How is Elisabeth II 1/16 Hungarian? – photos, videos

As we already reported many times, the British royal family has some Transylvanian Hungarian roots: Claudine (Hung. Klaudia) Rhédey, born and raised there is the great-great-grandmother of Elisabeth II. However, who exactly was Claudine Rhédey and how did she becomes one of the ancestors of the oldest ruling royal family in Europe? And are there any other links between Hungary and the kings and queens of the British Isles?

Dynastic relations in the Middle-Ages

Though the distance between Budapest and London is more than 1,000 miles, there were multiple connections between the two states even in the darkest centuries of the Middle-Ages. To start with, Hungarian peregrine students were learning at the most elite English universities. For example, one of the first students of Oxford University was Nicolaus of Hungaria who received a scholarship from Richard the Lionheart between 1193 and 1196. This generosity might be explained by the fact that

Richard I was brother-in-law to Queen Margaret of Hungary,

whose second husband was Béla III (1172-1196).

In fact, Margaret was the daughter of Louis VII of France, thus, a member of the renowned Capet family sitting on the French throne. Firstly, she married Henry the Young King, who was co-ruler with his father Henry II in England. However, after his death in 1183 the young widow married Béla III in 1186 and moved to Hungary.

The Árpád dynasty and the Christian Hungarian Kingdom was already well-known even before the 12^th century in the British Isles. For example, when after the Danish conquest of England in 1016 Edmund Ironside’s son,

Edward the Exile had to flee he finally came to Hungary.

There he supported King Andrew I for the crown and lived in his court where his daughter, Margaret was raised in a very religious environment. They were recalled to England a couple of years before the battle of Hastings (1066). Because of the defeat they had to flee again to the Scottish King Malcolm III’s court. There the widowed Malcolm married Margaret who later became a saint of her country.