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CastleView: Lucy Worsley's Empire of the Tsars
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Photo: BBC 4
So, I was sick the other weekend* and I watched some documentaries and I found "Lucy Worsley's Empire of the Tsars" by BBC. I only know little about Romanov history, or rather some parts of it, but am in now way anywhere near to knowledgable, so the three one-hour parts of the documentary gave a nice overview.
Reinventing Russia
Age of Extremes
Road to Revolution
*Yep, I pretty much only get sick during the weekends, not the weeks - I'm every employer's dream.
What it's about: Schloss Marienburg On Thursday and Saturday, Hereditary Prince Ernst-August of Hanover will first civilly and then religiously marry his long-time girlfriend Ekaterina Malysheva in, you guessed it, Hanover. Local, national and even international media have been covering the lead-up to the wedding, with a very special article popping up over the weekend: Handelsblatt writes that the groom's father, the even more (in)famous Prince Ernst-August of Hanover, has set his son an ultimatum for Friday of this week to give back several family possessions he received in 2004. Otherwise Ernst-August (the father) will, in his capacity as head of the House of Guelph, deny his son consent to his marriage. So, what happened? It has long been an open secret that the relationship between the two Ernst-Augusts is quite rocky to non-existent. Many have speculated that Ernst-August Senior will actually not be among the guests for Ernst-August Junior's wedding. Back w...
If you searched for a list of Germany's top ten most famous or beautiful castles, it would be a pretty save bet to assume to find the Würzburger Residenz on said list. In fact it was one of the places on my royal bucket list I published about one and a half years ago. While I did manage to cross it off the list since, I can't say it was an unequivocally wonderful experience. Don't get me wrong, the Residence Palace in Würzburg is a beautiful place but my visit once more proved that the most famous castles usually do not make for the best viewing experiences. But first, the history: Before the construction of the Residenz , the Prince-Bishops of Würzburg resided in the Festung Marienberg - which we will also cover someday on Castleholic - on a hill west of the Main river until the early 18th century. It was Count Johann Philipp Franz of Schönborn (1719–24) who moved the court from the fortress to a palace erected at the very beginning of the 18th century, the pre...
Schloss Berleburg , the main residence of the Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg family ...at least here on Confessions of a Castleholic , I'm sure it has been more rounds for the family. Just the other week I said over on Twitter that deposed royal families without their family disputes would only be half the fun - and one of the most intriguing family disputes within the German nobility has reared is ugly head again as of late: The inheritance dispute within the Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg family. It is based on a will that was drawn up during the days of the Third Reich and includes some, well, racist, to say the least, stipulations. Yours truly still has a hard time to understand that someone would actually try to enforce those... Then again, there is an estate said to be worth about a half of a billion euros up for grabs - and that's probably where most friendships (or cordial family relations) end. (To catch up: What is this will? What is the dispute about? ) To ...