angeles.

Business and Pleasure

Like their parents, Lord Frederick and Lady Gabriella work independently of the royal family.

Aside from Freddie’s work in the private banking world, reports say that he is also going to become a “brand ambassador” as the face of Savile Row. With this job, Freddie follows in the footsteps of his cousin Lady Helen Taylor, daughter of the Duke of Kent. Lady Helen was the brand ambassador for Giorgio Armani for over a decade.

Ella is journalist who has written for ¡Hola!, The Spectator, The Mail on Sunday, and various other publications. The date of her birth is fitting considering her career: William Shakespeare, the great writer and poet, is thought to have been born April 23rd.

Princess Michael herself turned her passions into a career – her love of art and design led her to create her own interior decorating firm. Eventually the princess became President of Partridge Fine Art, an art dealership which has employed the princess since 2007. Unfortunately, recent financial difficulties caused the firm to go into liquidation and in 2009 a spokesman confirmed that Her Royal Highness’ position might not be guaranteed.

“It will depend on whether the company is sold whole or broken up. It would be up to whoever takes it on whether she would keep her position.”

The financial pressures caused Marie Christine to take up her former career as an interior decorator. She also turned her artistic flair towards writing, researching her family tree and producing a book on her ancestors Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers entitled “The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King“. Her Royal Highness also lectures internationally at universities and museums.

The Prince and Princess continue to support nearly 140 various associations and charitable organizations both nationally and internationally. The success of their children and their own contented – if occasionally controversial – life has made Prince and Princess Michael two very interesting members of the Royal Family.

With a new daughter-in-law, their Highnesses may look forward to a new adventure in becoming grandparents. What will the next generation bring? Well, Princess Michael will probably tell you exactly what she thinks about that.

Prince Michael In Bid to Clear King George’s Name

Prince Michael of Kent is to appear in an upcoming TV series about one of history’s – and the monarchy’s – most tragic stories: the murder of the Romanovs.

Prince Michael, a cousin to the Queen, speaks fluent Russian and does a fair amount of business in Russia. His looks are reminiscent of the bearded Tsar Nicholas II, which comes as no surprise – his mother Princess Marina was a descendant of the Romanov clan.

The Russian dynasty was closely entwined with the British royals even before the Prince’s mother, Marina of Greece, married the fourth son of King George V. Tsar Nicholas was a first cousin to King George V himself. Their mothers were sisters, Danish princesses who married into the Russian and British royal families. Princess Dagmar became Tsarina Maria Feodorovna, and Princess Alexandra became Queen Alexandra of Great Britain.

The families were very close, and as World War I toppled monarchies and forced Royal Families to choose sides, King George V was expected to help his cousin. However, the paranoid and bombastic German Kaiser Wilhelm II, cousin to both George and Nicholas, inspired fear and xenophobia of Germans across the globe. Nicholas’ wife, Alexandra, was German, and on top of that she had turned many in the Russian court against her because of her belief in the supernatural and her reliance on the sketchy Rasputin.

Would George give the Tsar asylum and risk his own throne, or leave him to his own devices in Russia? As it turned out, the king’s decision cost his cousin and his family their lives. It’s a decision that Prince Michael now discusses in the television interview.

The program Mystery Files: The Romanovs, airs at 7pm on Thursday, February 11th on National Geographic