He Didn't Know When to Fold 'em

If her great-great-grandfather had been a better card player, Sophie Parkin might be living in Craig-y-Nos Castle in Wales.

Today the estate is worth around £2.5m but Sophie, 45, will never see a penny of it, nor will she ever live within the castle’s grey, stone walls.

Because, according to Sophie’s grandmother, the wealthy landowner was also a bit of a gambler and it was only a matter of time before the castle slipped out of his hands.

The winner of that fateful game took pity on the poor family and allowed them to stay on in the crofter’s cottage, but private schooling had to be swapped for hard work as their life of privilege disappeared before their eyes. [Link]

[Photo credit: Craig Y Nos by The Welsh Knight]

Aristocratic Monkey Business

Californian Paul FitzGerald has lost his 30-year battle to be the 9th Duke of Leinster.

The attempt by Mr FitzGerald of San Francisco to claim the titles had been masterminded by his Aunt Theresa Caudhill, who claimed she was acting on her father’s deathbed wishes.

In her evidence she argued that a switch of identities had led to her father Desmond - the rightful heir who settled in America - being frozen out of the family during the Great War. [Link]

Desmond was thought to have died in the war while serving with the Irish Guards, but secretly (so the story goes) slipped off to Canada, where—like most immigrants—he "was supported by a trust fund and worked as a polo instructor."

Apropos of nothing, this is how the family chose its coat of arms:

The coat of arms of the Dukes of Leinster derives from the legend that John FitzGerald, 1st Earl of Kildare, as a baby in Woodstock Castle, was trapped in a fire when a monkey rescued him. The FitzGeralds then adopted a monkey as their crest, and occasionally use the additional motto Non immemor beneficii (Not forgetful of a helping hand). [Link]

CEO Tries Buying Irishness

Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld knows how to throw a family reunion.

The guests, 20 of Mr Greifeld’s closest family members, had been invited to the party on August 20, 2004, via parchment scrolls that read: “Oh from far and wide ye young and old shall gather together for the Greifelds’ Grand Family Reunion. From the Big Apple to the Emerald Isle, journey back to discover our distant Irish past in a land of leprechauns and folklore.

The week-long event, held "on the edge of Dublin," cost more than $611,000. Attendees engaged in jousting and falconry, took rides in a private helicopter, and visited a replica 13th-century village set up on the grounds of a rented castle while dressed in period costumes.

A signature champagne cocktail was created for the event, and shampoos in bottles labelled “Greifeld” were placed in each guest room. A team of butlers — one of whom worked for the Crown Prince of the Netherlands — headed a staff of 55. Masseuses were available around the clock, as were leading chefs, sommeliers, cigar experts, equerries, fitness trainers and nannies.

Of course, all this ostentation had little to do with Greifeld's actual heritage.

One of the few sore points of the whole incredible week [...] was the genealogist. Despite charging €1,500 for his services, he was not able to uncover all that many of Mr Greifeld’s Irish ancestors. Fancy that. [Link]

A Man's Mobile Home Is His Castle

Helmuth von Maltzahn, baron of Ulrichshusen, and other aristocrats whose families lost their estates in East Germany under Communist rule have returned to reclaim their ancestral homes. Or at least to live in trailers nearby.

A hard-charging former cosmetics executive, von Maltzahn, his wife Baroness Alla, and their two small daughters gave up comfortable lives in West Germany in 1993 for a barely heated mobile home parked beside the ruins of the former family schloss, or castle. The walls of Ulrichshusen castle date to 1592. But the renaissance structure stands on the foundations of a von Maltzahn stronghold built in the 1100s.

"The communists were here for 45 years," von Maltzahn said during an interview in the main keep. "What's that? The blink of an eye. My family had been here for 800 years. Guess who is gone? Guess who is back? This time to stay. The land is my past, present, and future -- it holds the graves of my ancestors and will be my daughters' inheritance." [Link]

The von Maltzahns have since fixed up the place a bit.

Nic Nabs Costly Castle

Nicolas Cage has bought a Bavarian castle called Schloss Neidstein for genealogical reasons.

"Her ancestors are all from good old Bavaria," Cage, 42, tells the German magazine Bunte about his mother, dancer Joy Vogelsang.

The castle's previous owner, Alexander von Brand, 48, says the residence has been in his family since 1466 and he sold it reluctantly. "At the end, we only lived in the castle a few weeks each year," he tells Bunte. "Still, we tried to preserve our heritage and the center of our family."

He's pleased that Cage is the new owner: "While the one family loses its past, the other family attempts to regain its past – that's pure symmetry!" [Link]

Not That There's Anything Wrong with That...

From the (Johannesburg, South Africa) Mail & Guardian Online:

All the king's men ...

Munich, Germany
28 September 2005

An heir to a German aristocrat reached a settlement on Wednesday with an author who said his ancestor was the gay lover of Ludwig II, the "fairy-tale king" who built the legendary Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria.

Count Michael Siegfried von Holnstein, whose great-grandfather was the stables manager to the man also known as Mad King Ludwig, had taken the case to the regional superior court in the southern city of Munich, Bavaria's main city.

[snip]

The count had argued that the honour of his family line had been "gravely defamed" by the claim.

"Everyone knows about certain tendencies of Ludwig II, but it is totally unacceptable that my great-grandfather gets dragged into it," he said.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]