So fascinating with semi-imperial hang-arounds like the Leuchtenberg!
Long-time lurker here with some questions for the Leuchtenberg experts out there:
- I presume the title of Nicholas Leuchtenberg and Nadezhda Annenkova's children, whose offspring all were Dukes and Duchesses of Leuchtenberg, was Russian, as the original Bavarian title was inherited by primogeniture? Was then this title, герцог Лейхтенбергский, perhaps the only Russian ducal title?
- The comital family of Grabbe which some Leuchtenbergs married into, and which I take hailed from Kexholm in Finland and appearantly had been governors of Vyborg centuries earlier under the Swedes, were they related the famous Danish noble family Krabbe?
- Does anybody know what the third quarter in
the original Leuchtenberg arms, a sword on a green field with golden stars, represents? Must be some honour or title of Eugène Beauharnais. (The other quarters are Leuchtenberg, Eichstätt and Beauharnais, with, I suppose, the vice-regal crown if Italy or some other arch-office or notion of royal dignity overall.)
- In Russian Leuchtenberg is written Лейхтенберг and Beauharnais Богарне. Are they just spelled that way or do people actually pronounce them /leixtenberg/ and /bogarne/? What about Imperial times? Since they spoke a lot of French, did they say /lœʃtenberg/? Just for the record, the German pronunciation is ['lɔɪ̯çtənbɛrk].
On a related note: Is Гогенцоллерн actually pronounced /gogentsolern/ if the transcription with h→г is used instead of the more accurate Хоэнцоллерн? Same with the ubiquitous Гессен, of course. Do Russians speak of /aleksandra fyodorovna gessenskaja/?
