Royalty double-take
Feb. 20th, 2015 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeWhen I was maybe 10 years old, my remaining great-grandmother gave me a thick biography of Queen Victoria, replete with footnotes. I read that thing, and then I read other books about her, and about her relatives, and pretty soon I was shockingly familiar with the state of European royalty in the 19th century. I think the combination of family sagas and politics, with the added glamour of royal lifestyles, captured my imagination. I don't still read those books, but if pressed I could probably tell you all about Victoria's nine children.
Anyway, this morning, one of the obituaries in the local paper caught my eye: a woman in her 50s had passed away of cancer, and her name was Susi Hohenlohe, and her sons both had fancy names ending with "Hohenlohe-Langenberg." I did a double-take. The Hohenlohe-Langenbergs are one of those German princely families whose political power was merged into the empire but who still retain their titles to this day (I recognized the name from the Queen Victoria book). This local Susi had (from her marriage until her divorce) been a princess! And her sons are princes, good grief! They're from a minor branch of the family, otherwise they might still be living in Langenberg Castle, instead of Eugene, Oregon.
A big of Googling revealed that her older son has an "oxygenated water" business in town, and there's also a web page for a "flying electric car" project with his name on it. I wonder if they have lots of money and hobby businesses, or if they're regular folks who also just happen to have archaic German titles. As for Susi, who was born in Hungary but had lived in America for decades, she got a degree from our local community college and then worked as a lab technician.
Anyway, this morning, one of the obituaries in the local paper caught my eye: a woman in her 50s had passed away of cancer, and her name was Susi Hohenlohe, and her sons both had fancy names ending with "Hohenlohe-Langenberg." I did a double-take. The Hohenlohe-Langenbergs are one of those German princely families whose political power was merged into the empire but who still retain their titles to this day (I recognized the name from the Queen Victoria book). This local Susi had (from her marriage until her divorce) been a princess! And her sons are princes, good grief! They're from a minor branch of the family, otherwise they might still be living in Langenberg Castle, instead of Eugene, Oregon.
A big of Googling revealed that her older son has an "oxygenated water" business in town, and there's also a web page for a "flying electric car" project with his name on it. I wonder if they have lots of money and hobby businesses, or if they're regular folks who also just happen to have archaic German titles. As for Susi, who was born in Hungary but had lived in America for decades, she got a degree from our local community college and then worked as a lab technician.