A Crown Prince in Portugal: The Courtship of Princesses Margaret and Patricia of Connaught (Part 2)

A journey to the Mediterranean for the Duke and Duchess of Connaught to fulfill military duties provided a chance for their daughters to meet eligible princes

King Edward VII, eager to reinforce ties with allies across an increasingly divided Europe, was keen for his eligible nieces to make glittering diplomatic marriages. But first, the princesses would have to meet their potential suitors. A trip to the Mediterranean in the winter of 1905 offered several chances for Princess Margaret of Connaught and Princess Patricia of Connaught to do just that.

Lisbon’s Praça do Comércio, 2017 (Wikimedia Commons)

The magnificent Praça do Comércio stretched out in the winter sunshine as the Connaught family sailed into the harbor in Lisbon on the morning of January 7, 1905. The orange rooftops, the white columns, and the yellow buildings offered a neat contrast to the bright blue skies. Soon, military officers and government ministers from both Portugal and Britain boarded the ship to extend an official welcome to the 54-year-old Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and his wife and daughters. With piercing blue eyes and an impressive mustache, the disciplined Duke looked every inch the royal representative in his impeccable uniform.

The only surviving brother of King Edward VII, Arthur was treated like a monarch himself by the dignitaries who received the family at each stop on the tour. His wife, the 44-year-old Duchess, was born Princess Luise Margarete of Prussia. She was endowed with a sweet, open face—but also the rigid bearing of a German princess who had been raised in a tense, unhappy home. The Duke and Duchess’s daughters, 22-year-old Princess Margaret and 18-year-old Princess Patricia, were just as pretty but much more relaxed, having been raised in a household more loving and gentle than the one their mother had endured as a child.

The fifth member of the family, 22-year-old Prince Arthur, had stayed back home. “Young Arthur,” as the family called him to distinguish him from his father, had been entrusted with more and more representative duties abroad by his uncle, the King. While the rest of the family was sailing south, Arthur was reflecting on two recent official foreign trips. He had stood proxy for the King at the baptism of Crown Prince Umberto of Italy in Rome in December, and before coming home, he had paid a diplomatic call to Pope Pius X at the Vatican.

A composite picture-postcard image of the Connaught family: Princess Margaret, the Duke of Connaught, Prince Arthur, Princess Patricia, and the Duchess of Connaught (NPG)

After a brief return to England to celebrate Christmas at Osborne with his family, Arthur then headed to Germany, where he represented his uncle at the funeral of Queen Victoria’s late sister-in-law, Princess Alexandrine, the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Arthur was part of a glittering roster of representatives and relatives at the service, including the Emperor of Germany, the Prince of Bulgaria, and Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden. The King was apparently very pleased with his nephew’s professional approach to his royal duties, and as the rest of the Connaughts were arriving in Lisbon, Young Arthur was preparing to go abroad again soon, this time to represent his uncle at the wedding of the Grand Duke of Hesse in Darmstadt.

Increasingly, all three of the Connaught siblings were part of King Edward’s plan to involve the extended members of his family in international diplomacy. As Prince Arthur crisscrossed Europe as his uncle’s envoy, the future prospect of Princess Margaret and Princess Patricia making important political marriages was also in play. Both young women were attractive and good-natured, and both had been brought up watching their parents taking on duties as working members of the royal family. They were accompanying their parents on this particular royal tour as a way to give them the opportunity to meet eligible royal heirs from allied nations. The first of these was 17-year-old Infante Luis Filipe, the Prince Royal of Portugal.