I was on vacation last week, immersed in wedding plans for my niece, who is now, after a beautiful wedding, Johnna Mathews Mendenall. So I have marriage on my mind and thought I’d share something fun.

As you may know, royal families have historically married into other royal families or even within their own. This is both to keep the bloodlines pure (and royal) and often to form political alliances. That doesn’t necessarily mean that there was no true affection or love in these marriages, but love certainly wasn’t the main motivation.

There was another type of marriage for royals. A morganatic marriage is when someone of higher rank marries someone of lower rank, but the children of that union will have no claim to any of the titles or entailed property of their higher ranking parent. The marriage is legal and the children are legitimate. The rules governing these marriages vary by country and by monarch. The monarch could often alter the rules on a whim.

A morganatic marriage doesn’t necessarily mean that there is true affection or love, but it certainly seems more likely. I’ll share one story of a morganatic marriage and you can decide if you think it’s all about love.

Ferdinand VII (1784-1833), King of Spain, had been widowed three times and had no living children. Remember what I said before about bloodlines? Well, one of his wives was his first cousin and another was his niece. {shudder} At this point he was fairly desperate for an heir and married for the fourth time in 1829, this time to another of his nieces.

María Cristina de Borbón-Dos Sicilias by Vicente López y Portaña (1772-1850), painted 1830, currently in the Prado Museum. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

María Cristina de Borbón-Dos Sicilias by Vicente López y Portaña (1772-1850), painted 1830, currently in the Prado Museum. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

His fourth wife was Maria Christina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (1806-1878). When he died in 1833, Maria Christina had given birth to two daughters. Before his death he had changed the law so that a daughter could assume the throne, assuring the continuation of his line. Yes, Kings could do things like that.

Because their first daughter, Isabella was only three years old at the time of her father’s death, her mother became the Regent. Three months after his death, Maria Christina secretly married Augustin Fernandez Munoz (1808-1873), a former sergeant in the royal guard. A common soldier is most definitely lower in rank than a woman who was the current Regent and former Queen Consort.

It’s not clear how secret this morganatic marriage really was. Before it became public knowledge in 1840, and she was replaced as the Regent, Maria Christina and her husband had already had four or five of their eight children. I’m not sure how you keep four or five pregnancies and births a secret, but who’s going to question her?

María Cristina of Bourbon by Valentín Carderera in 1831, currently in the Museum of Romanticism (Madrid). Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

María Cristina of Bourbon by Valentín Carderera in 1831, currently in the Museum of Romanticism (Madrid). Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

When her marriage to a common soldier became generally known, Maria Christina became very unpopular and was exiled to France. Her daughter officially became Queen Isabella II in 1844 and conferred the title of Duke of Riansares on her stepfather. She also publicly gave her consent to the marriage. Yes, Queens could do things like that.

Maria Christina and Munoz were together for forty years, until his death in 1873.