Spanish Mavericks: Ripperdá, Godoy, Riánsares
Some of the most fun stories about dukes and princes in European history are about those who seem to come from nowhere, gain the very highest of noble titles for catching the eye and favour of a particular monarch, then either fade into obscurity or arrive at a very bad end. Three such examples appeared…
The Princes of Pless and the Wealth of Silesian Coal
One of the things I like most most about reading about Europe’s historic dukes and princes are the stories that completely transcend nationalism or political boundaries—and in particular those set towards the very end of the high point of the aristocracy, the ‘golden summer’ of 1913 before it all came crashing down in the First…
Malaspina-Cybo dukes of Massa and princes of Carrara
There’s a strange corner of northwest Italy where the Apennine mountain chain crashes into the sea creating narrow valleys and deep seaports that were contested by rival powers for centuries, at the intersection between the provinces of Liguria, Tuscany and Lombardy. Because of this rivalry and the complex geography, numerous small fiefdoms maintained a precarious…
How Many Hyphens? The Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos
Once upon a time there was a man named Richard who had so many hyphens he didn’t know what to do. And so Lord Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville petitioned the King for a dukedom and got one: the dukedom of Buckingham and Chandos. This unusual double dukedom, created in 1822, combined the Buckingham title from his father’s…
Buckingham and Normanby: a Yorkshire dukedom for the House of Sheffield
In 2024, Emily Sheffield published an editorial in I (now The I Paper) commenting on what it was like to be former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron’s sister-in-law. She received a lot of flak on social media from people who claimed she would be nowhere if not for her sister Samantha and her famous husband.…
Dukes of Courland: Kettlers and Birons
Can you think of a country in Europe that existed in the pre-modern period but vanished completely, leaving almost no trace? The Duchy of Courland is one of these. It was a semi-sovereign state from 1561 to 1795—only semi- since it was legally a fief of the grand dukes of Lithuania, then the kings of…
Dukes of Ormond: The Butlers, managing the King’s wine since the 12th century
In the historic Kingdom of Ireland there were two types of nobility: the ancient native Gaelic aristocracy, descended from kings and clan chiefs, and the Anglo-Norman nobles who arrived in the wake of their conquest of Ireland in the 1170s-80s. These soon controlled most of the richest parts of Ireland, but over the centuries became…
Golitsyn Princes: Russian ministers from Peter the Great to Nicholas II
The Russian Empire in all its vastness had many, many princes. Some became fairly well known while others came and went in prominence in Russian history. One of the most enduring—with historical figures from the fifteenth century all the way to the Revolution of 1918, and some interesting characters even after—are the Golitsyns. One was…
Galliera (Part II): The Montpensiers, Orléanist dukes masquerading as Spanish royals
The Duchy of Galliera, as seen in Part I, was created in 1839 for Raphaelle De Ferrari and his wife Maria Brignole-Sale, centred on a tiny village in the Papal States north of Bologna. After the death of the pro-Orléanist Duchess of Galliera in 1888, the Duchy was willed to Antoine d’Orléans, Duke of Montpensier,…
Galliera (Part I): Brignole-Sale and the most amazing palazzi in Genoa
Once upon a time there was a shining city by the sea: Genoa. A fair city built on bustling trade with the eastern Mediterranean, its merchant-oligarchs created a republic in which a select number of leading families shared rule through an elective title of doge, a local variant of the old Roman title dux or…
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