There are royal babies and there are royal babies that make a 89-year-old the matriarch of a new generation, and the birth of Isabel Marina Vesterberg on July 8 has made Princess Alexandra of Kent, Queen Elizabeth II’s first cousin and one of the longest-serving members of the extended Royal Family, a great-grandmother for the first time, which is a sentence that requires some genealogical scaffolding to follow but which GB News confirmed last week and which is the kind of milestone that arrives quietly and means something.
Flora Vesterberg, 31, who is the daughter of James Ogilvy and therefore the granddaughter of Princess Alexandra, announced the birth on Instagram: “Our daughter Isabel Marina Vesterberg arrived safely on the morning of 8 July. Timothy and I are overjoyed and full of love for her.” Flora married Swedish financier Timothy Vesterberg in 2020. The couple waited until July 11, three days after the birth, to share the news publicly, which is the timeline that allows mother and child to recover before the announcement cycle begins, and which produced a Tuesday confirmation followed by an article on GB News rather than a live birth announcement on Kensington Palace’s social media.
Flora is notable in extended Royal Family history for being the first member of the family to publicly discuss her autism diagnosis, which she disclosed in a personal essay for Vogue during Autism Awareness Month after receiving her diagnosis at 30 while preparing for her doctoral studies at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where she is researching Nordic impressionism. She is both a doctor of art history in progress and the granddaughter of Princess Alexandra and has now added mother to both.
Princess Alexandra, who is 89 and has been a working member of the Royal Family since the 1950s, attended this year’s Trooping the Colour, continues her patronages, and has now become a great-grandmother for the first time, which is the kind of personal milestone that arrives after a lifetime of institutional service and that the palace marks with a warm statement rather than a state occasion.
The baby is named Isabel Marina Vesterberg. The Marina is for Princess Marina of Greece, Alexandra’s mother, who died in 1968 and was one of the most beloved members of the Royal Family during her lifetime. The name is three generations deep in a family that has been doing this for considerably longer.
When the Queen’s first cousin becomes a great-grandmother at 89 and the baby carries the name of a princess who died before the baby’s grandmother was born, what exactly is the Royal Family passing on?
Sources
GB News: New royal baby born as Princess Alexandra’s granddaughter welcomes her first child
