Denmark, the first “royal baby” child of a surrogacy – time.news

2023-04-21 13:10:22

Of Irene Soave

Prince Gustav and his wife Carina, 54 each, took 20 years to get married. Now the announcement – not yet official – of the arrival of their first child (and the debates on the lines of succession)

He is a nephew of Margaret, Queen of Denmark; she an American children’s writer, of mixed Swedish and Mexican blood. They have been in love for twenty years and had to wait 19 to get married last year, after the court dissolved a series of vetoes imposed by his German – and Nazi – grandfather, who had forbidden the inheritance of his descendants who did not marry women “of the purest Aryan race”. Now, aged 54 each, Prince Gustav Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg and his wife Princess Carina Axelsson are expecting their first child, a boy, with the help of a surrogate mother. A first for a royal family. The question is, what will happen to the line of succession? Not much is clear, except that apart from questions of principle, the succession will not be upset: the father, Gustav, is just twelfth.

The announcement is not yet official, but has already been given to the staff of the castle of Berleburg, in Germany, where the couple resides: everything must be ready by May, when the baby is expected. From the staff to the usual sites and Instagram accounts of well-informed people – such as the well-known Couture and Royals, which first broke the news – the step was short, and now the news is in the public domain – with the royal family not confirming it , but it doesn’t even deny it. A press release from Berleburg Castle, which some read as being in the name of the couple and which instead places the baby’s arrival “in the summer”, says that “Princess Carina and Prince Gustav are very happy and grateful for this opportunity and thank all those who helped find a legal path to follow».

Princes Gustav and Carina come from two decades of pure chaos. Gustav’s grandfather, the 5th Prince Gustav Albrecht of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg who later died in 1944 on a military campaign in Belarus, was a senior German army officer and a staunch Nazi. Before the war he had written in his will that any of his descendants who married a woman without Protestant, noble or Aryan ancestry could never inherit a penny. His son Richard, father of Gustav, was able to obey: his wife, Princess Benedikte of Denmark, was “in order”. Seventh Prince Gustav, however, didn’t.

In 2000 everything seemed ready: Gustav was supposed to marry the French aristocrat Elvire Pasté de Rochefort. But the royal wedding was canceled two months from the established date due to a financial crisis that threw her family into disgrace. Already in 2003, Gustav was infatuated with Carina, a model known in Paris and author of children’s books — hers is the “Model Under Cover” series of moderate success in the United Kingdom — who began to appear more and more often at Schloss Berleburg and to wear jewels donated by him. But as a concubine: if he married her, Gustav would lose all her fortune. In 2017 his father dies, and the court wars begin: only in 2020 does the judge establish that Gustav, and not his great-uncle Ludwig-Ferdinand who challenged his Nazi grandfather’s will against him, must inherit everything. Immediately the wedding with Carina, and now the arrival of the surrogate «royal baby».

Now other doubts about the succession: how will the boy be positioned among the heirs to the throne of Denmark? Gustav is the son of Princess Benedikte, sister of Queen Margrethe of Denmark and former Queen of Greece Anne-Marie (mother of Pavlos of Greece). But the question remains open, as does the debate on gestation for others in the two countries involved: in Denmark it is possible, in Germany where Gustav’s family comes from, it is not. The new «royal baby», however it goes, is already a revolutionary.

April 21, 2023 (change April 21, 2023 | 1:25 pm)

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