, 1904 In 1905,
King Alfonso XIII of Spain made an official state visit to the United Kingdom. Ena's maternal uncle,
King Edward VII, hosted a dinner in
Buckingham Palace in honour of the Spanish monarch. Alfonso was seated between
Queen Alexandra and
Princess Helena, King Edward's sister. He noticed Ena and asked who the dinner guest with almost white hair was. Everybody knew that King Alfonso was looking for a suitable bride and one of the strongest candidates was
Princess Patricia of Connaught, another niece of King Edward. As Princess Patricia seemed not to be impressed by the Spanish monarch, Alfonso indulged his interest in Ena, and so the courtship began. When Alfonso returned to Spain he frequently sent postcards to Ena and spoke of her approvingly. His mother,
Queen Maria Christina, did not like her son's choice, in part because she considered the Battenbergs non-royal because of the obscure origin of Prince Henry's mother, and in part because she wanted her son to marry within her own family. Other obstacles to a marriage were religion (Alfonso was Roman Catholic, and Ena was Anglican); and the potential problem of
haemophilia, the disease that Queen Victoria had transmitted to some of her descendants. Ena's brother,
Leopold, was a haemophiliac, so there was a 50% probability that she would be a carrier, although the degree of risk was not yet known. Still, if Alfonso married her, their issue could be affected by the disease. Nonetheless, Alfonso was not dissuaded. After a year of rumours about which princess Alfonso would marry, his mother finally acceded to her son's selection in January 1906 and wrote a letter to Ena's mother, telling her about the love Alfonso felt for her daughter and seeking unofficial contact with the king. Some days later at Windsor, King Edward congratulated his niece on her future engagement. Princess Beatrice and her daughter arrived in
Biarritz on 22 January and stayed at the Villa Mauriscot where some days later King Alfonso met them. At the Villa Mauriscot, Alfonso and his future bride conducted a chaperoned, three-day romance. Then, Alfonso took Ena and her mother to
San Sebastián to meet Queen Maria Christina. On 3 February, the king left San Sebastian to go to
Madrid and Ena and her mother went to Versailles where the Princess would be instructed in the Catholic faith: as the future Queen of Spain, she agreed to convert. The official reception of Ena into the Catholic faith took place on 5 March 1906 at
Miramar Palace in San Sebastián. The terms of the marriage were settled by two agreements, a public treaty and a private contractual arrangement. The treaty was executed between Spain and the United Kingdom in London on 7 May 1906 by their respective
plenipotentiaries, the Spanish Ambassador to the
Court of St James's, Don
Luis Polo de Bernabé, and the British Foreign Secretary,
Sir Edward Grey, Bt.
Ratifications were exchanged on 23 May following. Among other conditions, the treaty stipulated: The treaty's reference to the forfeiture of Ena's British succession rights reflected neither any British government
censure of the alliance nor any
renunciation made by her. Rather, it was an explicit recognition of the fact that by marrying (and becoming) a Roman Catholic, Ena lost any right to inherit the British crown as a consequence of Britain's
Act of Settlement 1701. This exclusion was personal and limited: those among her descendants who do not become Roman Catholic remain in the
line of succession to the British Throne. Despite this treaty, concern about the reaction to the marriage and to Ena's conversion among
Protestants was accommodated by the British government's decision that King Edward need not grant official consent to the marriage in his
Privy Council, despite the fact that his niece was a British subject. Although the
Royal Marriages Act 1772 requires that descendants of
King George II obtain the British sovereign's prior permission to marry by
Order in Council, an exception exists for descendants of royal daughters who marry "into foreign families". Although the
naturalisation of Ena's father in the United Kingdom had been initiated in Parliament a week prior to his marriage to Princess Beatrice, the nuptials were completed before the naturalisation, thus the government was able to take the position that Ena was not bound by the Royal Marriages Act 1772, and therefore the British king had legal authority neither to authorise nor forbid her marriage. The king did, however, issue a
royal warrant which read: "Our Will and Pleasure is and we do hereby declare and ordain that from and after the date of this Warrant our Most Dear Niece Princess Victoria Eugénie Julia Ena, only daughter of Our Most Dear Sister Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore (Princess Henry of Battenberg) shall be styled entitled and called
Her Royal Highness before her name and such Titles and Appellations which to her belong in all Deeds Records Instruments or Documents whatsoever wherein she may at any time hereafter be named or described. And We do hereby authorize and empower Our said Most Dear Niece henceforth at all times to assume and use and to be called and named by the Style, Title and Appellation of
Her Royal Highness accordingly. Given at Our Court of Saint James's, the Third day of April 1906: in the Sixth Year of Our Reign. By His Majesty's Command. M Gladstone" Notice of this warrant was
gazetted in the
London Gazette which read: Princess Ena married King Alfonso XIII at the
Royal Monastery of San Jerónimo in Madrid on 31 May 1906. Present at
the ceremony were her widowed mother and brothers, as well as her cousins, the
Prince and
Princess of Wales. After the wedding ceremony, as the royal procession was heading back to the
Royal Palace, an
assassination attempt was made on the King and Queen when
anarchist Mateu Morral threw a bomb from a balcony at the royal carriage; this incident would become known as the
Morral affair. Ena's life was saved because, at the exact moment the bomb exploded, she turned her head in order to see St. Mary's Church, which Alfonso was showing her. She escaped injury, although her dress was spotted with the blood of a guard who was riding beside the carriage. at the moment of the bomb's explosion Later, Spanish composer
Fernando Moraleda Bellver wrote a song about the attack: ==Queen of Spain==