How Queen Victoria's aunt broke free of an abusive marriage

Helen Rappaport speaks to Danny Bird about the tumultuous life of the German princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who escaped her abusive marriage to the tsar’s brother.

Published: March 27, 2025 at 9:00 AM

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Danny Bird: What drew you to explore the life of Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld?

Helen Rappaport: She was a difficult subject because she’s so lost to history. I discovered her story while researching the siblings of Queen Victoria’s mother Victoria (or Victoire), Duchess of Kent. Victoire was a younger sister of Juliane, known as Julie, who was born in 1781. I found it fascinating that the obscure and impoverished German duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld produced so many children who made strategically significant marriages.

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Julie’s better-known siblings were Leopold, King of the Belgians, whose first marriage was to Princess Charlotte of Wales; and Victoire, who married the Duke of Kent. In 1796, Julie made an impressive marriage to Grand Duke Konstantin, the brother of the future Tsar Alexander I. If the couple had not divorced, Julie would have become empress on Alexander’s death in 1825 – yet she has been almost completely overlooked by history.

Why did this family play such a major role in reshaping post-Napoleonic Europe?

What distinguished the clan was their ambitious matriarch, Augusta. People often talk about Queen Victoria’s prowess as a matchmaker, but her grandmother Augusta was the precursor. Wedded to the impoverished Francis, heir to the Duchy of of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, she faced a dire situation: the family coffers were empty. To address this, she set about strategically marrying off her children to dukes, princes and princesses to secure their futures and the family’s standing. And her efforts began with Julie.

In 1795, Catherine the Great of Russia sought a bride for her second grandson, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich. German princesses were especially favoured, and Catherine’s emissary, Baron Budberg, came to Coburg.

At the time, this was the capital of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld – one of the Thuringian states – though today it is a relatively modest town in northern Bavaria. There, Baron Budberg encountered Augusta’s three young daughters, and reported back that one of these might be a suitable candidate to marry Catherine’s grandson.

Catherine invited Augusta to bring her charming daughters to St Petersburg for inspection – entailing a gruelling 40-day journey by carriage. For Julie and her sisters, emerging from provincial Coburg into the grandeur of the Russian capital must have been an extraordinary experience.

What were her experiences of life at the Russian court?

That’s incredibly hard to grasp. Julie was just 14 in 1795, when she was taken to Russia to marry a grand duke. She didn’t know the Russian language, she had no friends there and, once she’d been selected, her mother took the coach back home with her two sisters, leaving Julie completely isolated and frightened.

Thankfully her sister-in-law, Louise of Baden (known in Russia as Elisaveta), consort of the future Tsar Alexander I, took Julie under her wing. Even so, it was a bewildering experience. To marry Konstantin, she had to convert to Russian Orthodoxy from Lutheranism. Upon arrival, she underwent complex instruction in Old Church Slavonic rituals and endured a daunting conversion ceremony at the Winter Palace, taking the name Anna Feodorovna.

Imagine a 14-year-old girl facing the grandeur and arcane rituals of that enormous palace, surrounded by priests, incense and formality. She had no time to prepare for any of it. She arrived in Russia in the depths of winter, and in February 1796 – after just a few months in St Petersburg – she was married.

Her life during the marriage was isolated. She often sat through monotonous evenings with Catherine the Great, playing card games and being bored to tears. After Catherine’s death in November 1796, she was left alone much of the time because Konstantin was a career soldier and spent most of his time with his troops or away on campaign.

What was her marriage like?

We don’t fully know the extent of the abuse Julie endured, because she spoke very little about it. What we do know comes from numerous witness accounts of Konstantin’s cruelty and terrible behaviour. Her mother hinted in letters that he infected Julie with a venereal disease; this seems likely, and certainly she sought treatment. Julie never fully confided in her parents, because she knew that the prosperity of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld relied on her regularly sending money home. Indeed, her father often pressured her to provide financial support.

Konstantin’s brutality extended to his soldiers, and he displayed behaviour that suggests sadistic or psychopathic tendencies. According to his Swiss tutor, Frédéric-César de La Harpe, Konstantin struggled with attention and concentration, was highly restless and an uncontrollable pupil. Even Catherine the Great acknowledged her grandson’s behavioural issues, at one point placing him under house arrest.

The abuse that Julie faced was shocking. For example, knowing that she was afraid of mice, Konstantin once locked her in a room and had servants open a cage full of the animals – leaving her screaming in terror. Such actions are far from normal behaviour, and other instances of his cruelty are detailed in the book.

However, though Konstantin had a deeply disturbed and disturbing personality, there were also moments of kindness and gentleness. He later remarried, and reportedly had a happy marriage with his second wife. However, it seems unlikely that Julie ever experienced this softer side of him.

Julie determined to escape her marriage. How did her quest for autonomy compare with that of other noble women of the time? It was extraordinary! How many women dared to escape a marriage twice, especially during that period – and a marriage to a Russian grand duke, at that? I can’t think of any other young brides who didn’t just grin and bear it – or ‘lie back and think of England’, so to speak.

Many women of that period were married off into dreadful dynastic unions, often desperately unhappy, with no choice but to put up with it. Julie was different: strong-willed and determined. Konstantin made her life miserable within months of their marriage, and in 1799 she pleaded to visit her sick mother in Coburg, eyeing an escape. Konstantin was away campaigning in Italy, so Tsar Paul I [son of Catherine the Great] allowed her to go. However, she was commanded to return later that year.

Even her own family insisted that she go back to Russia, for the sake of their honour. They feared losing the financial support they received from the Romanovs if she didn’t return. Heartbroken, she complied, and endured more years of unhappiness until Paul’s murder in 1801.

After that, Julie appealed to her brother-in-law, Alexander Pavlovich, who had become Tsar Alexander I. He granted her permission to leave – on condition that she lived quietly in Coburg. She complied, albeit briefly, before moving to Switzerland.

Did her broken marriage cause a scandal?

There were rumblings at the Russian court, and some suggested – well, I think it’s likely – that she was having an affair by the time she left. The evidence is thin, but her misery was palpable, and Konstantin had countless mistresses. Rumours of a lover persisted, but definitive proof has been elusive.

When she did leave Russia, it was very, very quietly. She simply climbed into a carriage with a couple of ladies-in-waiting, and departed. In any case, the Russian people had little knowledge of Julie.

During her time there she had been confined to the Winter Palace, the Marble Palace or sometimes – worst of all – the great palace at Gatchina, 28 miles south-west of St Petersburg, where she had endured the harsh, militaristic regime of Tsar Paul.

What can you tell us about the world in which Julie lived?

Julie grew up during a tumultuous period in Europe, marked by the aftershocks of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon. Her family held the ducal rights to Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and were directly impacted by the Napoleonic Wars.

During the conflict, they retreated to their modest residence in Saalfeld, about 30 miles northeast of Coburg – where, in 1806, a major battle unfolded in the valley below. So Julie was acutely aware of the turmoil of the era.

Julie maintained a close relationship with Alexander, who had permitted her to escape her marriage to Konstantin. The tsar travelled a great deal in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars – for meetings, inspection of troops and so on, and also to visit his sister Maria Pavlovna, Duchess of Mecklenburg, in Weimar – which resulted in occasional further meetings with Julie.

After several years travelling around Europe, Julie finally settled in Switzerland in 1814. She found a quiet home near Bern, at the moment when the contentious issue of Swiss independence was resolved at the Congress of Vienna. Even so, an ongoing struggle in Vaud – the Swiss canton west of Bern – between German-speaking Lutherans and French-speaking Catholics at times posed a threat to her estate.

She also witnessed how the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe affected her friends, such as the king and queen of Prussia, who had to flee to safety during the wars. Julie kept herself apart from the political intrigues of Europe, though, even as she remained aware of the dramatic changes happening around her.

You refer to Julie as “an unjustifiably neglected footnote in history”. To what extent was that obscurity of her own making?

That’s a very interesting point. She left Russia under difficult circumstances, fleeing a deeply unhappy marriage marked by psychological and physical abuse. As a result, she avoided attracting attention to herself. Given the social norms of the time, her situation was especially precarious as a Russian grand duchess who had left her husband. She lived in limbo for 20 years, unable to obtain a divorce.

In such a situation, most women of her status would have been social pariahs. However, her exceptional personality and tragic circumstances transcended the judgmental attitudes of the time. Despite her self-imposed isolation, she maintained friendships and connections. Nevertheless, she did lead a solitary life, although occasionally paid visits to royal relatives.

Her obscurity was largely self-imposed, and her letters reveal a deep fear of scandal and social rejection. This fear prompted her to withdraw from public life. She was the active wife of a Russian grand duke for only about five years; consequently, history barely noticed her.

Julie’s most renowned relative was her niece Queen Victoria. What was their relationship like?

I love Victoria but, in many cases, she created a fantasy vision of the people in her life, including Julie. Victoria didn’t know her aunt particularly well, though she knew the basics of her tragic story, and had seen her portraits. In fact, Victoria commissioned the last portrait of Julie, painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter in 1848 as a gift for the queen’s mother, Victoire. I gather that the painting is now at Highgrove, in the possession of King Charles III.

Victoria had met Julie’s mother, Augusta, when the latter visited Britain to inspect her granddaughter, affectionately calling the young princess a “pretty little May blossom”. However, Victoria didn’t meet Julie herself until much later, during a visit to her uncle King Leopold’s palace at Laeken in 1843.

Victoria had been eager to meet Julie long before then. When she ascended the throne in 1837, she wanted Julie to come to her coronation. Later, she also wished Julie to attend her wedding to Albert in 1840. Being rather reserved, Julie generally avoided public displays and large gatherings of royal relatives, and declined both invitations.

After finally meeting Julie, Victoria was captivated by her and spoke lyrically about her “lovely Auntie Julie”. She became even more sentimental when Albert took her to Rosenau Palace, his birthplace and boyhood home, which Julie and her mother often visited. Perhaps because of that admiration, Victoria had an idealised image of Julie, and was unaware of the full truth of her life, much of it having been kept from her.

Prince Albert – who was also Julie’s nephew – had a closer connection with her. Together with his older brother Ernst, he visited Julie at her home in autumn 1837. Albert was very taken with Julie, and made two more visits later that year.

How did you piece together Julie’s life?

Writing this book proved a significant challenge, primarily because it required me to step outside my usual historical period. My expertise largely covers the reign of Queen Victoria and the following decades, with a particular focus on late imperial Russia and the revolution.

So the biggest hurdle was navigating the history and culture of Napoleonic Europe. Compounding this was the language barrier. Much of my work investigating Julie’s story involved studying German sources, including correspondence and material from the Staatsarchiv (State Archive) of Coburg.

Many of these documents were written in Kurrentschrift, an intricately cursive and challenging old German script that I can’t read. Though I have basic German, this was beyond me.

I enlisted experts to help with the German documents. In Germany, Josef Dreesen retrieved materials from the Staatsarchiv, which has a notoriously complex cataloguing system. In the UK, Oliver Walton, an expert in historical manuscripts, translated letters. His expertise, honed on work such as curating Prince Albert’s papers for the Royal Archives digitisation project, was invaluable.

Thankfully, the Russian aristocracy – indeed, much of the Europe- an aristocracy at the time – used French as their primary written language. Many crucial letters – including those from Julie’s close friend Elisaveta – were in French, so were far more accessible.

What do you hope that readers will gain from reading about Julie’s life?

I hope readers find Julie’s story as moving, interesting and unconventional as I did. It’s always a joy to restore someone overlooked, forgotten or under-represented to history. I spent more than 20 years chasing down the story of Mary Seacole before I wrote about it, and other subjects have proved just as elusive.

I also hope that the book offers a fresh perspective on the history of Saxe-Coburg and Russia during that era. And I hope especially that readers grasp just how brutally ruthless the European marriage market was for young aristocratic women. Being married off to a Russian grand duke or future tsar was far from glamorous – rather, it could be absolutely terrifying, as Julie’s experience shows.

Helen Rappaport is a historian and author. She is the author of

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This article was first published in the March 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

Authors

Danny BirdContent producer

Danny Bird is a content producer at HistoryExtra

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