Connecticut western news., 1896-05-14
ROYAL WIDOWS.
One or More In Nearly Every Country In Europe~

One or More In Nearly Every Country In
 Europe
 It is just thought astonishing to reckon the number of royal widows, regnant or uncrowned, now more or less in public view. First of course, comes her majesty, Victoria, empress of h. dia, queen of England. Scotland and Ireland Next to her one must rank her eldest child. Victoria, empress dowager of Prussia, more commonly known as Empress Frederick. Then, in the same family circle, there are the Duchess of Albany, born Princess of Waldeck-Pyr- mont. and widow of the English queens youngest son, and the Princess of Bat tenberg
 Upon the continent there are 0 pair of widowed queens regent-Christine of Spain and Emma of Holland Both have won golden opinions from those they govern. no less than from impartial onlookers Queen Emma is. by the way, sister to the Duchess of Albany, who is said to have been the first choice of the gay old reprobate, King William of Holland She refused him, but her sister threw herself into the breach, in spired doubtless by the knowledge that reigning sovereigns, even though some what battered and the worse for wear, were not likely to come often a-wooing in starveling if princely households So they were married, and there is little queen of Holland to cheat the anticipa- tions of the house of Cumberland.
 But none of the queens or expresses can put out of court Dagmar. sometime of Denmark. now the widowed czarina, Marie Feodorowna It must have gone hard with her. in spite of the splendors the change implied, to give over her Danish name, which means "day dawn, !" for an appellation so cumbrous Feodo- rowna means, by the way, daughter of Theodore, "as does Paulovna "daughter of Paul !" The termination "ovna," or "owna," has in all cases that signifi- canoe in Russian names, just as the suff1x witch" means always ''son of. " Thus Alexandrovitch is "the son of Alexander.
 Austrian royalty has two widows out right, between whom it is hard to say which has the more tragic story. All the world still remembers the tragedy of Meyerling-how the Crown Prince Ru- dolph shot himself and the beautiful Marie Vectsera, leaving his wife, Ste phanie of Belgium, by no means discon- solate, as the pair had been on the point of judicial separation Still the shock and shadow of it all for the time over whelmed her. But she has no continuing sorrow such as has driven to madness Carlotta, once empress of Mexico, who missed seeing her husband, Maximilian, shot only because she had gone to Eu- rope asking help for him, where no help was Yet it is question if, in spite of all, she is not less unhappy than her sis- ter, the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, who has been for long years widowed in all but name.
 Besides Empress Eugenie, widowed, childless, withered shadow of her beau tiful self. France has Duchess of Or leans, whom the Legitimists rank as queen dowager-not to mention the wife of her murdered president. Carnot And there is more than Gallic trace in the youngest of royal widows. the Bonaparte princess, who married her uncle, the Duke d'Aosta, and since his death has set the Italian court wild with her freaks New York Journal