Husband & King

Alfonso of Spain brought Victoria Eugenie, his British bride of 28 years ago, a full measure of woe. An anarchist's bomb nearly killed her on her wedding day. She was obliged to attend bullfights which she hated. She could not help thinking most Spaniards outlandish and sinister. Revolution chased her pell-mell out of Spain three years ago.

And cold, unimaginative Victoria Eugenie, Princess of Battenberg, brought her husband woe too. She was never really popular among Spaniards. She brought the King the dread haemophilia (easy bleeding) of her house, bore him a haemophilia heir, a second son who was a deaf mute, finally two whole boys, two fine girls capable of passing on their mother's haemophilia.

Last week, fortnight after his 48th birthday, the rumor spread insistently across Europe that at last Alfonso, still His Most Catholic Majesty to monarchists, was ready to ask Pope Pius XI for an annulment of his marriage to Victoria Eugenie. A twin rumor was that Alfonso proposed to renounce his rights to the Spanish throne in favor of his third son Prince Juan, now a cadet in the British Navy. Last week newshawks found a few of the Bourbon's "friends" who gravely agreed that "there is a foundation for the rumors." Vatican officials pointed out that the Pope grants an annulment only for the gravest moral and spiritual reasons.

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