Maud of Wales

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Maud of Wales
Maud following her coronation, wearing the Queen's Crown, sceptre and orb
Queen consort of Norway
Tenure 18 November 1905 – 20 November 1938
Coronation 22 June 1906
Spouse Haakon VII of Norway
Issue
Olav V of Norway
Full name
Maud Charlotte Mary Victoria
House House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Father Edward VII
Mother Alexandra of Denmark
Born (1869-11-26)26 November 1869
Marlborough House, London
Died 20 November 1938(1938-11-20) (aged 68)
Appleton House, Sandringham
Burial Akershus Castle, Oslo
Religion Anglicanism

Maud Charlotte Mary Victoria of Wales (26 November 1869 – 20 November 1938) was Queen of Norway as spouse of King Haakon VII. She was the youngest daughter of Edward VII of the United Kingdom and Alexandra of Denmark. Maud of Wales was the first queen of Norway since 1380 who was not also queen of Denmark or Sweden.

Early life

Princess Maud of Wales (centre) as a teenager, together with her sisters Louise (left) and Victoria (right).

Princess Maud of Wales was born at Marlborough House, London as the daughter of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Queen Victoria and at that time heir apparent to the British throne. Her mother was Princess Alexandra of Denmark.

Princess Maud was christened at Marlborough House by John Jackson, Bishop of London, on 24 December 1869. Her godparents were her paternal uncle Prince Leopold (for whom the Duke of Cambridge stood proxy); Prince Frederick William of Hesse-Kassel (represented by Prince Francis of Teck); Count Gleichen; the Duchess of Nassau (represented by Princess Francis of Teck); the King of Sweden and Norway (who was represented by Baron Hochschild, the Swedish minister); the Princess of Leiningen (represented by Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde); her maternal aunt the Tsarevna of Russia (represented by the Baroness de Brunnow, the Russian ambassador's wife); the Crown Princess of Denmark (represented by Madame de Bülow, the Danish Minister's wife); and her great-great aunt the Duchess of Inverness.

Princess Maud was a high-spirited child, a quality that earned her the nickname Harry. She was brought up with relative freedom, which was somewhat disliked by her grandmother, Queen Victoria.[1] Maud took part in almost all the annual visits to the Princess of Wales's family in Denmark and later accompanied her mother and sisters on cruises to Norway and the Mediterranean. She was a bridesmaid at the 1885 wedding of her paternal aunt Beatrice to Prince Henry of Battenberg,[2] and at the wedding of her brother George V to Mary of Teck in 1893.[3]

Maud, along with her sisters, Victoria and Louise, received the Imperial Order of the Crown of India from Queen Victoria on 6 August 1887. Like her sisters, she also held the Royal Order of Victoria and Albert (First Class) and was a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.

Princess of Denmark

Wedding of Princess Maud of Wales and Prince Carl of Denmark

On 22 July 1896, Princess Maud married her first cousin, Prince Carl of Denmark, in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace. Prince Carl was the second son of Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark, Queen Alexandra's elder brother, and Princess Louise of Sweden. The bride's father, the Prince of Wales, gave her Appleton House on the Sandringham Estate as a country residence for her frequent visits to England. It was there that the couple's only child, Prince Alexander, was born on 2 July 1903. Tor Bomann-Larsen suggested that the birth of the couple's only child after seven years of marriage may have been the result of an early form of artificial insemination to cover up for her husband's infertility.[4][5]

Prince Carl was an officer in the Danish navy and he and his family lived mainly in Denmark until 1905. In June 1905 the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, dissolved Norway's 91 year old union with Sweden and voted to offer the throne to Prince Carl. Maud's membership of the British royal house had some part in why Carl was chosen.[1] Following a plebiscite in November, Prince Carl accepted the Norwegian throne, taking the name of Haakon VII, while his young son took the name of Olav. King Haakon VII and Queen Maud were crowned at Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim on 22 June 1906, that being the last coronation in Scandinavia.

Queen of Norway

Queen Maud with her husband and their son.

Queen Maud never lost her love of Britain, but she quickly adapted to her new country and duties as a queen consort. Maud played a strong and dominant role within the court and family, but a discreet role in public.[1]

During her first years in Norway, she and her spouse were photographed in Norwegian folk costumes, and enjoying winter sports such as skiing, to give them a Norwegian appearance in the eyes of the public.[1] She disliked representation but performed her role as a queen with great care, and used clothes and jewelry to make a regal impression. She supported charitable causes, particularly those associated with children and animals, and gave encouragement to musicians and artists. Among her projects was Dronningens Hjelpekomité (the Queen's Relief Committee) during World War I. She supported the feminist Katti Anker Møller's home for unwed mothers (1906), which was regarded as radical, designed furniture for the benefit of the Barnets utstilling (Children's Exhibition) in 1921, and sold photographs for charitable purposes.[1]

Maud continued to regard Great Britain as her true home even after her arrival in Norway, and visited Great Britain every year.[1] She mostly stayed at her Appleton House, Sandringham, during her visits.[6] She did, however, also appreciate some aspects of Norway, such as the winter sports, and she supported bringing up her son as a Norwegian. She learned to ski and arranged for an English garden at Kongsseteren, the Royal lodge overlooking the nation's capital Oslo. She is described as reserved as a public person but energetic and with a taste for practical jokes as a private person. Her influence over her spouse and politics is not much examined, but she is described as a forceful and dominant person within the royal court, though her public role was less visible.[1]

Queen Maud's last public appearance in Britain was at the coronation of her nephew, King George VI, in May 1937 at Westminster Abbey.[6] She sat in the royal pew at Westminster Abbey next to her sister-in-law Queen Mary and her niece Mary, Princess Royal, as part of the official royal party.[7]

Maud also acquired a reputation for dressing with fashionable chic. An exhibition of numerous items from her elegant wardrobe was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2005 and published in the catalogue Style and Splendour: Queen Maud of Norway's Wardrobe 1896-1938.

Maud's death

Maud came to England for a visit in October 1938. Initially she stayed at Sandringham, but then moved into a hotel in London's West End. She became ill and was taken to a nursing home, where an abdominal operation was performed on 16 November 1938. King Haakon immediately travelled from Norway to her bedside. Although she survived the surgery, Maud died unexpectedly of heart failure at Appleton House on 20 November 1938,[6] six days before her 69th birthday (and on the 13th anniversary of her mother's death).[8][9] Norwegian newspapers were allowed to break the law forbidding publication on Sundays in order to notify the Norwegian public of her death.[10] Her body was returned to Norway on board HMS Royal Oak, the flagship of the Second Battle Squadron of the Royal Navy's Home Fleet.[11] Her body was moved to a small church in Oslo before the burial.[11] Queen Maud was buried in the royal mausoleum at Akershus Castle in Oslo.[6] At her death, Queen Maud was the last surviving child of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Maud's coat of arms (granted 1896).
Royal monogram as Queen of Norway

Titles and styles

  • 26 November 1869 – 22 July 1896: Her Royal Highness Princess Maud of Wales
  • 22 July 1896 – 18 November 1905: Her Royal Highness Princess Carl of Denmark
  • 18 November 1905 – 20 November 1938: Her Majesty The Queen of Norway

Honours

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Arms

Upon her marriage, Maud was granted the use of a personal coat of arms, being those of the kingdom, with an inescutcheon of the shield of Saxony, differenced with a label argent of five points, the outer pair and centre bearing hearts gules, the inner pair crosses gules.[12] The inescutcheon was dropped by royal warrant in 1917.

Ancestors

See also: Grandchildren of Victoria and Albert

Legacy

Queen Maud Land and Queen Maud Mountains in Antarctica; Queen Maud Secondary School in Hong Kong; and Queen Maud Gulf in Nunavut, Canada, are named after Maud of Wales.

Maud's great-granddaughter, Princess Märtha Louise, named her eldest daughter after the queen.

The ship Maud, designed to the specifications of Roald Amundsen for service in the Arctic Ocean and launched in 1916 to traverse and explore the Northeast Passage, was christened in honor of Maud of Wales.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Maud Charlotte Mary Victoria – utdypning
  2. ↑ "Prince and Princess Henry of Battenberg with their bridesmaids and others on their wedding day". National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 9 July 2013. 
  3. ↑ "'The Duke and Duchess of York and Bridesmaids'". National Portrait Gallery, London. 
  4. ↑ "Beloved king ‘naive’ about the Nazis". News in English. 28 October 2011. Retrieved 9 July 2013. 
  5. ↑ "Norway royal bloodline 'British'". BBC. 15 October 2004. Retrieved 9 July 2013. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 "Statue of Queen Maud unveiled by HM King Harald". Norway. Retrieved 9 July 2013. 
  7. ↑ "The Queen Mother in pictures". Telegraph. Retrieved 9 July 2013. 
  8. ↑ "Queen Maud Undergoes Operation". The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld.: 1933 - 1954) (Brisbane, Qld.: National Library of Australia). 17 November 1938. p. 7. Retrieved 25 December 2011. 
  9. ↑ "Death of Queen". The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld.: 1933 - 1954) (Brisbane, Qld.: National Library of Australia). 21 November 1938. p. 1. Retrieved 25 December 2011. 
  10. ↑ "Death of Queen Maud". The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW: 1842 - 1954) (NSW: National Library of Australia). 22 November 1938. p. 11. Retrieved 25 December 2011. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Sandelson, Michael (28 October 2011). "Norway’s Queen Maud in euthanasia speculations". The Foreigner. Retrieved 9 July 2013. 
  12. ↑ Heraldica – British Royal Cadency

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Queen Maud of Norway.
Maud of Wales
Cadet branch of the House of Wettin
Born: 26 November 1869 Died: 20 November 1938
Norwegian royalty
Vacant
Title last held by
Sophia of Nassau		 Queen consort of Norway
1905–1938 		Vacant
Title next held by
Sonja Haraldsen
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