NEWS OF THE WEEK.
IT is officially announced that the Princess Marie, eldest
is of the Duke of Edinburgh, is betrothed to Prince Ferdinand of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen, statutory heir to the throne of Roumania. The Prince is a Catholic, and the marriage bars the very distant claim of the Princess to the British throne, but is, of course, otherwise governed by the custom, not of England, but of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The „group of families allied by close kinship or marriage with the reigning family of this country now includes, therefore, Germany, Russia, Denmark, Saxe-Coburg, Hesse, Greece, Belgium, Roumania, and Portugal, nine thrones, or, with Great Britain, ten, of which three are of the highest class. The result is an evidently increased intimacy among the per- sonages belonging to that section of the Royal caste, but it -will probably have little influence on politics. One House, the Bourbon, for a time directed its policy by family considera- tions; but during this century, Royal cousins have shown much capacity for hating and fighting each other. They re- tain, however, the caste feeling very strongly, and so far as we remember, no one in close succession to a throne has stepped outside its boundary for a bride. The apparent exception, the second son of the King of Sweden, is fifth from the succession, and has renounced all claims to be considered Royal. The Roumanian Prince is, we believe, exceptionally rich, or, at all events, his father was credited with the possession of nearly twenty millions.
