Coat of arms of Alexander Mountbatten. He used a coronet of a child of a daughter of a Sovereign above the shield rather than a marquess's coronet.[1]
Alexander Albert Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Carisbrooke (born Prince Alexander Albert of Battenberg; 23 November 1886 – 23 February 1960) was a British Royal Navy officer, a member of the Hessian princely Battenberg family and the last surviving grandson of Queen Victoria.
Prince Henry of Battenberg was the product of a morganatic marriage and took his style of Prince of Battenberg from his mother, Julia von Hauke, who was created Princess of Battenberg in her own right. At his birth, Alexander was styled His Serene Highness Prince Alexander of Battenberg because the child of a morganatic marriage is ineligible for "Grand-Ducal Highness" status. However, three weeks after his birth, on 13 December 1886, he was styled His Highness under a Royal Warrant passed by his grandmother Queen Victoria.[3]
Prince Alexander passed a qualifying examination to become service cadet in the Royal Navy in March 1902,[5] and subsequently joined the cadet training ship HMS Britannia at Dartmouth on 8 May 1902.[6] He served in the Royal Navy from 1902 to 1908[2] and in 1910, became one of the earliest members of The Castaways' Club, an exclusive dining club for Naval officers who resigned while still junior but who wished to keep in touch with their former service. Several of his Mountbatten cousins were also subsequently members, including his first cousins once removed the Marquess of Milford Haven and Duke of Edinburgh. On 11 July 1908, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Hessian Merit Order of Philip the Magnanimous.[7]
In 1909, he joined the British Army, being appointed Second Lieutenant (on probation) in the Grenadier Guards on 4 August 1909.[8] He was confirmed in the rank on 22 November 1911,[9] and was promoted to Lieutenant on 15 August 1913.[10] He was seconded to the staff to act as an extra aide-de-camp on 10 April 1915[11][12] and promoted to captain the same year.
On 1 June 1917, he was authorised to wear the insignia of the Russian Order of St Vladimir, fourth class with Swords, awarded "for distinguished service to the Allied cause."[13] He resigned his commission on 19 June 1919[14] and was placed on the General Reserve of Officers, ranking as a Captain with seniority of 15 July 1915.[15] He held several other foreign orders and decorations: Grand Cross and Collar of Order of Charles III (Spain), Order of Leopold, with swords (Belgium), Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky (Russia), Order of Naval Merit, fourth class (Spain), Order of the Nile (Egypt), Order of the Crown (Romania), and Croix de Guerre, with palms (France).
Anti-German feeling during World War I led George V to change the name of the Royal House in July 1917 from the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the House of Windsor. He also relinquished, on behalf of his various relatives who were British subjects, the use of all German titles and styles.
The Battenberg family relinquished their titles of Prince and Princess of Battenberg and the styles of Highness and Serene Highness. Under royal warrant, they instead took the surname Mountbatten, an Anglicised form of Battenberg. As such, Prince Alexander became Sir Alexander Mountbatten.[21] On 7 November 1917, he was created Marquess of Carisbrooke, Earl of Berkhamsted and Viscount Launceston.[22]
According to the published diaries of Cecil Beaton, in his later years, Lord Carisbrooke had a longtime male lover, Simon Fleet.[23] More is written about Lord Carisbrooke and his wife in the published diaries of James Lees-Milne and Henry "Chips" Channon.
Tomb of Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry of Battenberg, with Lord Carisbrooke's ashes casket set into the wall above
Later career
Lord Carisbrooke, who received no state allowance, became the first member of the British royal family to work in the commercial sector. He began his career working as an entry-level clerk in the offices of Lazard Brothers bankers. He later worked for a company that oversaw housing estates, and before long he took control of social work for the tenants.[19]
Later he became a director of Lever Brothers and several other prominent corporations.[19]
^Queen Victoria's Journals – Saturday 18 December 1886
^"Naval & Military intelligence". The Times. 22 April 1902. p. 12.
^"Naval & Military intelligence". The Times. No. 36763. London. 9 May 1902. p. 10.
^"Verdienst-Orden Philipps des Großmütigen", Großherzoglich Hessische Ordensliste (in German), Darmstadt: Staatsverlag, 1914, p. 21 – via hathitrust.org
^Beaton, Cecil (2003). Vickers, Hugo (ed.). Beaton in the Sixties: the Cecil Beaton diaries as they were written. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN0297645560.
*Not Mountbatten or Battenberg by birth. Adopted the surname Mountbatten from his maternal line on abandoning his patrilineal Greek and Danish princely titles.
