Princess Thyra of Denmark

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Princess Thyra
Crown Princess of Hanover Duchess of Cumberland and Teviotdale
Born	(1853-09-29)29 September 1853 Yellow Palace, Copenhagen, Denmark
Died	26 February 1933(1933-02-26) (aged 79) Gmunden, Austria
Burial	7 March 1933 Gmunden, Austria
Spouse	Ernest Augustus, Crown Prince of Hanover ​ ​ (m. 1878; died 1923)​
Issue	Marie Louise, Margravine of Baden George William, Hereditary Prince of Hanover Alexandra, Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin Princess Olga Prince Christian Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick and Prince of Hanover
Names Thyra Amalie Caroline Charlotte Anna
House	Glücksburg
Father	Christian IX of Denmark
Mother	Louise of Hesse-Kassel

Princess Thyra of Denmark, Danish pronunciation: [ˈtsʰyːʁɑ], (29 September 1853 – 26 February 1933) was the youngest daughter and fifth child of Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Kassel. In 1878, she married Ernest Augustus, the exiled heir to the Kingdom of Hanover. As the Kingdom of Hanover had been annexed by Prussia in 1866, she spent most of her life in exile with her husband in Austria.

Thyra was the sister of King Frederik VIII of Denmark, Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom, King George I of Greece, Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia and Prince Valdemar of Denmark.

Birth and family[]

King Christian IX of Denmark with his wife and their six children in 1862. Left to right: Dagmar, Frederick, Valdemar, Queen Louise, King Christian IX, Thyra, George and Alexandra.

Princess Thyra Amelie Caroline Charlotte Anne was born on 29 September 1853 at the Yellow Palace, an 18th-century town house at 18 Amaliegade, immediately adjacent to the Amalienborg Palace complex in Copenhagen.^[1] She was the third daughter and fifth child of Prince Christian and Princess Louise of Denmark. As a child, she shared a bedroom with her elder sisters, Alexandra and Dagmar, and was taught how to sew and knit her own clothes and socks. Her family had been relatively obscure but happy until her father, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was chosen with the consent of the great powers to succeed his childless distant cousin, Frederick VII, to the Danish throne. Just two months before Thyra's birth, the new Act of Succession had been passed and Prince Christian given the title of Prince of Denmark.

Early life[]

Princess Thyra of Denmark (right) with her sister-in-law Louise of Sweden.

In 1863, when Thyra was 10 years old, King Frederick VII died, and her father succeeded to the throne of Denmark as King Christian IX. Earlier the same year, her brother Vilhelm had been elected King of Greece, and her sister Alexandra had married Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. In 1866, her other sister Dagmar married the Tsarevich of Russia, Alexander.

Thyra was an attractive and gentle young woman, with dark hair and dark blue eyes, and Queen Louise wanted her youngest daughter to make a good marriage as her elder daughters had. Thyra's first suitor was King Willem III of the Netherlands, but as he was thirty-six years older than she was, she rejected him.

In her youth, Thyra had fallen in love with Vilhelm Frimann Marcher, a lieutenant in the cavalry, which resulted in a pregnancy.^[2] Her brother George I of Greece suggested that she have the baby in Athens to avoid scandal; the Danish press was told Thyra had been taken ill with jaundice.^[2]

Marriage[]

The Duchess of Cumberland with her daughter, Princess Olga.

On 21 December/22 December 1878, she married Crown Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover, 3rd Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, at the chapel of Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen. Ernst Augustus was the eldest child and only son of King George V of Hanover and his wife, Princess Marie of Saxe-Altenburg.^{[citation needed]}

Ernest Augustus had been born as a Crown Prince of Hanover, but in 1866 his father had been deprived of his throne, when the Kingdom of Hanover was annexed by Prussia after siding with Austria in the Austro-Prussian War.^{[citation needed]}

Later life[]

Her husband died on 14 November 1923. Thyra survived him by ten years and died in Gmunden, Upper Austria, on 26 February 1933.^{[citation needed]}

Issue[]

The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland with their children

The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland had six children:

Ancestry[]

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Princess Thyra of Denmark.

• Princess Thyra at the website of the at Amalienborg Palace