Prince Leopold was the eighth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and the youngest of their sons. He was born April 7, 1853, and delivered with the aid of chloroform, administered by the Royal accoucheur, Dr. John Snow. He was the first of the Queen’s children to be born with her under it; Beatrice who followed four years later and was the last of the line, also received it as the Queen was trying to popularize the drug.
The safe arrival of Prince Leopold didn’t silence opposition to obstetric anesthesia altogether, but the Queen’s heartily expressed enthusiasm for pain-free childbirth helped make chloroform use respectable.
Albert wrote that “Leo was jolly and fat” and “no beauty, ” and that set the tone of how the Royal parents treated him — he was left to the care of nannies until his father died on December 14, 1861, at which point the Queen became very taken with her last boy as solace. She wrote that he was “abnormally pale” but tall and it was after she became close to him that she started to notice he “hemorrhaged” easily. By the time he was a teenager, the family realized the problem. He was the first of the British Royal family to have the problem.
The comparison of his chart to his second cousin, the Tsarevich, is an interesting one.
Leopold, the Duke of Albany, is Bowl with a lip that is formed by the Line of Personality –Saturn in the Ninth House at 16.57 in a week inconjunct aspect to Jupiter in the Fourth at 24.27 giving an interesting emphasis to Jupiter at its throne in Sagittarius. Jupiter rules the bloody as the thought is that an excess of it gives enthusiasm, here in the Fourth House of maternal inheritance, it would agree particularly as Saturn is in the natural house of Sagittarius and lending an almost fatalistic hand to the Duke. As Aries rules the head and governs the Red Ray of Blood, it hints that he would die from a fall to his head & probably die from bleeding profusely from an inherited familial disease especially as Mars is also found in the house of its Lord.
The Duke also has a prominent stellium in the Eighth house of Legacies and Death with his Sun and Mars the Lord of Aries on its Throne there as well. As Aries rules the head, it does hint that injuries to the head could be fatal to the Duke particularly if while he was travelling (the Sagittarian connection).
Like his cousin the Tsarevich he has a few septiles in his chart. The first one shows up between Pluto at 0.56 Taurus and his North Node at 21.42 Gemini in the Tenth. The others are the larger bi-septile aspect both types that according to Emma Belle Donath¹ suggest a “personal sacrifice”. One at Mercury at Taurus 08 in the Eighth House to Jupiter in the Fourth at Sagittarius 25 and then from Jupiter again to Venus at Aries 09 Aries in the Seventh. Mercury has a Virgintile to Venus that has no ominous overtones at all but instead suggests like his older brother Edward, was quite the ladies man.
When he died, February 21, 1884 at 3:30 according to his mother’s diary, the Duke of Albany had one Septile active, this time from Jupiter and the Galactic Center to his MidHeaven at 18.25 Cancer, a Hyperion Symbol of “Guitars and Mandolins” embracing the duality that is life and the North Node having moved from the Tenth House of aspirations to that of the Ninth and long journeys.
Afternotes
His son, Charles Edward Leopold, his Royal Highness Prince Leopold Charles Edward, inherited his title and became the second Duke of Albany, Earl of Clarence and Baron Arklow. The Duke, called Charlie, was born at Claremont House, near Esher Surrey, on July 19, 1884. He was the first cousin of King George V (Edward and Leopold were brothers) as well as Kaiser Wilhelm II. He was forced by Grandmother Victoria to take over the House of Coburg-Saxe and Gotha, despite his many protestations at age fifteen.
Charlie married the niece of Empress August of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenberg, Victoria Adelheid (Adelaide) and had five children including a daughter who married into the Swedish Royal Family and brought hemophilia to that Royal family. He and his family remained loyal to the Kaiser during World War I while his sister who was married to the British Queen Mary’s brother, the Duke of Teck stayed on the British-Allied side of the Great War.
The Second Duke and his family remained loyal to the Kaiser during World War I while his sister who was married to the British Queen Mary’s brother, the Duke of Teck, stayed on the British-Allied side of the Great War. It, of course, made lots of headlines.
- Minor Aspects between natal Planets, Donath, Emma Bella. c. 1981, American Federation of Astrologers. Tempe, AZ.
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Queen Victoria’s Gene Haemophilia and the Royal Family, Potts, D.M, c. 1999, Sutton Publishing. London, UK.
