The royal bride who survived an assassination attempt minutes after walking down aisle
A granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg cemented the alliance between Spain and the UK at the start of the last century.
Princess Victoria Eugenie became engaged to King Alfonso in January 1906 (Image: Getty)
The great-grandmother of the current King of Spain had a rather eventful start to her life as a married woman – and it wasn’t due to the difficulties of settling into a different royal institution.
Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg was the only daughter of Princess Beatrice, the youngest child of Queen Victoria, and Prince Henry of Battenberg, then a minor royal house hailing from Germany.
While she was originally expected to marry within her family’s extensive connections in England, Victoria Eugenie – known as Ena by her family – captured the attention of the then-King of Spain Alfonso XIII.
The Spanish sovereign had been a guest of Ena’s uncle, King Edward VII, at Buckingham Palace and was expected to attempt a match with her cousin Princess Patricia of Connaught.
Alfonso, however, quickly shifted his focus on the younger royal and the pair began an intense letter and postcard exchanged which ultimately culminated in an engagement.
Ena and Alfonso had just left the church when an anarchist threw a bomb at them (Image: Getty)
The Spanish and British courts announced the upcoming wedding in the early months of 1906 and set the wedding ceremony for May 31, 1906.
Alfonso and Ena exchanged vows at the Royal Monastery of San Jeronimo in Madrid but the day soon turned into tragedy as they were victims of an assassination attempt immediately after leaving the church.
The couple had been riding a coach back to the Royal Palace when anarchic Mateu Morral threw a bomb disguised as a flower bouquet at them from a nearby balcony.
Ena, by then Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain, miraculously escaped a direct hit as she turned her head at the last moment to look at nearby St. Mary’s Church, which Alfonso had been pointing at before the attack.
The pair was not injured but the new Spanish Queen arrived back at the palace with her wedding dress covered in splatters of blood from a horse who had been riding beside the coach when Morral struck.
Ena’s relationship with Alfonso broke down after their son was diagnosed with haemophila (Image: Getty)
The assassination attempt left 24 people dead between bystanders and soldiers, leaving another 100 injured.
Morral escaped the scene and hid for two days before he was accosted by the police. He murdered one officer and then proceeded to kill himself.
While the couple quickly recovered from the incident, it inaugurated a difficult period for the new Spanish Queen, who found herself isolated at court and struggling to win over public support.
Her situation briefly improved following the birth of her eldest son and heir apparent, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias in May 1907.
But her relationship with her husband the King took a severe hit after the boy was found to have inherited haemophilia – a genetic condition several of Queen Victoria’s heirs suffered from.
Queen Ena’s youngest son, Infante Gonzalo, also inherited the condition and died following a car crash when he was only 19 in 1931.
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Queen Ena briefly visited Spain in 1968 to attend King Felipe VI’s christening (Image: Getty)
Prince Alfonso also died in a car accident five years after renouncing the right to the throne.
End and Alfonso’s second son, Infante Jaime, also followed in his eldest brother’s footsteps and gave up his position in the line of succession because he had become deaf during childhood.
Following the victory of the Republicans in municipal elections in 1931, Queen Ena followed Alfonso XIII in exile first in France and then Italy.
The pair later separated the Ena started splitting her time between the UK and Switzerland.
The former Spanish Queen only returned to Spain once after the fall of the monarchy in 1968, where she attended the christening of her great-grandson, the now-King Felipe VI of Spain.
