Prince and Princess Michael of Kent are expected to retire from public duties soon. Although no official announcement has yet been made, it is believed that Queen Elizabeth II’s first cousin and his wife will take the next step as he turns 80 on July 4. It comes months after he was criticized for having business dealings with the Kremlin following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
After the criticism, the 79-year-old British prince, who speaks fluent Russian and is linked to Tsar Nicholas II, resigned as patron of the Russian-British Chamber of Commerce. He also gave up an award from the Order of Friendship, one of Russia’s highest honours. But it has been said that he is still an ambassador and a shareholder in the money transfer company RemitRadar, which is headed by former KGB officer Sergey Markov.
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According to the Royal Family website, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent are ‘out of work’ royals, but they ‘undertake a range of public duties including representing the Queen at certain engagements’ . They would be married for more than 40 years. The website says the prince ‘undertakes an average of over 200 public work assignments for the non-profit sector, funded by his own family’, before adding: ‘Princess Michael is also actively involved in around 45 organisations. different charities and organizations, including animal and wildlife trusts and health and welfare charities.
Inside Prince Michael of Kent and Marie-Christine’s royal relationship
Prince Michael married Baroness Marie-Christine von Reibnitz, daughter of Silesian nobleman Baron Gunther von Reibnitz and his Austro-Hungarian wife, Countess Maria Szapáry of Muraszombath, in 1978. After her marriage, she became Her Royal Highness the Princess Michael of Kent. Apparently, the 77-year-old princess did not use her birth name as “Anglo-Saxon tradition dictates that a woman on marriage takes her husband’s name”, according to Royal Central.
“The same principle happens with women who marry into the royal family – they adopt the female variant of their husband’s title. However, what makes Princess Michael’s title unique in The Royal Family is that she is currently the only woman married to a prince who is not a peer of the realm. If Prince Andrew had not been conferred as Duke of York at his wedding, Sarah Ferguson would have been officially named HRH Princess Andrew at her wedding,” the Royal Central report said.
However, the marriage of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent was not easy as Marie Christine von Reibnitz was Roman Catholic and divorced at the time. The union also cost the prince his right of succession since “the Bill of Rights (1689) and the Act of Settlement (1701) excluded those who married Roman Catholics from succession”, as mentioned on his official website . But the site adds that “this provision has been repealed by the Succession to the Crown Act (2013) and the Prince’s place in the Succession has been restored”.
It has been reported that the prince proposed to his bride-to-be by gifting a two-stone sapphire and diamond ring, which was created using gemstones from his late mother, Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. They exchanged vows in a civil ceremony at Vienna’s Rathaus (Town Hall) in Austria, which was attended by his siblings – the Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra, as well as Princess Anne and Lord Louis Mountbatten .
In June 1983, the newlyweds were blessed for their marriage in a Roman Catholic ceremony at the Archbishop of London. They later became parents to a son and a daughter – Lord Frederick Windsor, 43, and Lady Gabriella Windsor, 41. Both are members of the Church of England and also in the line of succession.
But like many royal weddings, the wedding of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent was also reportedly not free of infidelity rumors. According to royal expert Phil Dampier, who said in the documentary ‘Princess Michael: The Controversial Royal’, “Both Prince and Princess Michael have had romantic relationships with other people. Some other people have been married, some don’t.”
“She was related to Texas oil tycoon John Ward Hunt. It was suggested that he wanted to marry her at some point. They met in Dallas at a business conference, and they were seen together, and she denied there was an affair, but she was once photographed walking out of her house in a red wig with dark glasses obviously trying to dress up in the 1980s. Very significantly in 2006, she was seen in Venice looking very happy in the company of Russian furniture tycoon Mikhail Kravchenko were pictured together joking, laughing, holding hands, even kissing and floating around Venice on a gondola “, explained Dampier.
The expert also spilled beans on the prince, saying: “Prince Michael, likewise, has been linked to a number of girlfriends. Bryony Brind, who was a ballet dancer, had a long-standing relationship with him and finally gave he said she did not want to jeopardize her marriage. He was also linked to an American, Lucy Weather, and she later gave interviews about their eight-year relationship. He was very involved in their sex life and liked that she dressed in white lingerie and went into many intimate details which probably caused the queen to ‘spit on her breakfast’.”
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