This sex-fuelled British royal became the Queen of Spain. But she was ‘sacked’ for sleeping with a duke AND his duchess. Then Britain booted her out, too!

A party animal, loaded with large jewels and beautiful furs.

Caught in a love triangle with a duchess and her husband, expelled from Britain, Spain and Italy, she was almost murdered on her wedding day and ended her days living on royal benefits.

Queen Ena of Spain wasn’t all beer and skittles.

Born in Balmoral, she was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria (the daughter of Princess Beatrice) and spent her happy childhood at Kensington Palace.

She would later be remembered as the great-great-grandmother of the current King of Spain, Felipe VI, but only after a turbulent life that included hemophilia, the Spanish flu pandemic, the Spanish Civil War and exile.

She had startling aquamarine eyes and, according to diarist Chips Channon, was ‘loose and very bawdy in her conversations’.

In other words, more than a little naughty.

But tragedy followed in her footsteps. She inherited the ‘royal disease’, haemophilia, through her grandmother Victoria, which she would pass on to her sons after her marriage.

No one considered that possibility when she was arrested by the twenty-year-old King Alfonso of Spain when he came to London looking for a bride.

Ena – or Princess Victoria Eugenie as she was born – caught his attention and within a short time the couple were engaged.

Later, Ena complained, “The British hated me because I converted to Catholicism; the Spaniards hated me because I was not born Catholic.”

That turned out to be the least of her worries.

On her wedding day in 1906, an anarchist threw a bomb, hidden in a bouquet, at the royal carriage as it passed by.

Ena and her new husband were unharmed, but the blood of the fatally wounded horseback escort splattered over her wedding dress, a terrible omen for the future.

A revolution was already in the air in Spain, and much more was on the horizon.

A year after the wedding, the couple’s first child, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias, was born, but almost immediately it was discovered that he suffered from hemophilia, which meant he could not stop bleeding from an accidental wound.

The effect on the king was crushing, and in a courageous attempt to rectify the situation, Ena allowed herself to become pregnant almost immediately – the following year she gave birth to a second son. Unfortunately, at the age of four, this child could no longer speak or hear.

Five more births followed – seven children in total in seven years – including one stillbirth, and the love the couple had once had long ago evaporated.

The Spanish – who had never liked their English queen – took her misery lightly. A popular verse of the time read:

One month of pleasure/eight months of pain;

Three months of free time/ And on again;

Oh what a life/for the Queen of Spain!

Alfonso took a series of lovers in revenge for bringing the scourge of hemophilia into the Spanish royal family, and after fifteen years of marriage the couple separated.

They had been chased out of the country in the run-up to the civil war that brought General Franco to power and had left for Rome.

Despite the fact that the king had bedded numerous women, it was Ena’s relationship with Duchess Rosario Lecera and her husband the Duke that ultimately caused the rift.

The king angrily accused his wife of having an affair with the duke, with whom she was close.

But according to Ena’s biographer Gerard Noel, the duchess – unknown to the king – was also in love with Ena.

“Ena had no such proclivities,” he writes defensively, “although the Duchess’s were well known – a number of governesses and maids had been dismissed from her service under mysterious circumstances over the years.”

But significantly, when the king ordered his wife to choose between him and the duke, Ena replied in the plural: she would not give up the man OR the woman.

Ena was told to leave Italy, and she came back to England to take a house near Kensington Palace where her mother, Princess Beatrice, still lived.

Although the war clouds were gathering in Europe, she felt safe there and led a hectic social life, a popular guest at many parties. Her wandering days were over.

Then, one day in late August 1939, the Secretary of State, Anthony Eden, knocked on her door. He came to tell her that she had to leave the country.

He could not guarantee her safety in England if war broke out, he said. Technically, she was no longer a member of the British Royal Family – even though her cousin was the King, George VI.

She needs to pack her bags and go.

His unspoken reason: she could be a security risk. No one knew whether Spain would enter World War II and, if so, which side they would be on.

Ena urgently called the king at Buckingham Palace, but he did not return the call. Instead he wrote her a note saying ‘I hope you won’t be away long, and that a visit to Balmoral will still be possible.’

He didn’t mean it – and Ena knew it. Her royal cousins ​​had set her adrift and left her to her fate.

She fled to Switzerland, where she served out the war.

Occasionally, Queen Mary would send her money – in strict defiance of wartime currency restrictions – to keep her afloat.

The Queen of Spain bitterly vowed that she would never come ‘home’ to Britain again.

On her death in 1969 she was buried in Lausanne.