Template For A Queen
Feb. 18th, 2012 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_imperium..first posted Dec. 13th, 2008 in my Live Journal..
~First, a bit of backstory...
Queen Alexandra's mother, Sophia, Countess Stenbock, comes from a family of very minor Swedish nobility. The Countess' aunt was a mistress of one of the last Vasa kings who was ennobled by her royal lover and managed to pass the title on to her close relatives. As the Stenbock's were an attractive and intelligent lot, they parlayed that title into a decent living, not rich, but certainly comfortable.
All the Stenbock children received the best education possible, boys and girls. After all, it was the combination of beauty and wit that had landed the first Countess Stenbock her royal lover.
And so it was that Sophia caught the eye of a bookish English Royal Duke when they crossed paths in a dusty Stockholm library in 1821.
Octavius, Duke of Cleveland, was the youngest living brother of Fredrick II, King of Great Britain, etc and seventh in line for the throne, which no one expected he would ever sit upon, something that suited the Duke just fine. He preferred the task that had brought him to Stockholm in that summer; collecting rare volumes for the great Royal Library at Haarlem Palace in New York City.
The Duke was forty one and most, himself included, expected he'd die a bachelor. Quiet and painfully shy, he was thought weak. That is until one pushed him on any subject for which he had a passion. Then those large soulful eyes would flash with fire and the famous Hanoverian temper would explode.
And Octavius' greatest passion was books and the learning they contained. He was sneered at as 'The Duke of Dustbins' for his love of rummaging through old library shelves. But it was in one of those dusty old libraries that he met another dusty bookworm, a young and beautiful bookworm.
Sophia Stenbock was just fifteen at the time, but nearly as tall as the gangling Duke. She was truly what she called a 'stack rat', as she loved books too. She did later confess to her then husband that she had 'stalked him like a game animal' in those book stacks. “Happy then is the prey,” he replied.
Of course, finding this well dressed yet dust covered young beauty seemed almost too good to be true for the shy duke. Many women had pursued him, but all of them had been uniformly shallow, vain, and rapaciously ambitious. Here was a fellow book fiend.
After a brief exchange of of letters with his brother the King, he was given permission to marry Sophia.
The marriage took place on August 31st, 1822 – little more than a year after they met - in the private quarters of Charles XIV, King of Sweden. This was an important event, however small the duke and his bride wished it to be.
After a two week honeymoon, the couple traveled first to London for the new Duchess of Cleveland's introduction to the King, and then on to New York City, where mountains of books awaited them. Their daughter, Alexandra Charlotte Willamina Frederica, was born on April 21st, 1823 in The Annex at Haarlem Palace. /end
~Well, I had not planed to go on like that, but there you have it. The original purpose of this entry when I first opened the file and began to type was to share an interesting bit of research.
A while back I did a Google search on the name 'Stenbock' just to see what I came up with. I found a Natasha Stenbock who works for KFMB News 8, the CBS affiliate down in San Diego as a weather broadcaster and 'light news' reporter. It seems she sky dives, scuba dives, and can fly a plane.
When I checked 'images', I found these....
....and that, my friends, is very much how I have envisioned Alexandra. We were most pleased.
~First, a bit of backstory...
Queen Alexandra's mother, Sophia, Countess Stenbock, comes from a family of very minor Swedish nobility. The Countess' aunt was a mistress of one of the last Vasa kings who was ennobled by her royal lover and managed to pass the title on to her close relatives. As the Stenbock's were an attractive and intelligent lot, they parlayed that title into a decent living, not rich, but certainly comfortable.
All the Stenbock children received the best education possible, boys and girls. After all, it was the combination of beauty and wit that had landed the first Countess Stenbock her royal lover.
And so it was that Sophia caught the eye of a bookish English Royal Duke when they crossed paths in a dusty Stockholm library in 1821.
Octavius, Duke of Cleveland, was the youngest living brother of Fredrick II, King of Great Britain, etc and seventh in line for the throne, which no one expected he would ever sit upon, something that suited the Duke just fine. He preferred the task that had brought him to Stockholm in that summer; collecting rare volumes for the great Royal Library at Haarlem Palace in New York City.
The Duke was forty one and most, himself included, expected he'd die a bachelor. Quiet and painfully shy, he was thought weak. That is until one pushed him on any subject for which he had a passion. Then those large soulful eyes would flash with fire and the famous Hanoverian temper would explode.
And Octavius' greatest passion was books and the learning they contained. He was sneered at as 'The Duke of Dustbins' for his love of rummaging through old library shelves. But it was in one of those dusty old libraries that he met another dusty bookworm, a young and beautiful bookworm.
Sophia Stenbock was just fifteen at the time, but nearly as tall as the gangling Duke. She was truly what she called a 'stack rat', as she loved books too. She did later confess to her then husband that she had 'stalked him like a game animal' in those book stacks. “Happy then is the prey,” he replied.
Of course, finding this well dressed yet dust covered young beauty seemed almost too good to be true for the shy duke. Many women had pursued him, but all of them had been uniformly shallow, vain, and rapaciously ambitious. Here was a fellow book fiend.
After a brief exchange of of letters with his brother the King, he was given permission to marry Sophia.
The marriage took place on August 31st, 1822 – little more than a year after they met - in the private quarters of Charles XIV, King of Sweden. This was an important event, however small the duke and his bride wished it to be.
After a two week honeymoon, the couple traveled first to London for the new Duchess of Cleveland's introduction to the King, and then on to New York City, where mountains of books awaited them. Their daughter, Alexandra Charlotte Willamina Frederica, was born on April 21st, 1823 in The Annex at Haarlem Palace. /end
~Well, I had not planed to go on like that, but there you have it. The original purpose of this entry when I first opened the file and began to type was to share an interesting bit of research.
A while back I did a Google search on the name 'Stenbock' just to see what I came up with. I found a Natasha Stenbock who works for KFMB News 8, the CBS affiliate down in San Diego as a weather broadcaster and 'light news' reporter. It seems she sky dives, scuba dives, and can fly a plane.
When I checked 'images', I found these....
....and that, my friends, is very much how I have envisioned Alexandra. We were most pleased.
