
Baby joy for the royal family as they announce a princess is pregnant
The royal, 34, married Nicolas Bagory in 2023 at Luxembourg Town Hall, before they went on to welcome their first child last May, a daughter named Victorie.
Now, the couple have revealed that their family is about to grow even larger after revealing that Princess Alexandra is pregnant.
The loved-up pair released a statement via the institution's official Instagram page on Thursday evening.
It read: 'Their Royal Highnesses the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess are delighted to announce that Princess Alexandra and Mr. Nicolas Bagory are expecting their second child.
'The Grand Duke, the Grand Duchess, and members of both families share in the joy of their children.'
The family also unveiled the timeline of the birth and said that the new infant is expected to be born in the autumn season.
In 2011, the Luxembourg Succession Rules were revised to allow women in the line of succession - which added Princess Alexandra along with her future children.
The social media post soon racked much excitement for royal fans who commented their best wishes to Alexandra and Nicolas.
One wrote: 'Sincere congratulations to the happy parents.'
Another penned: 'Congratulations to Princess Alexandra and Mr Bagory,' while many others wished the happy couple congratulations.
Alexandra is the daughter of Grand Duke Henri and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg.
As well as being an active working royal, Princess Alexandra - who is sixth in line to the throne - also works as a professional linguist.
Meanwhile, Nicolas, who grew up in Brittany, France, works on social and cultural projects in Paris, where he is based.
Up until her 20th birthday, Princess Alexandra was excluded from the line of succession until 2011, when Grand Duke Henri adopted Absolute Primogeniture, meaning that all his descendants could be in line for the throne, regardless of gender.
She was nine when her father ascended the throne in 2000 after her grandfather abdicated in his favour.
According to her online biography, Alexandra speaks four languages fluently, including Luxembourgian, English, French and Spanish. She can also hold her own in German and Italian.
Throughout her studies - which she pursued in the US, France and Ireland - the Luxembourg royal expressed a keen interest in international relations and conflict.
She even interned for the United Nations in New York when Luxembourg was one of its non-permanent members.
She dedicates her time to volunteering with refugee associations and loves sports, being a keen skier, dancer and tennis player.
It comes after Grand Duchess Maria Teresa revealed the reason behind her husband Grand Duke Henri's shock decision to abdicate the Luxembourg throne.
The monarch, 70, made the announcement in December during what will now be considered his last ever annual Christmas broadcast, bringing his 24-year reign to an end.
His son, Prince Guillaume, 43, will officially take the throne from October - and has already assumed many of his father's duties in recent months.
He will be the second European monarch to step down in recent years. In January 2024, Queen Margrethe of Denmark decoded to give up the throne after 52 years, with her son Frederik taking over as King.
In an exclusive interview given to HELLO! Magazine at her impressive home in Berg Castle, the Grand Duchess has revealed the real reasons behind the change in plan.
She said that, unlike other monarchies, abdication is a tradition in the Luxembourg royal family.
"It's a family tradition that goes back to Henri's grandmother, Grand Duchess Charlotte,' the Duchess explained.
'Then his father Jean did the same. What is special and doesn't exist in other monarchies is the transition period we have, which makes things smoother.'
In 2000, Grand Duke Henri took to the throne when his father, Grand Duke Jean abdicated.
Duchess Maria Teresa added: 'So the abdication isn't something radical. After reigning for 25 years, at our age and with such a well-prepared heir, we're able to pass on the baton and enjoy some rest.'
She said that there will be a one-year transition period as the reins are handed over, with the Grand Duke remaining as head of state but delegating some of his powers.
In October, the royal couple will retire to the Fischbach Estate to make way for their heirs, Prince Guillaume and Princess Stephanie.
The Duchess herself, who has been married to the Duke for 44 years, grew up in Cuba but was forced to flee due to the Castro revolution in 1959. The couple share five children: Guillaume, Felix, Louis, Alexandra and Sebastien.
Unlike other monarchies, Luxembourg is helmed by a Grand Duke, rather than a king or queen.
The current house is Nassau-Weilburg, dating back to a family pact in 1783.
During the broadcast in December, the outgoing Grand Duke said he was 'proud' to have served his country for a quarter of a century.
He said: 'It has been a period during which Luxembourg has undergone great changes, and I am proud to have been able to, together with the Grand Duchess, walk this path with you.'
While explaining that 'the Grand Duke is above political parties and does not interfere in political debates,' he said, 'nothing prevents me from speaking out when the fundamental interests of the country and its citizens are at stake.'
He continued: 'This is what I have strived to do over the past 25 years, paying particular attention from the outset to the diversity of our population, the need for coexistence, and sustainability in all areas of our society, so that we can leave our children a healthier country.'
Henri had hinted at stepping down in June this year when he announced his son would become Lieutenant-Representant.
After the announcement, the Grand Duke appeared very moved and kissed his son whilst the room applauded.
According to the official Palace website, 'designation of the Lieutenant-Representative traditionally occurs in the process of change of reign'.
'This is the beginning of a next chapter for our monarchy,' Luxembourg's Prime Minister Luc Frieden told local media at the time.
While the move over the summer on the country's National Day came as a shock to the public, Frieden said it had been mulled behind closed doors for a while.
'We have been talking about it for some time, and I think that on the national holiday it was the right moment, because the Grand Duke is the symbol of our nation,' he said.
Grand Duke Henri is the eldest son of the five children of Grand Duke Jean and Grand Duchess Joséphine-Charlotte and took to the throne in 2000, after his father abdicated following a 36-year reign.
Following his birthday last year, he admitted that he 'intends to retire at some point' in an interview with French publication La Libre.
'All this is planned in family consultation. I find that it is very important to give young people a perspective.'
'There are plans, it will happen,' the Grand Duke continued.
Last year, Queen Margrethe of Denmark decided to give up the throne after 52 years, making way for her son Frederik to take over as King on 14 January.
In a statement revealing the news, the former Danish monarch said: 'I have decided that now is the right time.
'The 14th January 2024 - 52 years after I followed my beloved father - I will step back as the Queen of Denmark. I leave the throne to my son the Crown Prince Frederik.'
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Daily Mail
34 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Eight years on, the undiagnosed condition that may explain why no one believed Chloe Ayling after she was snatched by a madman, injected with ketamine and held captive
She became one of the most famous – or infamous – kidnapping victims of our time. When British glamour model Chloe Ayling was abducted on a bogus photoshoot in Milan in 2017, her plight made global headlines and last year led to a gripping TV drama. Little wonder, because it was the real-life stuff of nightmares. Chloe, then only 20, was grabbed from behind and bundled into a suitcase. Injected with ketamine and chained to furniture, she was forced to sleep on the floor of a remote farmhouse. Pictures of her lying unconscious in skimpy clothing were sent to her manager in London, along with a demand for €300,000 (£260,000). If the ransom wasn't paid within a week, she would be auctioned off as a sex slave. She was also told she risked being fed to tigers when her 'buyers' tired of her. Although she was eventually released, it has been another ordeal for Chloe to rebuild her life. The reason? Many simply didn't believe her graphic and appalling story. So outlandish was the sequence of events she described – and crucially how odd her unemotional retelling of the story was – that to this day, eight years on, questions still abound about whether she was complicit in the kidnap and it was all an elaborate publicity stunt. Could the BBC documentary airing tonight finally silence the online commentators and conspiracy theorists? Including interviews with British and Italian police officers who were involved (and some of whom admit they too doubted Chloe's story at first), the three-part series offers an interesting new theory. It suggests Chloe's lack of emotion, both during the kidnap and in media interviews afterwards, was the result of immaturity and nervousness at finding herself in the public eye – but also of undiagnosed autism. Towards the end of the documentary, she actually receives a formal diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, which she says explains so much – not just about her reactions during her kidnap ordeal, but about her life before and since. 'I had a lot of difficulties with communication,' she explains in the documentary, while poring over childhood pictures. 'I'd react in the wrong way. If I was being told off I would smile. I just had the wrong reactions to things. 'My mum would come with me on school trips because I wouldn't be able to say what I wanted or express how I was feeling. For ages I just said I'm not an emotional person, but now I realise that no matter now hard I try, I just can't [express emotion].' In hindsight this was never more apparent than Chloe's attempt to communicate what had happened to her when she returned home to the UK. What a catastrophe that was. She admits: 'The aftermath affected me more than the kidnap.' The defining moment for many was when Chloe emerged from her mother's house to face the world's press to deliver a statement that began: 'I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour.' The mountain house where Chloe was held for six days near Turin in Italy The smile on her face, her almost cheerily robotic delivery, and the way she was dressed – in a revealing vest top and tiny pair of shorts – seemed completely at odds with the seriousness of the situation. Public bafflement was quickly followed by judgment. These days we might call it victim blaming, although there looked to be inconsistencies in Chloe's story which contributed to the sheer disbelief that the situation happened the way she said it did. Why had she gone shopping with her kidnapper to buy shoes, for instance? Why hadn't she tried to run? Chloe, now 28, has spent the years since trying to convince others about what happened – even though in the eyes of the law there is no doubt whatsoever. Polish national Lukasz Herba was sentenced to 16 years and nine months (although this was later reduced to just over 11 years on appeal) after being convicted of her kidnapping. A career that went on to include a stint in the Big Brother house the following year – seen by many as evidence of Chloe's desire to be famous at all costs – hardly helped. 'What is it about me and my story that makes this so unbelievable?' she asks at the start of this documentary. By the end, you get the impression she has as much of an answer as she is ever going to get: because she didn't behave in the way most victims would, her story was scrutinised and found lacking. And because no one asked whether her robotic telling of her story could have another explanation, she was dismissed as a money-grabber who wanted only to be famous. By rights she should be livid, although she doesn't appear to be. 'I can't really be mad at people for not understanding, when I didn't really understand it myself,' she concludes. Chloe's diagnosis is a development that makes complete sense to her former manager Phil Green, who appears in the documentary reliving the horror of having to deal with hostage demands. Phil, who had been a lawyer before setting up a modelling agency, met Chloe when she was 19 and told me this week while the attractive teenager was clearly ambitious ('her goal was to have 100,000 followers on Instagram'), she wasn't a typical model-about-town. 'She didn't seem to have many friends, and didn't hang about with the other models. She lived at home with her mum,' he says. Unusually, for someone starting off in modelling, she also had a baby son 'who would only have been about one at the time,' remembers Phil. The child lived with his father, Chloe's ex partner Conor Keyes. Phil had not been aware of any suggestion of autism until the documentary, but now wonders if Chloe's condition actually helped her maintain a facade of calmness during the ordeal. 'Her reaction to everything that happened was so unemotional, even at the time, but maybe that was a good thing because if she'd behaved in the way some other girls would have who knows what would have happened? Chloe smiles in a skimpy top and shorts as she spoke to the press outside her mother's house after leaving Italy 'Afterwards though it led to people just not believing her.' His inclusion in the documentary defending her is also interesting given the background. Although Phil was the one who always seemed most steadfastly in her corner, Chloe appears to have blamed him for not doing enough to help secure her freedom and perhaps for putting her in jeopardy in the first place by sending her to Milan for the assignment. She dumped him as her manager as soon as she returned from Italy and they haven't spoken since. 'It was brutal,' he says of his sacking. 'I think she blamed me for what happened and we've never been able to sit down and talk properly about it. 'She thought I'd abandoned her [to the kidnappers], but the reality is that my office, which was in my house, had been taken over by the police. 'They were replying to the kidnapper's emails on my behalf. I was out of my depth trying to deal with it all, and I still feel terrible about what happened. I think she has remained bitter. But I always knew she was telling the truth.' He feels Chloe was the victim of more than the kidnapping, angrily lashing out today at the Italian prosecutors who put her story in the public domain against Chloe's own wishes. They also forced her to stay in Italy for weeks after her release, effectively holding her captive all over again. 'If that had happened to an Italian girl in Britain, she would have been allowed to go home immediately to be with her family.' On top of that, the Italian authorities took Chloe back to the property where she had been held – ostensibly to help with their investigation. 'My feeling then was that they didn't believe her and wanted to see her reaction,' he says. The feeling that Chloe was badly let down is echoed by the detective superintendent who headed the British side of the operation, who admits on camera (on condition of anonymity) that the lowest point in his 30-year career was when he realised he had not been able to find or save Chloe. 'It was my job to get her back and I didn't,' he says. The astonishing thing about this case is that it was not the authorities in either Britain or Italy who did save her. She was found only because the man holding her – a man she knew as 'MD', but who was later identified as Polish national Lukasz Herba – walked her into the British Consulate in Milan. In court Herba was described as a 'narcissistic fantasist' who had become obsessed with Chloe. A computer programmer who was living in the West Midlands, Herba had been a Facebook friend of Chloe's (a fact she discovered only after the kidnapping). In order to kidnap her he concocted an elaborate plan, posing as a photographer called Andre Lazio to book her via her agent for a modelling job in Milan. With the help of his brother Michal, who was also jailed for his part, he then abducted Chloe when she arrived in Italy, drugging her and bundling her into a holdall, before taking her to a remote hideout where he kept her captive for six days. He convinced Chloe that he was a trained assassin working for a Mafia organisation called Black Death. Although he never sexually assaulted her, she does speak in this documentary about how he did make sexual advances – but backed off when she convinced him that they would be able to embark on a proper relationship once she was free. She refers to an incident where he tried to kiss her but she declined, saying that she wasn't in the right 'headspace' but implied she could be once she was free. 'He lit up then and everything changed,' she says. 'He could easily have just raped me,' says Chloe, 'but he had this idea of having me in his future. He didn't want to upset me. I repeated that I was not in the right headspace. I wanted to be released before anything sexual happens. I got up and went to have a shower and he was all sorted after my shower. We didn't speak about it again.' Sharing his bed and shopping with him? While these were all details that caused people to doubt her, she says it was all part of her desperate attempt to gain his trust, hoping that he would break ranks, defy his dangerous bosses and help her escape. She was not to know that there was no Black Death organisation. 'He was the good guy in my eyes,' she says. After Herba deposited her at the British Consulate, initially Chloe attempted to stick to the script Herba had drilled into her – that he had simply found her and was her rescuer – but she soon caved under questioning. The fact that some details, such as the shopping trip for shoes, emerged later was highly damning to Chloe, but the Italian police accepted her story that she was simply embarrassed at how far she had gone to appear to be her captor's girlfriend. But public opinion was never as accepting and Chloe is understandably hurt that she was never given credit for her own role in her escape. What has happened to her since? After that perhaps ill-advised appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018, she has rebuilt her life as a model, posting regularly on OnlyFans and Instagram (where she describes herself as an 'entrepreneur' and a 'multiple property owner'). She was never in a career that was compatible with anonymity, but she reveals in the documentary that a few years ago she bought a property in North Wales, falling in love with the area and attracted by the fact that no one knows who she is there. There is no mention of her son in the documentary. She declined to involve him for privacy reasons. Nor is her mum Beata a part of it. Chloe, originally from Coulsdon in south London, explains that her mother was so traumatised by the kidnap ordeal that she still cannot talk about it even eight years on. And while the autism diagnosis has helped Chloe herself understand the backlash against her, she is keen to stress that it does not excuse how she was doubted. There is rarely such a thing as a 'perfect victim' she says. 'Autism plays a big part in the way that I reacted, and that was confusing to neurotypical people. 'However, there are other reasons why people could react in the way that I did, or in an 'unusual' way that doesn't fit the normal box. 'People disassociate with events that have happened or have a delayed reaction, especially after trauma. So, it can't all be put down to a diagnosis, and that shouldn't affect the way people treated me.'


Daily Mail
36 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
'I thought it was a hat!' Video of man with bob throwing shapes in Ibiza sparks hilarious memes
A young partygoer with a stylish bob has been spotted cutting shapes in Ibiza. Footage of the man - Jack Kay - went viral at the start of this week as he was filmed donning a gold chain and pair of sunglasses with a baby pink cup gripped in his hand. But it was the dancer's haircut that caught the attention of thousands of social media users - with many saying they thought the 'top bloke' had been wearing a hat. The lone reveller's bright white teeth contrast perfectly with his black vest as he purses his lips and throws out his best moves to the groove of the music. Several thousand people have commented under the footage on TikTok after it was uploaded with a plea to locate the 'absolute legend'. Somebody claimed the mystery dancer was in fact 'Lloyd Christmas ' - a character from the film Dumb and Dumber who is also known to sport an iconic bob. One person said: 'When you've got Ibiza at 3 but the battle of hastings at 4.' Another added: 'That's a hat right? It is... it must be? Tell me it is...'. Since the footage spread online Mr Kay - now known as "Ibiza final boss" has uploaded a brand new video to TikTok - but this time with friends. He can be seen wearing the same iconic sunglasses and gold chain pulling out more dance moves from under his belt as a mate puts his arm around Mr Kay's neck. A montage of photos also shows the partygoer enjoying himself with "the lads". Somebody commented under the video: 'Short back and Battle of Hastings, cheers mate.' Another person said: 'Short back and magna carter please mate.' And a third concluded: 'Are the mandem from Sherwood Forest as well?' Mr Kay has already developed a fanbase with some admirers even using him as their artistic muse. Someone who had painted a portrait of the reveller caption their social media post: 'Excellent use of free will if I do say so myself.' Somebody concluded: 'When you've got Ibiza at 3 but the battle of hastings at 4.' The tweet was liked nearly 5000 times A number of people have even taken selfies with the Ibiza final boss as they bump into him on the island. Tony Truman, co-owner of Ocean Beach Ibiza, posed for a picture with the young champ while another fan mistook him for the DJ and presenter Charlie Sloth on their first encounter.


Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Love Island contestants were so randy during 'particularly feral year' in show's history that bosses 'had to stock up on condoms'
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