“For me, it was a big no-no… I just didn’t think that I could fall in love with a Crown Prince,” Maria Teresa, HRH Grand Duchess of Luxembourg tells me over a Zoom call from her private office.
“In the back of my mind, I was thinking to myself that this could be a very problematic situation, so it wasn’t something I was expecting or hoping for. It just fell on me,” she said.
HRH was referencing her first encounter with her now-husband, Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. The Grand Duke — whose title is equivalent to king — was heir to the throne when the couple were first introduced by their parents in the late 1970s.
Unlike most royal consorts in Europe at the time, the Grand Duchess didn’t come from a royal background. She was born in Havana, Cuba to parents José Antonio Mestre and Maria Teresa Batista-Falla de Mestre in 1956, and the family moved to New York in 1960, according to the Grand Ducal website.
She grew up with a passion for humanitarian work, which led her to pursue a degree in political sciences in 1980. The following year, she married the Grand Duke, and her life became dedicated to supporting the Luxembourg monarchy through royal and charitable engagements.
Luxembourg is one of 12 monarchies still active in Europe today, World Population Review reports, and it is the only Grand Duchy — a country headed by a Grand Duke or Duchess — according to Maria Teresa.
HRH uses her title, which she says is equivalent to Queen consort, in supporting a number of charities, particularly women’s rights organizations. She is currently focused on supporting victims of rape and sexual abuse.
“I’m in such a privileged position, that if I don’t take up the most difficult causes, I wonder who is going to give them visibility?” the Grand Duchess said.
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She also represents Luxembourg on overseas visits. She has traveled to the UK on a number of occasions, and said she plans to return for Prince Philip’s memorial service on March 29.
“The Queen is an extraordinary person who I admire deeply,” she tells me. “We’re all cousins, you know that? There is a great fraternity between us.”
HRH said she feels particularly “protective” of the Duchess of Cambridge, who she described as “absolutely charming, mature, and very natural.” She said these traits are admirable in someone who faces the “tremendous pressure” of public life.
“And remember, I was one of the first ones to marry into a royal family without being born into a royal family. Before me, there was Queen Sonja of Norway and Queen Silvia of Sweden, and then my husband and I,” she said.
“And so, I’m protective of this young generation and I think that we three were the first ones to open the doors to them to be able to make these choices,” the Grand Duchess added.
Queen Sonja was considered a “commoner” before she married Norway’s King Harald in 1968, according to Royal Central. The publication reports that she gained the approval of the monarch at the time, King Olav, after Harald vowed to never marry if he could not marry Sonja.
The couple’s daughter, Princess Märtha Louise, previously told Insider that her mother “wasn’t even accepted in the building” when she first arrived at the royal household. According to Märtha Louise, palace officials wouldn’t allow Sonja to have an office, and they questioned her request to have her own staff.
Queen Silvia married King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in 1976 after meeting at the 1972 Munich Olympics, where she was working at the time, Royal Central reports. The king waited to propose to Silvia until his accession to the throne so that he wouldn’t have to seek approval to marry a non-royal, according to another report by the same publication.
It’s now common for non-royals to be accepted into royal families in Europe. Middleton met Prince William in 2001 at university in Scotland. The future duchess accompanied William to a number of royal family events before the pair tied the knot in 2011. And former actress Meghan Markle, who met Prince Harry through a mutual friend in 2016, moved to the UK to be with him shortly before their wedding in 2018.
“It’s true that it’s a very privileged life,” the Grand Duchess tells me. “But it is also a life of sacrifice and a life of service and maybe one doesn’t always know how much that is true.”
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