6 LGBTQ+ royals you probably didn't know about

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Princess Isabella of Parma exchanged roughly 200 letters with her sister in law that implied the pair’s relationship was more than friendly.

Princess Isabella of Parma, who lived between 1741 and 1763, never confirmed that she was bisexual, and even married Archduke Joseph of Austria in 1760. However, speculation remains about the royal’s sexuality and whether she had a romantic relationship with her husband’s sister, Archduchess Maria Christina.

The pair exchanged hundreds of letters over the years, with many of them extremely affectionate in nature.

“I am told that the day begins with God,” Princess Isabella wrote in one letter. “I, however, begin the day by thinking of the object of my love, for I think of her incessantly.”

Unfortunately, Princess Isabella’s life was cut short after she died during childbirth at the age of 21.

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Philippe I, the Duke of Orl ans, was known and often criticized for dressing in women’s clothing and his homosexuality was commonly acknowledged.

The younger brother of King Louis XIV, Philippe I was negatively described by the seventeenth-century memoirist Saint-Simon as effeminate and “always adorned like a woman.” While the terms gay, queer, or even bisexual were rarely directly used to describe the royal, his relationships with men were well-documented.

According to Retrospect Journal, the courtier Madame de Lafayette wrote in her memoire that no woman could ever “enflame [Philippe’s] heart.” It is also widely accepted that Philippe I had a number of queer relationships, most notably with the Chevalier de Lorraine, to which his brother turned a blind eye to.

Philippe did marry twice in his life. His first wife, Princess Henrietta of England, died of peritonitis caused by a perforated ulcer, though an investigation conducted by Saint-Simon alleged that the Chevalier de Lorraine and the Marquis d’Effiat, another of Philippe’s supposed lovers, had poisoned her.

Philippe later married Princess Palatine Elizabeth Charlotte, who slept in separate bedchambers and was generally forgiving of what she called “the Italian vice,” a colloquial term for homosexuality in that era. Philippe died in 1701.

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King Umberto II of Italy was married to Queen Marie Jos of Belgium, but former ruler Mussolini’s secret police kept dossiers on Umberto’s male lovers.

King Umberto II reigned for only 34 days, from May 9, 1946, until June 12, 1946, after the fall of Mussolini. Shortly after he took the throne following the abdication of his father King Victor Emmanuel III, Umberto was outed in the press as homosexual. The Italian public then voted to abolish the monarchy.

Umberto divorced from his wife, whom he shared four children with, in 1946 and lived the remainder of his life in exile. He passed away in Geneva at 78 years old.

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Prince Egon von Furstenberg, the second husband of fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, was open about being bisexual.

The couple separated in 1973 and divorced a decade later after 20 years of marriage. After they separated, von Furstenberg told New York Magazine that he and Diane had experimented with another woman during their marriage, but she had a distaste for it.

According to World of Wonder, he also told an Italian newspaper that gay clubs like the Flamingo were among his favorite places to spend time and frequently partied on Fire Island, a known location for the LGBTQ+ community to come together. However, despite his apparent openness about his sexuality, he married another woman, Lynn Marshall, in 1983.

The royal died in Rome at the age of 57 in 2004, leaving behind his wife, ex-wife Diane von Furstenberg, and their two children.

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Lord Ivar Mountbatten is the first extended member of the British royal family to come out as gay.

Lord Ivar Mountbatten, who is related to both Queen Elizabeth and her late husband Prince Philip, married his partner James Coyle in 2018 two years after coming out publicly as gay.

Mountbatten was previously married to Penny Mountbatten, a British philanthropist, from 1994 until 2011. She has since come out in support of her husband, and even gave him away at his wedding to Coyle. The former couple’s three daughters also came up with the idea.

“Ivar is so much more relaxed these days,” Penny told the Daily Mail in 2018. “He’s so much kinder. He’s become a great cook. I now call him Fanny Cradock. He probably wasn’t even aware that by keeping his sexuality a secret it was really quite tormenting him. Now it’s ‘out’ he’s a completely different person. Everybody says they’ve never seen him happier.”