Glamor. Wealth. Becoming a baby-making factory? Royalty comes with a ton of perks,
but it can also mean supplying the next heir — and maybe a few spares — at a ridiculously early age.
Germany no longer has a monarchy, but at one time the country was ruled by royals.
The nation's last empress, Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, was born in 1858.
She married her distant cousin, Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, when she was just 22 years old.
She gave birth to her first son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, the following year at the age of 23.
Empress Augusta had six sons and a daughter,
but none of them took the throne as the monarchy was abolished. Crown Prince
Wilhelm and his father were both forced to sign documents relinquishing their claims to
the crown. They were exiled from the country, although the crown prince returned in 1923.
One of the most famous royals of all time,
Princess Diana had a baby when she was barely out of her teens. Diana had just turned 20
a couple of weeks before marrying Prince Charles, who was 13 years older than her.
Less than a year after their wedding, she gave birth to her first child, Prince William. In a
break from tradition, Prince Charles was in the room during the birth. A couple of years later,
Diana gave birth to Prince Harry, making her the mother of two children by the age of 23.
Diana later revealed that she suffered from postpartum depression,
which led to rumors that the young royal was mentally unstable.
She received little support from the royal family and was quite unhappy as a princess,
but was devoted to her children who were her main source of happiness. As William himself explained:
"She very much wanted to take us away from the
sort of the royal aspect of life, if you like, and get us to see the rawness of real life."
Queen Elizabeth II gave birth to the future king of England when she was only 22 years old.
Britain's longest reigning monarch fell for her future husband,
Prince Philip, when she was just 13.
They became friends and became romantically involved a few years later, marrying in 1947
when Elizabeth was 21. The following year, the young bride gave birth to their first child,
Prince Charles. She went on to have three more children, two boys and a girl.
Motherhood was not the only responsibility the young royal faced. When her father died in 1952,
Elizabeth found herself ruling the country
at the tender age of 25… and wearing a very heavy crown, indeed.
"You can't look down to read the speech, you have to take the speech
up. Because if you did, your neck would break, and it would fall off."
In spite of her youth, or perhaps because of it, Queen Elizabeth II
became a formidable ruler who helped bring Britain's monarchy into the modern age.
Before Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest reigning monarch was Queen Victoria,
who ruled from 1837 to 1901. Like her great-great granddaughter Elizabeth,
Victoria was also a very young mother. She married her first cousin,
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, when they were both 20 years old.
Victoria was already the queen at this point, having ascended to the throne three years earlier.
Victoria's coronation at s uch a young age likely influenced her early marriage. It was an uncle of
Albert and Victoria, Leopold, who suggested that the cousins marry. They had their first child,
of a total of nine, the same year they were married, when Victoria was only 21 years old.
Victoria and Albert's children made strategic marriages with other royal houses,
connecting many of the royal houses of Europe who can trace their descent from Queen Victoria.
Belgium's Queen Paola was born Princess Ruffo di Calabria in Italy, and grew up in Rome.
While Paola was Italian, her grandmother was Belgian. The young princess reconnected
with her Belgian roots in 1959, when she married Prince Albert of Belgium.
She was only 21 years old at the time, and had her first child within a few months,
giving birth to her son Philippe in 1960 when she was 22.
Two years later, the royal had a daughter,
Astrid. The year after that she gave birth to another son, Laurent.
Due to his declining health, Albert II abdicated the throne in 2013. At that time,
the couple's oldest son Philippe ascended to the throne with his wife, Queen Mathilde.
Mary, Queen of Scots was just a few days old when she became queen of Scotland after her
father died in 1542. Although she didn't have her first child until her second marriage,
she was still quite young when she gave birth. When she was 15 she married Francis,
the heir to the French throne. Francis became king the following year, making Mary his consort,
but by 1560 he had died and the 18 year old Mary returned to Scotland.
The young widow married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in 1565. The marriage was an unhappy one,
but brought her a son, James, in 1566. Mary was only 23 when she gave birth to her only child.
Her husband was killed just a few months later, and when Mary remarried shortly afterwards — which
may have been a union forced on her against her will — Scottish nobles then quickly turned on her.
Mary was forced to flee the country, leaving her infant son as the new king of Scotland, and went
to England, seeking refuge with her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. Instead of welcoming Mary, Elizabeth
saw her cousin, a claimant to the English throne, as a threat. She kept Mary imprisoned
for 19 years — during which time she miscarried her husband's twins. She was executed in 1587.
Mary's son went on to inherit the English throne
from Elizabeth and became King James I, ruling over both England and Scotland.
Marie Antoinette's short life was marked by tragedy. In 1770,
when she was only 14 years old, she was married to the French dauphin Louis,
the grandson of the then-king Louis XV. Their marriage was an unhappy one
and was not consummated for several years, which led to worries over the future of the monarchy.
Rivals for the throne took advantage of Marie Antoinette's lack of children and conspired
to take the crown for themselves. This led to scandals which helped contribute to the
political turmoil which would eventually result in her execution during the French Revolution.
Even though she had been married for several years before giving birth, Marie Antoinette was still
a very young mother when she had her first child at the age of 23. Although she had four children,
only her firstborn, Marie Thérèse, lived to adulthood. Marie Thérèse lived her life out in
exile after her parents were executed during the revolution and her other siblings had passed away.
Queen Victoria's youngest granddaughter, Princess Victoria Eugenie Julia Ena of Battenberg,
followed in her grandmother's footsteps and had children early. The princess was born in
1887 in Scotland. She was only 17 when she met the 19 year old king of Spain, Alfonso XIII.
The king was instantly smitten, and fought to marry the princess in spite of worries
from his advisors that Victoria Eugenie was a carrier for hemophilia. He eventually won,
and the two became engaged. In order to marry, the Protestant Victoria
Eugenie had to convert to Catholicism and relinquish her claim to the British throne.
Victoria Eugenie and Alfonso had seven children together. The oldest, Alfonso,
was born in 1907, the year after the couple married. Victoria Eugenie was only 19 years old,
and her eldest son would have a tragic fate: Alfonso died in a car crash when he was 31.
He most likely would have survived his injuries, but he had hemophilia just as
his father's advisors had feared. This caused complications, which led to his early death.
The famous Egyptian queen Cleopatra was married at a young age,
but it probably wasn't her husband who made her a young mother. As was the
custom among Egyptian royals, Cleopatra most likely married her younger brother
Ptolemy XIII after their father's death, and they ruled the country together.
When her brother raised an army against her, Cleopatra turned to Rome for support.
She and Roman general Julius Caesar had an affair, and he provided assistance in
her battle against her brother. Ptolemy XIII drowned in the Nile while attempting to flee
the Roman troops. Cleopatra then married his successor, her brother Ptolemy XIV.
Cleopatra's exact date of birth is uncertain, but she was around 22 when she gave birth to her son,
Ptolemy Caesar. It is commonly thought that his father was Cleopatra's lover,
Julius Caesar, although this has not been definitively proven. While skeptics remain,
Caesar himself acknowledged Cleopatra's child as his own.
"When I was very young, I could say to myself that this was how love was… and how it would be."
The name Alexandra Feodorovna may not ring a bell, but you've likely heard of this ill-fated monarch.
The daughter of Grand Duke Louis IV of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and his wife, Princess Alice of the
United Kingdom, Alexandra, was born on June 6, 1872. A granddaughter of Queen Victoria,
the young royal married Grand Duke Nicholas Romanov on November 26, 1894.
Her oldest child, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, was born almost one year later, on November 15,
1895, when Alexandra was 23. Her husband was crowned Tsar Nicholas the following
year but was forced to abdicate in 1917, and Alexandra would bear four daughters before
giving birth to a son. The couple and their five children were executed the following year.
Rumors persisted for years that their youngest daughter, Anastasia, survived,
with several women even claiming that they were the long-lost Russian royal.
However, DNA testing later proved that the entire family was killed.