Friday, 11 January 2013

Queen Natalie of Serbia

HM NATALIJA OBRENOVIC b. 1859, Florence as Natalia Keshko

This is Queen Natalija and Elizabeth became friends with her.  She married King Milan Obernovic IV of Serbia in 1875 and they had a son called Alexander.  She was the Moldovian/Russian Duchess of Serbia 1875-1882 and the Queen of Serbia 1882-1889. The King and Queen divorced in 1888 and then in 1889, her former husband abdicated and she became regent for her son.  Alex married a lady-in-waiting Draga and the Queen was finally banished by her son for opposing the match.  But King Alex & Draga were killed in a military coup in 1903 and Natalija became the sole heiress to the Obrenovic dynasty. She coverted to Catholicism and spent her remaining years as a nun in exile.  She died in 1941 in St. Daniel in France and her unpublished memoirs are kept at the Vatican.
King Milan had devoted great energy in his early reign to the improvement of communications and development of natural resources and this is when Rossall worked for him - I heard tell there was a bridge named Papineau - not the Canadian one but in Serbia.

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