Princess Michael of Kent

Princess Michael of Kent (born Baroness Marie-Christine Anna Agnes Hedwig Ida von Reibnitz, 15 January 1945) is a member of the British royal family. She is married to Prince Michael of Kent, a grandson of King George V. Princess Michael of Kent was an interior designer before becoming an author; she has written several books on European royalty.

Early life and ancestry

Princess Michael was born Freiin (Baroness) Marie-Christine Anna Agnes Hedwig Ida von Reibnitz on 15 January 1945 in Karlovy Vary, then part of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, and officially known as Karlsbad in the German-populated Sudetenland, now in the Czech Republic. She was born at Jagdschloss Inselthal, the family estate inherited from her Austrian maternal grandmother, Princess Hedwig von Windisch-Graetz (1878–1918), the eldest daughter of Alfred III, Prince of Windisch-Grätz, who served as the 11th Minister-President of Austria and was President of the Imperial Council from 1895 to 1918.

She is born into the Reibnitz family, an ancient (uradel) German nobility from Silesia who can trace its noble lineage back to 1288 with Henricus de Rybnicz. The ancestral seat of the family was Burg Läusepelz, today Rybnica in present-day Poland. On her paternal line, Princess Michael is descended from the Burggrafen of Dohna, Herrand III von Trauttmansdorff, and the Nostitz family, who are also among the ancestors of Queen Elizabeth II.

She is the younger daughter of Freiherr Günther Hubertus von Reibnitz (1894–1983) by his second wife, Countess Maria Anna Carolina Franziska Walburga Bernadette Szapáry von Muraszombath, Széchysziget und Szapár (1911–1988), who was the daughter of Count Friedrich Szapáry von Muraszombath, Széchysziget und Szapár, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to Saint Petersburg at the outbreak of the First World War. On her mother's side, she descends from the House of Lobkowicz and numerous other Austrian princely houses, lineages which also connect her by blood to her husband, Prince Michael of Kent, and to Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III. Through her maternal line, she is also descended from King Henry II of France via both his wife, Catherine de' Medici, and his longtime mistress and rival of Catherine, Diane de Poitiers, a connection noted in her historical work. She also descends, through this line, from Peter Paul Rubens, the celebrated Flemish Baroque painter, artist and diplomat who served and was knighted by the Habsburg and Stuart monarchs.

Princess Michael's father was a Nazi Party member and served as a cavalry officer in the Waffen-SS during the Second World War. In response to the advances of the Red Army near the end of the war, the family abandoned their estates and moved to Bavaria, which was part of the American-occupied zone of Germany. Her parents divorced in 1946 and, along with her mother and elder brother Baron Friedrich von Reibnitz (born 1942), Princess Michael moved to Australia, where she was educated at Convent of the Sacred Heart, Rose Bay (now Kincoppal-Rose Bay). In the early 1960s, she lived with her father on his farm in Portuguese-ruled Mozambique. She then went from Vienna to London to study History of Fine and Decorative Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Marriages

Her first husband was the English banker Thomas Troubridge (1939–2015), the younger brother of Sir Peter Troubridge, 6th Baronet. They met at a boar hunt in Germany and were married on 14 September 1971 at Chelsea Old Church, London. The couple separated in 1973 and were civilly divorced in 1977. The marriage was ecclesiastically annulled by Pope Paul VI in May 1978.

One month after the annulment, on 30 June 1978, at a civil ceremony at the City Hall (Wiener Rathaus) in Vienna, Austria, she married Prince Michael of Kent, the son of Prince George, Duke of Kent, and Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. Prince Michael is a grandson of King George V. Marie-Christine has named Lord Mountbatten as their matchmaker.

Michael presented Marie-Christine with a two-stone sapphire-and-diamond ring made from stones that had belonged to his mother, Princess Marina. At the civil ceremony she wore a cream two-piece suit, a blazer and knee-length skirt combination, by Hardy Amies. For the ball held after the wedding, she wore the City of London diamond fringe tiara and a cream dress from Bellville Sassoon. Upon their marriage, she was accorded the style and title of Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent, the female equivalent to her husband's title. After receiving Pope John Paul II's permission (Pope Paul VI had barred them from having a Catholic wedding), the couple later received a blessing of their marriage in a Roman Catholic ceremony on 29 June 1983 at Archbishop's House, London.

Since the Act of Settlement 1701 prohibited anyone who married a Roman Catholic from succeeding to the throne, Prince Michael of Kent (at that time, 15th in the line of succession) lost his succession rights upon marrying Marie-Christine. Prince Michael was reinstated to the line of succession to the British throne on 26 March 2015 with the passing of the Succession to the Crown Act 2013. Their children are members of the Church of England and have retained their rights of succession since birth.

Prince and Princess Michael of Kent have two children:

• Lord Frederick Windsor, born 6 April 1979 at St Mary's Hospital, London. He married Sophie Winkleman on 12 September 2009 and they have two daughters: Maud (born 15 August 2013) and Isabella (born 16 January 2016).
• Lady Gabriella Kingston, born 23 April 1981 at St Mary's Hospital, London. She married Thomas Kingston on 18 May 2019. Her husband shot himself on 25 February 2024 in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, leaving her widowed at 42 years old.

Marie-Christine was linked romantically by the press to John Warner and tycoons Ward Hunt and Mikhail Kravchenko. She also had a friendship with John W. Galbreath and Peter de Savary, the latter of whom gifted her a £150,000 parcel of land on Antigua.

Career

Before her marriage to Prince Michael, she worked as an interior designer. According to a report in The Observer's Pendennis column in September 2007, the Princess resumed decorating under her original company, Szapar Designs. In 1986, her first book Crowned in a Far Country: Portraits of Eight Royal Brides was published, after which she faced allegations of plagiarism and reached an out-of-court settlement with another author. Her second book Cupid and the King: Five Royal Paramours faced the same issues, which the Princess attributed to the researcher, who had allegedly submitted notes without due attribution. The book was to be published by Michael Joseph, but after the draft was submitted several months late, it was rejected and published by HarperCollins. From 2007 to 2011, the Princess served as president of Partridge Fine Art, a gallery in London's New Bond Street until it went into administration having suffered substantial multi-year losses. In 2008, the Princess was engaged as a consultant by Galerie Gmurzynska in Switzerland, and later became their international ambassador. She also served on the board of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and goes on lecture tours around the world where she talks about historical subjects at universities, museums and galleries to promote her books and endorse her charities. Marie-Christine, whose husband has a strong interest in Russia, was reportedly taking Russian lessons in 2012.