How American Blood Will Soon Sit on the British Throne
- europeboundjourney
- Jul 29, 2025
- 4 min read
Those of you familiar with the hit show Downton Abbey might know a little bit about our next topic. Those of you who haven’t watched the show, there’s still time to make better life choices and get caught up, I won’t hold it against you.
Set in the early twentieth century, the show highlights the lives and times of the fictional characters, Lord and Lady Grantham and their family. Their lavish life of luxury centers around their family estate, Downton Abbey, which at first glance, glitters brightly against the darkened English skyline.
But as the show progresses, you soon learn that the abbey wasn’t always the glitz and glamour the times are now portraying. We learn that at one time, not that long before, the abbey and the village it supported were both in dire financial straits. Something that becomes a running theme throughout the show as the characters try in vain to hold change at bay as modern life threatens to take over.
We come to learn, with the industrial revolution happening all around him, the then single Lord Grantham realizes that the income he once made from tenant farming isn’t filling the coffers anymore and his workers are leaving in droves to seek work in the cities. Downtrodden, he stands in the shell of the grand home he once knew. Whatever is a rich lord whose estate is falling apart around him supposed to do?
Faced with losing his beloved estate and possibly having to get a real job, Grantham agrees to a marriage most likely set up by his powerful mother, the Dowager Countess of Grantham. Hesitantly he marries Cora Levison, the daughter of a rich American businessman from Cininnati. The union brings prestige to Cora’s family and gave Grantham the millions he needed to re-energize his estate. It was a match made in big money heaven as they both learn to love each other and live happily ever after. This time.
What the writer, Julian Fellows, is referring to in the show is something called The Million Dollar Princesses of which his character Cora is a part. The term refers historically to wealthy American heiresses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who married into European aristocracy, effectively trading their vast fortunes for titles, prestige, and social standing.
The industrial evolution in real life America was having the same effects it was having in England. It was making a handful of people very rich, and it wasn’t just the silver spooned folks like the Astors in New York.
Soon the “nouveau riche” riff raff like William Kissam Vanderbilt were wanting to hob nob with the old elite and it was becoming a problem. I mean, just because you’re some guy who built and sold a railroad doesn’t mean you belong in polite society!
America was all about the “old money” aristocracy and if you were one of the newly rich like the Rockefellers or Vanderbilts, well, you were going to need to prove yourself before you started trying to leave your calling cards with the butlers on the Fifth Avenue!
And that’s when Vanderbilt decided he was going to up the ante by adding to his family bloodline someone from an even OLDER aristocracy: The English Nobility! The marriage of his daughter Consuelo Vanderbilt to Charles Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke of Marlborough was primarily orchestrated by her mother and brokered with a socialite in London who handled these types of matters with discretion and candor, of course.
But in this marriage, everyone was set for a happy ending except Consuelo. The duke had his money. Her parents had their clout and Consuelo ended up in a marriage she described as “emotionally oppressive and isolating.” Not quite the ending experienced by our fictional heroine, Cora. At least she got to know Winston Churchill whose mother was also a million-dollar princess but that’s a whole nother story!
So now that we’ve explored the dynamics on how the MDP arrangement worked overall, let’s get to the part where America’s rejoining the UK!
Born October 27, 1857, in New York City, Frances Ellen “Fannie” Work was the daughter of Franklin H. Work, who was a highly successful stockbroker and protégé of one of the Vanderbilts.
In 1880, Frank thought he could finally tell Fifth Avenue to hold his beer, when he had his daughter Fannie marry James Boothby Burke Roche, who later became the 3rd Baron Fermoy. Fannie brought a substantial American dowry, around $2.5 million, into the marriage. However, Roche quickly proved financially irresponsible, gambling away substantial sums and accumulating large debts. Finally, Frances and especially her father, had enough of James and she and her three children, twin boys and one daughter, returned to New York.
The older of the twin boys, Maurice returned to England in 1920 upon succeeding his father to the title of 4th Baron Fermoy. In 1931, Maurice married Ruth Sylvia Gill, and they had three children. Maurice was one half American.
Their middle child, Frances Ruth Burke Roche would go on to become the mother of a young girl later known to the world as Princess Diana. Born as The Honourable Diana Frances Spencer on 1 July 1961 at Park House on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, Diana was one eighth American.
We all cheered in July 1981 as we watched the shy young girl jumping feet first into something she could never have imagined becoming a true princess and future queen. Before we knew it, there was William and Harry, and the sad looking princess began to smile a mother’s smile.
Diana’s oldest, christened William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten‑Windsor at birth is one sixteenth American and will one day succeed his father to the throne. His accension will mark the first time anyone with American heritage will serve as the King of England and will no doubt add a level of clout to his three times great grandfather’s bloodline in a way Frank never could have imagined!
Take THAT Mrs. Astor!
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