The sexy European blueblood so magnetic that a classic British actor begged her to marry him – and why the Princess turned down King Charles’ attempts to court her
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In his courting days, King Charles was more than happy to be seen with her on his arm. Sexy Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia was the most alluring blueblood that postwar Europe had ever seen, and he revelled in the attention.
Her list of conquests was already long and to Elizabeth, her second cousin Charles was just another date. She’d been married – twice – so was out of the running to become the future Princess of Wales when they were spotted together at polo in 1975. Plus the stunning Elizabeth was twelve years older – though she didn’t look it.
The daughter of the last Regent of Yugoslavia, Prince Paul, she was a first-cousin of the Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra. But though she could turn on the ‘princess’ bit when required, Elizabeth preferred the company of red-blooded men, not blue-blooded princes.
One conquest was the serial bed-hopper Warren Beattie. Another was British actor Richard Burton – who in between his stormy first and second marriages to Elizabeth Taylor, became so smitten by the princess he begged her to marry him.
‘I’m not a star. I have no career. There will be no separations in our lives, so I do not see how this cannot last,’ gushed the princess about Britain’s leading actor as they announced their engagement in November 1974.
But it was all over before you could say ‘Cut!’
Princess Olga with her three week old baby girl, Princess Elizabeth
The Duke of Kent sits with the princess during a visit to see Prince Paul of Yugoslavia
Princess Elizabeth arriving with Princess Alexandra of Kent for the wedding of the Hon Laura Smith to Mr Michael Brand
The Duchess of Kent, Princess Alexandra and Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia arriving in identical outfits of fur coats and black dresses
The engagement was a risky step for both. She’d already been married – to New York fashion czar Howard Oxenberg, then to Oxford-educated banker Neil Balfour. (With Oxenburg she had a baby girl, Catherine, who’d rise to become an international star playing Amanda Carrington in the fabled TV series Dynasty).
Burton had been also married twice – to his first wife Sybil, then sensationally to Elizabeth Taylor, the Queen of Hollywood. For Taylor, Richard was to be her fifth marriage, and their nuptials followed a scandal when the couple, who’d got together on the ‘Cleopatra’ film set, were accused by the Vatican of ‘erotic vagrancy’. Both were still married at the time.
The couple divorced in 1974, with Taylor having been the one to introduce Princess Elizabeth to Burton. Within five months of the decree absolute, the princess and Richard were engaged – even though Burton confessed he was scared of her.
‘She is very pretty & sexy but impertinent,’ he confided to his diary. ‘Very self-sufficient, brittle. I’m not absolutely sure she mightn’t be a little bit nasty behind one’s back. A touch of the daggers – until I get to know her better I shall wear armour on my back, where the daggers go in.
‘Elisheba [his pet name for her] is after Warren Beatty. Bess [Elizabeth Taylor] warned her off – but naturally when a women is set on a certain course of action, order turns into chaos, and logic into insanity.’
Despite this, Burton managed to push Beatty to one side and grabbed the volatile, alluring princess for himself. He couldn’t wait to get her up the aisle, and neither could she – when they announced their engagement to the world’s press, Elizabeth was still married to Balfour.
Prince Charles with Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia at Smith’s Lawn, Windsor in 1975
Elizabeth Taylor introduced Princess Elizabeth to Burton. Within five months of the decree absolute, the princess and Richard were engaged
Elizabeth with Richard Burton and her daughter Catherine Oxenberg, between her second and third marriages she was reportedly engaged to Welsh actor
Catherine Oxenberg played Amanda Carrington in Dynasty and seen here with Michael Praed in ‘The Wedding’ in 1985
She took him to Paris to meet her parents. Prince Paul, the head of state when World War II broke out, was a committed Anglophile having studied at Oxford, and took to Burton immediately, nodding enthusiastically when the subject of marriage came up.
Elizabeth’s mother, Princess Olga, was the snooty sister of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent – both sisters were granddaughters of King George I of Greece – and from the very first moment of their meeting looked down her nose at the Welsh actor, despite his colossal box office success and considerable riches.
In a taxi, she burst into tears and ‘cried all the way home’, according to biographer Robert Prentice. ‘Thoughts and worries raged through her mind that night.’ She went to see a spirit medium in London who got in touch – so she thought – with various dead relatives. They helped her through the crisis which, as it turned out, had been all for nothing.
Richard Burton’s diaries – never less than brutally honest about himself and others – are curiously silent about what happened next. But within weeks of the engagement, it was over.
No explanation was ever made, though within weeks of their getting together Burton was having an affair with the actress and former Playboy centrefold Jeannie Bell. And, according to Elizabeth’s daughter Christina Oxenberg in an article for Avenue magazine: ‘She went on to squire many others around. I did not meet all these paramours, but rather only the serious boyfriends, and there were quite a few [of those].’
Put simply, they were two ships passing in the night.
