HRH The Prince of Asturias and Miss Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano
May 22, 2004

Only a week after Crown Prince Frederik married Mary Donaldson in Denmark, Prince Felipe of Spain tied the knot with journalist Letizia Ortiz in Madrid.  Theirs was the first wedding of a member of the Spanish royal family to take place in Madrid since the wedding of King Alfonso XIII and Princess Ena of Battenberg in 1906.  That wedding was marred by an assassination attempt on the royal couple and the tragic deaths of several bystanders -- this one, thankfully, went more smoothly, although it was a cloudy, rainy day in the Spanish capital.

There were a few controversies, however, about Felipe's choice of bride.  Letizia, a journalist who covered the September 11th attacks in New York and the Iraq War, will be the first commoner to be queen of Spain.  She also had previously been briefly married and divorced.  However, because her first wedding was a civil rather than religious one, the Catholic Church did not recognize it, and she was free to marry Felipe.

Felipe and Letizia have become quite a working team since their wedding, frequently appearing together on royal engagements.  They have also had two daughters, Infanta Leonor (born in 2005) and Infanta Sofia (born in 2007).  Leonor is expected to become queen of Spain in her own right one day -- that is, if her parents don't provide her with a baby brother!

Wedding Hatters

Get excited, kids, it's a new hatter for the blog!  Remember our discussions about the big mess that is the Bourbon-Two Sicilies royal fam back during the Danish wedding flashbacks?  Well, meet the wife of the other claimant to the headship of the house: this is HRH The Duchess of Calabria (yep, the other one! -- though, since the death of her father-in-law, Camilla of Bourbon-Two Sicilies uses the title of "Duchess of Castro," which at least helps untangle things a little).

Anne, who married Infante Carlos, Duke of Calabria in 1965, but she was born a princess in her own right.  She's the daughter of the late Henri, Count of Paris, the Orléanist pretender to the French throne (Anne's brother Henri now holds that title).  So, just to put things in perspective, if the French had a monarchy, she would have been a princess of France, and if the Italians hadn't unified back in the 1800s, she'd (maybe) be the queen of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.  That's a heck of a lot of ifs in royal terms, but there you go!

Anne and Carlos attended this wedding, and not the "other" Charles and Camilla, because King Juan Carlos of Spain (who just happens to be cousin of Carlos's) recognizes the Calabrias as the rightful heirs to the B2S house.  Coincidentally, the Calabrias met for the first time at the 1964 wedding of Juan Carlos and Princess Sophia of Greece.  What a small royal world!

Anyway, not to make it an afterthought here -- the hat!  I think it's a little too wispy and frou-frou for a mature royal lady.  Frothy fascinators just say "young" to me, don't you agree?