As Prince Michael of Kent turns 82, how the controversial father of Lady Gabriella Windsor was in Britain’s reserve bobsleigh squad at 1972 Winter Olympics – before he married ‘Princess Pushy’

As he turns 82 in the present day, Prince Michael of Kent will seemingly be celebrating in a low-key vogue with shut household.

In latest months he and his spouse Princess Michael have been supporting their daughter Woman Gabriella Windsor after the loss of life of her husband Thomas Kingston in February.

Within the weeks after her tragic loss, Woman Gabriella moved again in along with her dad and mom at their Kensington Palace condominium.

Her father is the primary cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth, the brother of the Duke of Kent, a grandson of King George V and a cousin-twice-removed of Russia’s final Tsar, Nicholas II. 

In his youthful years, Prince Michael was a aggressive rower and bobsledder and was even on the reserve record for Britain’s bobsleigh group on the 1972 Winter Olympics. 

However not like his daughter’s impeccable public picture, Prince Michael – who bears a placing resemblance to Tsar Nicholas – has hit the headlines for the flawed causes up to now.

He has been criticised for earlier enterprise dealings in Russia and the promoting of royal souvenirs on US tv.

And his spouse – famously dubbed ‘Princess Pushy’ by Princess Anne – has additionally obtained criticism.

Princess Michael has had feuds with Kensington Palace neighbours and buddies, accusations of racism levelled her manner and confronted claims that she thinks overly extremely of herself – after saying she had extra royal blood than all those that had married into her husband’s household since Prince Philip. 

She claimed that her allegedly esteemed lineage was ‘only a genealogical factor, a truth of life’.

Her daughter’s husband was discovered useless at his dad and mom’ dwelling within the Cotswolds with a ‘traumatic head wound’, an inquest present in March.

Woman Gabriella moved out of the Notting Hill dwelling she had shared with Mr Kingston so she might be along with her dad and mom.

Certainly one of her buddies informed the Mail’s Richard Eden: They [Prince Michael and Princess Michael] wished Ella to be with them, and he or she did not wish to be alone within the dwelling she shared with Tom. 

‘All of us are rallying spherical and he or she’s going to be OK.’ 

Prince Michael accompanied his daughter when she arrived for her marriage ceremony at St George’s Chapel in Windsor in 2019. 

Prince Michael’s father, Prince George, the Duke of Kent, was the youthful brother of each King George VI and King Edward VIII, who famously grew to become the Duke of Windsor after abdicating in 1936 so he might marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

He’s associated to Tsar Nicholas by his grandfather George V, who was a primary cousin of the assassinated Russian ruler.   

Prince Michael can also be a cousin of the late Prince Philip by his mom, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, who was the niece of the Duke of Edinburgh’s father, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark.  

Born simply weeks earlier than his father’s tragic loss of life in a airplane crash in 1942, Prince Michael is the youngest of three. 

The oldest, the Duke of Kent, now 87, inherited his title when he was solely six. His sister, Princess Alexandra, 86, is, just like the Duke, a working royal.

While he has to deal with being the youngest of three, Prince Michael can boast about the truth that one in every of his godparents was wartime US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He agreed to tackle the honour after being requested to take action by the Prince’s dad and mom, as a result of truth he was born on the US’s Independence Day.

When the Queen and Prince Philip married at Westminster Abbey in 1947, Prince Michael, then aged simply 5, was one of many web page boys. 

Images of the ceremony present him holding up the then Princess’s practice as she stood subsequent to her husband-to-be in entrance of Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher. 

The Prince was later among the many visitors on the Queen’s Coronation in 1953. 

Like his brother, Prince Michael was educated at Eton Faculty and had a protracted Military profession. 

His time within the forces got here to an finish in 1981, when he retired with the rank of Main. 

By then, he had additionally competed in rowing and bobsleigh competitions.

The closure of the navy chapter in his life got here simply three years after the start of the one that will outline him – his marriage to Princess Michael, who was born Baroness Marie-Christine von Reibnitz.

Though she has boasted of the actual fact she is a descendant of each Catherine de Medici, spouse of King Henry II of France, and his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, the Princess was raised within the Australian suburbs. 

That did nonetheless not cease the Queen from apparently mischievously remarking to Lord Mountbatten that the Princess ‘sounds a bit too grand for us’.  

The pair’s union was instantly the topic of controversy, due to the truth that the Princess had beforehand been married for six years to British financier Thomas Troubridge.

And since the Princess was a Catholic, it meant Prince Michael needed to surrender his succession rights, due to the Act of Settlement 1701. 

The Act barred Catholics from having anyplace within the line of succession and remained in place till 2013, when new laws was handed.

The couple had a civil ceremony after the then Pope, Paul VI, had barred them from having a Catholic marriage ceremony. 

However the background of Prince Michael’s alternative of spouse was simply the primary in a sequence of undesirable newspaper headlines.

Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties it emerged that the Princess had develop into near rich oil tycoon Ward Hunt, resulting in hypothesis that she almost left her husband. 

Quickly afterwards, it emerged that her father, who deserted her mom on the finish of the Second World Conflict, had been an officer within the Nazi SS for 11 years. 

The Princess insisted she had not recognized about her father’s previous and was deeply affected by the disgrace of the saga. 

She later stated in an interview: ‘It got here as a very nice blow to me, as a result of I all the time fairly hero-worshipped him.

‘What the general public notion of me can be, I do not know. I wasn’t alive when all this occurred. 

‘So I hope they may choose me alone efficiency however my shoulders are broad and I shall carry it. However sure, it is a deep disgrace for me.’

Prince Michael poured additional gasoline on the hearsay mill when he insisted that the numerous period of time they spent aside truly made their marriage ‘richer’.

Later, within the Nineteen Nineties, he was photographed escorting the Royal Ballet’s former principal dancer Bryony Brind, who was 18 years his junior.

The Princess then added to the doubts in regards to the energy of their marriage when she was photographed a couple of years later holding fingers with and stroking the cheek of Russian furnishings magnate Mikhail Kravchenko on a visit to Venice.

Each insisted that nothing untoward had occurred.

In 2006, American artist and socialite Lucy Weber claimed to have had an eight-year relationship with the Prince, however he refused to remark.

In 2010, he insisted that his marriage was stable, saying: ‘I believe individuals put two and two collectively and make 5. 

‘We spend a whole lot of time aside. The princess is a author and he or she likes to get to put in writing.

‘We each have completely different pursuits and, though some coincide, this makes for a a lot richer life than all the time doing the identical factor. 

‘So we have now an amazing life and we take pleasure in virtually all of it.’

As for his or her enterprise pursuits, the couple have been accused of exploiting their connections, incomes the nickname Hire-a-Kent because of this. 

In contrast to his siblings, Prince Michael shouldn’t be labeled as working royal, and nor his is spouse. 

They subsequently don’t obtain public cash and have needed to discover different methods to make a dwelling. 

In 1994, many royal watchers have been left open-mouthed when Prince Michael marketed cheesy branded souvenirs on US tv, underneath the heading ‘Home of Windsor’.

Within the look on Larry King’s CNN present, he was seen holding up embellished plates and different objects and in addition talked about the telephone quantity that viewers might ring in the event that they wished to purchase the merchandise.

While the gross sales pitch labored – CNN’s telephone strains have been stated to be ‘jammed’ with would-be clients – the brazen use of his royal standing was stated to have infuriated the Queen. 

MPs additionally complained of Prince Michael’s alleged use of international embassy services for enterprise journeys, prompting him to insist that controversy was ‘unhelpful and infrequently hurtful’.

He added: ‘Should you consider in what you’re doing, it provides you a stable base from which to function.

‘So when the knocks come, unpalatable and unpleasant although they might be, you simply get on with it. You’ve got to withstand the temptation to get affected by it.’

The couple wanted the cash to fund each their lavish way of life and the £120,000-a-year lease on their Kensington Palace condominium. 

They’d earlier purchased and lived in Nether Lypiatt Manor in Gloucestershire, having turned down Highgrove – later owned by King Charles when he was the Prince of Wales – as a result of it was too small.

There was uproar in 2002 when it was claimed that they have been paying a peppercorn lease of simply £69 per week for his or her Kensington Palace condominium. 

The Queen then paid the lease out of her non-public funds in recognition of the royal and charitable work the couple did at their very own expense. 

However this association solely lasted for a couple of years and, confronted with a requirement that they meet the price of the lease themselves, they offered their plush dwelling for £5.75million in 2006.

Extra not too long ago, Prince Michael’s lengthy affiliation with Russia has come again to chunk him.

Having learnt to talk Russian whereas within the Military, the Prince had enterprise pursuits within the nation till final 12 months, when he needed to sever ties after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The unlawful invasion additionally prompted him at hand again the Order of Friendship award -one of Russia’s highest honours – he was given by the Kremlin in 2009.

The gong was handed out by then president Dimitry Medvedev. 

His private web site, which now seems to have ceased functioning, had additionally listed the Prince as a patron of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce, a publish which he departed from in March final 12 months. 

And in 2021, video clips emerged displaying undercover reporters posing as Asian businessmen being informed that the Prince might secretly introduce them to senior figures in Putin’s regime. 

Prince Michael was filmed saying he could be ready to leverage his connections in Moscow to ‘deliver some profit’ to what he was informed was a Korean gold agency’s efforts to increase into Russia. 

His charge of £50,000 would guarantee he made ‘confidential’ representations to Putin’s internal circle. 

It later emerged that the creators of the bogus agency, Home of Haedong, have been reporters from the Channel 4 programme Dispatches. 

Prince Michael’s spokesman stated afterwards that he had ‘no particular relationship’ with Putin, having final met him in 2003 and having had ‘no contact with him or his workplace since then’.  

That controversy got here after Prince Michael visited Moscow in 2018 to open the Brookes Moscow College, a £25million academy widespread with rich Russian dad and mom. 

That journey got here within the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings, which led to then Prime Minister Theresa Could’s fierce criticism of Putin and the Russian regime.

The next 12 months, he was praised for ‘melting the ice of distrust’ between Russia and Britain on a go to to Yekaterinburg – the city the place Tsar Nicholas and his household have been murdered. 

His reputation in Moscow has seen him get given the affectionate nickname of ‘Kentski’, in keeping with one former Russian diplomat. 

Talking after the Prince was filmed by Channel 4, they added that he has  ‘vital connections amongst influential enterprise individuals, and he’s revered by main political figures. 

‘It may be arduous to know the place the road is between his royal duties and his private business actions.’ 

Going additional again, in 2012 it emerged that the Prince had been given a ‘stipend’ of £320,000 by former tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who died in 2013. 

Nonetheless, regardless of the revenue, Princess Michael beforehand complained of how she and her husband needed to rein of their way of life after they started paying the total lease on their Kensington Palace condominium. 

She informed an interviewer: ‘I’m in very austere financial occasions, too, thanks very a lot.

‘We have reduce dramatically. I imply, we by no means exit to dinner except we go to anyone’s home. 

‘We by no means go to eating places. That is too extravagant. We invite individuals right here. I cook dinner.’ 

However the dangerous press generated by their monetary affairs is nothing in comparison with the backlash the Princess herself has confronted occasionally. 

In 2004, a gaggle of black diners in New York’s Da Silvano restaurant claimed to have heard her say ‘return to the colonies’.

She insisted that she had requested to be moved to a quieter desk and, when informed that the one one out there was ‘in Siberia’ – which means a much less busy a part of the restaurant – she responded: ‘Siberia? At this level, I might be prepared to return to the colonies.’ 

This dangerous publicity this generated was topped by her 2017 choice to reach for the Queen’s Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace – the place visitors included Prince Harry’s combined race fiancée Meghan Markle – sporting a Blackamoor Brooch.  

While she apologised, issues weren’t helped when an ex-boyfriend of her daughter claimed that ‘royals and Nazis go collectively like blini and caviar’.

Woman Gabriella’s ex-boyfriend of three years, Aatish Taseer, claimed that the Princess as soon as owned two black sheep at her Gloucestershire dwelling which she named Venus and Serena, after African-American tennis sisters. 

And the couple’s son, Lord Frederick Windsor, 43, additionally introduced additional controversy for his dad and mom when he was allegedly noticed snorting cocaine at a London occasion in 1999. 

In the summertime of 2022, it was reported that Prince Michael and his spouse have been to retire from public life.

This was adopted by information in March this 12 months that they’re closing their enterprise, which is known as Cantium Companies.

The Prince’s spokesman declined to touch upon the applying at Corporations Home to ‘strike off’ Cantium. 

Final 12 months’s preliminary stories of their retirement have been adopted by one more occasion – the couple’s annual summer time bash within the backyard of their dwelling at Kensington Palace.

The gathering of round 150 family and friends occurred to be held on the identical day as Prince Michael’s eightieth birthday. 

The visitors included Michael’s elder brother and Chantal Hanover, the ex-wife of Prince Ernst August. 

While that occasion was largely free from the media highlight, Prince Michael and his spouse did seem in entrance of the lense of a digital camera once more in September 2022, after they each attended the funeral of the Queen. 

And so they have been current at King Charles’ Coronation final Could. 

Prince Michael attended the Chelsea Flower Present in Could and was seen earlier this month visiting non-public member’s membership Oswald’s.