Princess Eugenie announced her first pregnancy at the end of September, just 30 years since her own public debut, when she slept through her first photo call outside of Portland Hospital, in London, as a beaming Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, held her tight. On February 9, 2021 Eugenie gave birth to a son in that very same hospital, though the announcement varied a little bit from modern royal tradition—she posted a picture of the tiny baby hand on Instagram.
Over the centuries royal babies have made their public debuts shockingly soon, and become rulers even sooner. In 309 AD, Shapur II, Emperor of Persia, was said to have been crowned in utero, when a crown was placed on his mother’s large belly. Mary, Queen of Scots became queen at six days old, and Alfonso XIII of Spain, King from birth, personally opened the Spanish parliament at the tender age of 12 months.
In order to perpetuate a monarchy, royal women have had to deal with the enormous pressure of giving birth to living heirs, who they often had little agency over once they were born. But despite the best efforts of royals to control their pregnancies and births, fate has often had other plans—some heartbreaking, some joyful. “These wretched babies don’t come until they’re ready,” Queen Elizabeth II once said. “They don’t come to order.”
Edward VI of England
For three decades, King Henry VIII desperately and obsessively attempted to have a son and heir. He divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, partly for having no living son. He executed his second wife, Anne Boleyn, with whom he had one daughter—the future Elizabeth I. Anne’s execution came less than two weeks before he married his third wife, Jane Seymour, on May 30, 1536.
The outwardly submissive Jane, whose motto was “bound to obey and serve,” knew what her main worth was to her husband. “Even in the early days of their marriage, he had kept hoping to hear that Jane had conceived. He would put his hands on her stomach and repeat, ‘Edward, Edward,’ the name he had already chosen in advance for his son,” writes Amy Licence in Royal Babies: A History 1066-2013.
According to Chris Skidmore, author of Edward VI: The Lost King of England, when Jane did not conceive fast enough for her husband, Henry got restless and began eyeing other women, saying cruelly that he was “sorry that he had not seen them before they were married.”
Understandably, Jane was relieved when she announced her pregnancy in the spring of 1537. She developed a craving for quails, leading her husband to order a huge amount from Calais for her pleasure. Everyone seemed sure the child was a boy, with one courtier writing, “We look daily for a Prince.”
Under this enormous pressure, Jane gave birth to Prince Edward VI in the early morning hours of October 12, 1537. Huge celebrations thundered across England, with 2,000 rounds fired from the Tower of London the night of his birth. The birth, an Englishman wrote, “hath more rejoiced this realm and all true hearts…more than anything hath done this 40 years.”
But while the country celebrated the princeling, the mother ailed. On October 24, Jane died, probably from bleeding caused by a torn placenta. Though mourned, her death was cast as a noble sacrifice, a “Comfortable Consolation,” pamphleteer Richard Morysine wrote, “wherein the People may see how far greater causes they have to be glad for the joyful Birth of Prince Edward, than sorry for the death of Queen Jane.”
Distraught yet finally in possession of a son, Henry went to obsessive lengths to protect the motherless Prince, who he called “this whole realm’s most precious jewel.” Edward was guarded at all times, and courtiers required written permission from Henry to approach the cradle. No person ranked lower than a knight was allowed to kiss the baby’s hand, and the kiss was tested for poison—as was Edward’s food, clothing, and playthings.
Years later, Edward, now a weary, orphaned child King, crowned at age nine, lamented his and Jane’s fate. “How unfortunate have I been to those of my blood,” he allegedly said. “My mother I slew at my birth.”
Francis II of France
In 1544, Catherine de’ Medici, the future queen of France, gave birth to her first child, a sickly, sallow son named Francis (later King Francis II). After 11 years of marriage to the future King Henry II, the birth was greeted with great relief and joy by Catherine as well as another woman present at the birth: Diane de Poitiers, the longtime mistress of Catherine’s husband.
Brilliant but considered unattractive, Catherine de’ Medici had married Henry in 1533. From the start of the marriage, she was overshadowed by Diane, Henry’s glamorous, beautiful, equally brilliant, former nanny turned lover. According to HRH Princess Michael of Kent, author of The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King, the King suffered from hypospadias, a condition in which the urethra is on the underside of the penis, while Catherine may have had an inverted uterus. This was a blessing for a mistress hoping to avoid pregnancy, but devastating for Catherine, tasked with producing an heir.