In 1852, not long after becoming emperor of the French, a proposal was made to her parents for her hand in marriage on behalf of Napoléon III. Although the two had never met, the political advantages of the marriage for the emperor were obvious; an international concord between the French and the British could be expected to ensue, combined with a marital alliance that would garner dynastic respectability for the Bonapartes. Because the bride was, officially, a minor German princess rather than a member of the British royal family, the risk of refusal was small and the bride could be expected to be sufficiently grateful for her good fortune to convert to Roman Catholicism in exchange for the crown matrimonial.
In fact, the proposal horrified Queen Victoria and vexed the Prince Consort, who preferred not to publicly confer such hasty legitimacy upon France's latest "revolutionary" regime — the durability of which was deemed dubious — nor to yield up a young kinswoman for the purpose. The British court maintained a strict silence toward the Hohenlohes during the wedding negotiations, lest the queen seem either eager for or repulsed by the prospect of Napoléon as a nephew.
The parents, accurately interpreting the British disinterest as disapproval, declined the French offer -- to their sixteen year-old daughter's dismay. This may have been only the first move in a gambit the Hohenlohes hoped would wring sufficient concessions from the French to secure their daughter's future interests. Nonetheless, before his ministers could press his case with further inducements, Napoléon decided to forgo pursuit of a royal consort in order to procure the acquiescence of a woman he had been simultaneously soliciting to become his mistress: the strategically chaste Countess of Teba.2
