Royal Profile: Tsaritsa Margarita of Bulgaria, The Duchess of Saxony

Tsaritsa Margarita of Bulgaria was born 6 January 1935 as the daughter of Don Manuel Gómez-Acebo y Modet, the second son of the Marquess of Cortina, and Doña María de las Mercedes Cejuela y Fernández {Source}{Source}. She has one older brother {Source}:

1. Don Jose-Luis, The Marquess of Cortina (1930-2010)

Margarita's parents were assassinated in the Spanish Civil War when she was fairly young, and she was looked after by family friends before reaching her grandmother and going off to boarding school in Belgium {Source}. First, she and her brother lived with their father’s close friend, the Marquess of Casa Pissaro until May 1937{Source}. That summer, they traveled to Northern Spain via Valencia-Barcelona and France{Source}. Upon the fall, the two youngsters had reached their paternal grandmother, Doña Maragarita Modet, where they stayed until her death in 1940{Source}. After their grandmother died, they were placed under the guardianship of their uncle Juan Gómez-Acebo, Marquess of Zurgena (the father-in-law of Infanta Pilar of Spain) and his family until he died, and then they moved in with their other uncle, The Marquess of la Deleitosa{Source}. In 1950, at the age of 15 she was sent to Sacré Coeur College in Brussels{Source}.


At the age of 18, she returned to Spain, where she started residing her family's home and began traveling extensively, to places across Latin and North America, the middle and far east{Source}. During her travels, she met King Simeon II on the eve before he enrolled at the Valley Forge Military Academy and College in the United States{Source}.Although their meeting was brief, they kept in contact and met again the next summer{Source}. They made the decision to marry, but were briefly in a roadblock due to religion, as she was Catholic and as a Catholic, it was required that the non-Catholic partner must agree in writing that their children would be raised Catholic and he could not follow this without violating the Turnovo Constitution{Source}. To resolve this issue, he contacted an expert lawyer in matrimonial matters, who found a legal precedent in a 1939 case in Japan{Source}. A local bishop had assumed the responsibility of concluding a marriage between a catholic bride and a shintoist governor without prior guarantees{Source}. King Simeon II visited the Vatican twice in his efforts to overcome the obstacles, where he met with Pope John XXIII{Source}. On January 14, 1962 father Albendea, confessor of the King of Belgium, conducted the first of the three wedding ceremonies. The second one took place in Lausanne, where the city mayor signed their civil marriage act {Source}.


The next day relatives and Bulgarians from all over the world convened at the beautiful church in Vevey for an Orthodox wedding ceremony, conducted by Metropolitan Bishop Andrey and the Russian Archbishop of Switzerland {Source}. Upon her marrige, she said, smiling: “It is very hard and almost impossible to dissolve a triple wedding” {Source}. Together, they have the following children, grandchildren and children-in-law:

1. Kardam, Prince of Turnovo (1962–2015)
1. Princess Miriam of Bulgaria
1. Prince Boris, The The Prince of Tarnovo (1997)
2. Prince Beltrán of Bulgaria (1999)
2. Kyril, Prince of Preslav (1964)
1. Doña María del Rosario Nadal y Fuster-Puigdórfila (m. 1989-2009, seperated)
1. Princess Mafalda-Cecilia of Bulgaria (1994)
2. Princess Olimpia of Bulgaria (1995)
3. Prince Tassilo of Bulgaria (2002)
3. Kubrat, Prince of Panagiurishte (1965)
1. Doña Carla María de la Soledad Royo-Villanova y Urrestarazu
1. Prince Mirko of Bulgaria (1995)
2. Prince Lukás of Bulgaria (1997)
3. Prince Tirso of Bulgaria (2002)
4. Konstantin-Assen, Prince of Vidin (1967)
1. Doña María García de la Rasilla y Gortázar (m. 1994)
1. Prince Umberto of Bulgaria (1999)
2. Princess Sofia of Bulgaria (1999)
5. Princess Kalina of Bulgaria (1972)
1. Don Antonio José "Kitín" Muñoz y Valcárcel (1958, m. 2002)
1. Prince Simeon Hassan of Bulgaria (2007)