Royals Who Left Their Countries To Move To America

Jerome Bonaparte played second fiddle to his more famous brother Napoleon, who even dictated his personal life. But initially, Jerome made his own fate, leaving France at 20 to marry wealthy 18-year-old Baltimore socialite Elizabeth Patterson in 1803, per the Jane Austen Center. The couple seemed over the moon and Elizabeth quickly became pregnant with their son. Napoleon, however, wasn't having any of it. He ordered his brother to return to France and annul his marriage, even barring Elizabeth from French-controlled Europe. Despite Jerome's pleas, he relented after Napoleon threatened to take away his titles. There was just one problem – the pope refused to grant an annulment.

Napoleon in the end declared the marriage null by his own authority and married Jerome off to German princess Catharina von Wurttemburg. But Jerome still loved Elizabeth, who had given birth to their U.S. citizen son Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte in 1805. So what was the hard-partying but ultimately unhappy elder Jerome to do? He offered Elizabeth land and titles in Westphalia, giving her the chance to be the "other" woman. She, however, would not accept anything less than being his wife and queen of Westphalia. That could not materialize, so she returned to Baltimore.

Together, Elizabeth and Jerome end up siring the little-known American Bonapartes. Jerome Napoleon, according to the Maryland Historical Museum, attended West Point and served with distinction in the French army before settling in Washington, D.C. Jerome Napoleon's son went to Harvard and served as Teddy Roosevelt's attorney general, ensuring that American Bonapartes did not disappear into obscurity. Not bad for spurned royalty.

In 1974, the Soviet-backed communist Derg overthrew the last Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, ending the dynasty that had ruled the country since 1274 and traced its ancestry back to the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. However, Selassie's relatives survived, fleeing the communists for exile in Europe and eventually, the United States. Today, the heir to the Ethiopian throne is Joel Makonnen, who told Business Insider his own story of how he came to the United States. Makonnen was born in exile in Rome and is the great-grandson of Haile Selassie. However, unlike the Windsors, who generally have flaunted their royal lineage, Makonnen said he rarely, if ever, discussed it. So when he met his wife, the American Ariana Austin (pictured with Makonnen) at a D.C. nightclub, she was in for a shock.

Austin found out about her then-boyfriend's lineage when a mutual friend spilled Makonnen's secret. It didn't prove to be much of an impediment, however, since the two eventually married in a lavish Ethiopian Orthodox wedding, according to Vogue – albeit one that was modified to ensure the bride's father could walk her down the aisle. Within the United States (a republic), however, they do not use their royal titles.

Today, the couple runs a media company called Old World/New World, which seeks to tell the stories of Africa and its diaspora through television and film. Among their pet projects is the eventual creation of an Ethiopian version of "The Crown," which would focus on the Ethiopian monarchy's epic 800+ year history.

Boasting a handful of illustrious ancestors from around Europe, Prince Dimitri is the son of Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia and Italian princess Maria Pia di Savoia, per his own website. Growing up surrounded by the jewelry of numerous European royal families, including the famous Romanov treasure, the prince developed a love of precious stones that led him to leave his native France for New York City to pursue his dream. The prince initially moved to New York in 1983 to work on Wall Street with the firm EF Hutton, per The New York Times. He soon left that world to pursue his passion for gems, working at various auction houses and jewelers before launching his own eponymous business in 1999.

The prince, however, is not a fan of vulgar, tasteless jewelry. Instead, his pieces are informed by another of his great loves – history. In his NYT interview, he noted that he chooses his materials and designs straight out of the history books. So the Savoy knot, considered historically a symbol of true, enduring love, adorns many of his pieces that are no doubt given to women by their lovers as gifts. Another of his favorite materials is Damascus steel. Why? Because it was the Latin crusaders' favored material for making their weapons.

Today, the prince's company produces jewelry lines catering to people from the uber-rich to the upper-middle class. And given that his pieces have been modeled in the biggest fashion houses, it is safe to say that his American gamble paid off in style.

Emperor Agustin Iturbide was Mexico's first monarch, reigning over a vast empire that stretched from Oregon to Panama for one year from 1822-23. However, he was forced to abdicate and eventually executed by republican forces led by a name that Americans might be more familiar with: Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana.

Iturbide's wife, Ana Maria Huarte, was a problem for the new Mexican government, which did not know what to do with her. Fearing that she or her children might try to retake Iturbide's throne, per the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, she was exiled abroad to the United States. In June of 1825, the former Mexican empress and her family arrived in Baltimore. Part of the condition of her exile was that the Mexican government would provide her a pension, which initially allowed the former empress to live comfortably at 226 Spruce Street in Philadelphia. But the rest of her life would be spent fighting for the payments and avoiding insolvency, especially once Mexico stopped paying due to the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.

As the war was ending, the former empress sought none other than President James Polk's help to get her money. He wrote that through an interpreter, the empress asked him to make Mexico pay for her pension as part of the treaty with money that U.S. troops had taken from Mexico to support their occupation. It is unclear what the result of the meeting was, but it does not appear to have mattered. The empress died in 1861, apparently in a poor financial state. She was buried in the cemetery of her parish, St. John's Catholic Church in Philadelphia.

Prince Joachim of Denmark (pictured center) was in the Danish news after his mother Queen Margarethe stripped his children of all their royal titles in 2022, allegedly on a mere five days' notice according to Vanity Fair. The official reason, per The Guardian, was to allow Joachim and his children to live more normal lives, although the real reason more likely has to do with reducing the size of the royal family and therefore its expenditures.

Despite the friction with his mother, Joachim will continue to serve the Danish state in a military capacity – a path that brings him and his family to the United States in September 2023. As a defense attache at the Danish embassy in Washington, D.C., the prince's job is a sort of liaison between the Danish government and military on one hand and the U.S. military and defense industry on the other. While royals are often given cushy sinecures, this posting has national security implications. The prince told Canada's CTV News that his job will be increasing transatlantic military cooperation between the United States, Canada, Denmark, and the rest of Europe.

Although the prince did not provide any more specifics about the position, it comes at a time when the governments of Europe and North America have moved toward closer cooperation due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Denmark has been a NATO member since 1949, and the timing and purpose of the prince's move to the United State suggest that Russia may be a major driving force.

The relationship between Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and his family, the Windsors, have been strained thanks to the fallout around his marriage to American socialite Meghan Markle.

In an interview with James Corden, the prince, who simply went by his first name and paid his bus fare for one of LA's double-deckers, mentioned having settled in Santa Barbara. During the interview, Harry noted that the problems between him and his relatives were made considerably worse by the media printing stories that he said were either not true or grossly exaggerated. He added that when Queen Elizabeth II was alive, she still sent her grandchildren presents and ensured that they were taken care of as family members — a very different angle from the stories alleging that there had been a fallout over Meghan's race, which came up in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Now, the couple owns a $15 million mansion in Montecito, California. They have retained the title of Duke and Duchess of Sussex. It remains to be see if Prince Harry has attempted to mend fences with his family somewhat, and he announced he would attend his father King Charles III's coronation. So in that regard, he doesn't seem likely to become the next Edward VIII. Not that he would either way since he is too far back in the line of succession.