Maud of Wales
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Princess Maud of Wales (Maud Charlotte Mary Victoria) (
26 November 1869 –
20 November 1938) later
Queen Maud of Norway was a member of the
British Royal Family, a granddaughter of
Queen Victoria, and later
Queen consort of Norway, as the wife of
King Haakon VII of Norway. She was the first queen consort of
Norway since
1319 who was not also queen consort of
Denmark or
Sweden.
Born as
Princess Maud of Wales at
Marlborough House,
London as the daughter of
The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), the eldest son of
Queen Victoria and heir apparent to the British throne. Her mother was the then Princess of Wales,
Princess Alexandra of Denmark.
Princess Maud was christened at Marlborough House by
John Jackson,
Bishop of London, on
24 December 1869. Her godparents were the
King of Sweden and Norway;
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany;
the Landgrave of Hesse;
Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg;
Adelaide, the Duchess of Nassau;
Marie, the Princess of Leiningen;
Grand Duchess Marie Feodorovna (later empress);
Crown Princess Louise of Denmark; and
Cecilia, the Duchess of Inverness.
She was a high-spirited child, a quality that earned her the nickname Harry. Princess Maud of Wales took part in almost all the annual visits to the Princess of Wales's family in Denmark and later accompanied her mother and her sisters on cruises to Norway and the Mediterranean. She, along with her sisters
Princess Victoria and
Princess Louise, received the Imperial Order of the Crown of India from Queen Victoria on 6 August 1887. Like her sisters, Princess Maud also held the First Class of the Royal Order of Victoria and Albert and a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.
On
22 July 1896, Princess Maud married her first cousin,
Prince Carl of Denmark, in the private chapel at
Buckingham Palace. Prince Carl was the second son of
Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark, Queen Alexandra's elder brother, and Princess
Louise of Sweden. The bride's father, the Prince of Wales, gave her Appleton House on the Sandringham Estate, as a country residence for her frequent visits to England. It was there that the couple's only child,
Prince Alexander, was born on
July 2,
1903.
Prince Carl was an officer in the Danish navy and he and his family lived mainly in Denmark until 1905. In June of that year, the Norwegian parliament,
Storting, dissolved Norway's one hundred year-old union with Sweden and voted to offer the throne to Prince Carl. Following a plebiscite in November, Prince Carl accepted the Norwegian throne, taking the name of Haakon VII, while his young son took the name of Olav. King Haakon and Queen Maud were crowned at the
Nidaros Cathedral in
Trondheim on
June 22,
1906, the last
coronation of a Scandinavian monarch.
 |
The coronation of Haakon VII and Queen Maud |
Queen Maud never lost her love of Britain, but she quickly adapted to her new country and duties as a
queen consort. She supported charitable causes, particularly those associated with children and animals, and gave encouragement to musicians and artists. She learned to
ski and arranged for an English garden at Kongsseteren, the Royal lodge overlooking the nation's capital
Oslo. Queen Maud's last public appearance in Britain was the coronation of her nephew,
King George VI, in May
1937. She sat in the royal box at
Westminster Abbey next to her sister-in-law
Queen Mary and her niece
the Princess Royal, Countess of Harewood.
Maud died of heart failure in London on November 20, 1938, only weeks before her 69th birthday, three days after an operation. Her body was returned to Norway on board the
HMS Royal Oak, the flagship of Second Battle Squadron of the
Royal Navy's Home Fleet. Queen Maud was buried in the royal mausoleum at the
Castle of Akershus.
Titles
*
1869-1896:
Her Royal Highness Princess Maud of Wales
*
1896-1905:
Her Royal Highness Princess Maud of Denmark
*
1905-1938:
Her Majesty Queen Maud of Norway
Queen Maud Land and
Queen Maud Mountains in
Antarctica, and
Queen Maud Secondary School are named after her.
