August Ludwig Freiherr von Senarclens de Grancy (19 August 1794 – 3 October 1871) was born Auguste Louis de Senarclens de Grancy at the Château d'Etoy in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, the ancestral home of the de Loriol Family, the firstborn son of three sons and four daughters of Cesar August Freiherr von Senarclens de Grancy, (born César Auguste de Senarclens de Grancy in 1763) and wife Élizabeth Claudine Marie-Rose de Loriol (born in 1773).
He became Grand Master of Stables of the Grand Duke of Hesse, Major General and Knight of Honor and Devotion in the Order of Malta. It is also alleged that he was the biological father of four of his employer's wife's children and, thus, an ancestor of the current King of Spain and the current heir apparent to the throne of the United Kingdom. He is also a direct-line ancestor of the current pretenders the thrones of Yugoslavia, Romania and the German Empire.
Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse, bought the area of Heiligenberg near Jugenheim in 1820 for his Chamberlain, von Senarclens de Grancy, to live, and after the acquisition Grand Duchess Wilhelmine no longer lived with her spouse, nor did they have any children since 1809. Senarclens's identity as the father of the later children of Wilhelmine of Baden was strongly suspected: correspondence detailing this involved many government ministers, ambassadors and sovereigns, including Tsar Nicholas I and Queen Victoria.
By Wilhelmina, he is believed to have fathered four children:
- Unnamed Prince/Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt (b. and d. 1820)
- Princess Elizabeth of Hesse-Darmstadt (1821–1826)
- Prince Alexander of Hesse-Darmstadt (1823–1888)
- Princess Marie of Hesse-Darmstadt (1824–1880)
Alexander and Marie were the only two to survive childhood and were deemed to be the legal children of Wilhelmina's husband, Grand Duke Louis II. They are ancestors of the later Tsars of Russia, as well as the Battenbergs (now known as the Mountbattens).
After 1836, he married Luise Wilhelmine Camille von Otting und Fünfstetten (24 May 1810 - 1876), a morganatic descendant of the Houses of Zweibrucken and Baden-Durlach, by whom he had three sons and three daughters.
He died at Jugenheim.
Famous quotes containing the words august and/or von:
“Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“There is nothing outside of us that is not at the same time in us, and as the external world has its colors the eye, too, has colors.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)