Thyra, Crown Princess of Hanover

Princess Thyra of Denmark (Thyra Amalie Caroline Charlotte Anna; 29 September 1853 – 26 February 1933) was the youngest daughter and fifth child of Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Kassel. In 1878, she married Ernest Augustus, the exiled heir to the Kingdom of Hanover. As the Kingdom of Hanover had been annexed by Prussia in 1866, she spent most of her life in exile with her husband in Austria.

Thyra was the sister of King Frederik VIII of Denmark, Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom, King George I of Greece, Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia and Prince Valdemar of Denmark.

Birth and family

Thyra was born on 29 September 1853 at the Yellow Palace, an 18th-century town house at 18 Amaliegade, immediately adjacent to the Amalienborg Palace complex in Copenhagen. She was the third daughter and fifth child of Prince Christian and Princess Louise of Denmark. As a child, she shared a bedroom with her elder sisters, Alexandra and Dagmar, and was taught how to sew and knit her own clothes and socks. Her family had been relatively obscure but happy until her father, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was chosen with the consent of the great powers to succeed his childless distant cousin, Frederick VII, to the Danish throne. Just two months before Thyra's birth, the new Act of Succession had been passed and Prince Christian was given the title of Prince of Denmark.

Early life

In 1863, when Thyra was 10 years old, King Frederick VII died, and her father succeeded to the throne of Denmark as King Christian IX. Earlier the same year, her brother Vilhelm had been elected King of Greece, and her sister Alexandra had married Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. In 1866, her other sister Dagmar married the Tsarevich of Russia, Alexander. Princess Thyra was confirmed on 27 May 1870 by the Bishop of Zealand, Hans Lassen Martensen, in the chapel of Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen.

In 1871, at 18 years of age, Thyra had an affair with Vilhelm Frimann Marcher, a lieutenant in the cavalry, which resulted in a pregnancy. To avoid scandal, Thyra fled to Greece to be with her brother, George I of Greece. When her father Christian IX learned that Thyra was "unwell", from the Greek media, he rushed to Greece to be with her. When Thyra gave birth in Athens, the baby was immediately given up for adoption. The Danish press was told Thyra had been taken ill with jaundice. Ernest Augustus had been born as a Crown Prince of Hanover, but in 1866 his father had been deprived of his throne, when the Kingdom of Hanover was annexed by Prussia after siding with Austria in the Austro-Prussian War. Ernest Augustus had Cumberland Castle in Gmunden, Austria, built in 1882 as exile seat. Despite this, Thyra wrote that she believed Ernest Augustus would one day ascend the Hanoverian throne. It was a loss from which Thyra never fully recovered. As the accident happened in Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II organised a guard of honour, and Thyra and Ernest Augustus sent their youngest son, also called Ernest Augustus, to Berlin to represent them, and to thank the Kaiser in response to his gesture. Whilst in Berlin, Ernest Augustus fell in love with the Kaiser's only daughter, Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia. A wedding was arranged and on the 24 May 1913 they were married, the wedding formally ended the decades-long rift between the House of Hanover and House of Hohenzollern.

Under the Titles Deprivation Act 1917, the British government deprived Ernest Augustus of his British peerage as Duke of Cumberland after he served in the German Army during the First World War, a decision that also removed Thyra from her status as Duchess of Cumberland, prompting her to remark that "England has destroyed my Duke and accuses him of treason." In her later years, Thyra moved out of Schloss Cumberland, and into a smaller residence close by.

Ernest Augustus died of a stroke on 14 November 1923. Thyra survived him by nine years and died in Gmunden, Upper Austria, on 26 February 1933.

Issue

The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland and Teviotdale had six children:

Ancestry