(Angelo Paratico) A private wedding took place at the Royal Chapel of All Saints in Windsor Great Park on 17 July 2020, when Edoardo Alessandro Mapelli Mozzi married Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice of York. A private reception followed, hosted by Her Majesty The Queen in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. The couple became engaged in Italy in September 2019. The late Queen Elizabeth granted them a great honour by allowing the royal venue to her niece, Beatrice, daughter of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew. Perhaps the Queen hoped to dispel the dark clouds gathering over Andrew after the Epstein scandal. All was in vain, as the final disgrace of Prince Andrew occurred in the past weeks.
Born in 1988, Beatrice is 12th in line to the throne of Great Britain and has had several romances. According to the British royal family’s official website, several royal weddings have taken place at the Chapel Royal, including those of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, their eldest daughter Victoria, Princess Royal, to Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, and the Duke of York and Princess Victoria Mary of Teck.
Edoardo, born in 1980 and now 45 years old, was educated in the England. He is a millionaire and a real estate developer. He is the father of a young son, “Wolfie”, by his first wife American-Chinese designer and architect Dara Huang. While Mapelli Mozzi and Huang separated in the years following their son’s birth, they appear to have a good relationship. Edoardo’s mother is Nicole “Nikki” Burrows, who is divorced from his father.
The Mapelli Mozzi family belongs to the petty nobility of Bergamo, and their royal licence dates back to 1919, when Italy was still a monarchy and they could be called counts.
Their palace, Villa Mapelli Mozzi, is located in Ponte San Pietro. It is one of the most imposing villas in the province of Bergamo. It was enlarged in the second half of the eighteenth century with the current neoclassical façade. It was the residence of the Counts Mozzi and then, after that family died out in the early nineteenth century, the Mapelli family took their place.
The groom is half Italian and half English. His father, Alex (born 1951), was an Olympic ski champion with the English team in 1972 and lives in Provence, where he remarried Ebba Margaretha Antonie von Eckermann.
Beatrice gave birth to their first daughter, Sienna Elizabeth Mapelli Mozzi, on 18 September 2021 at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Sienna is currently 10th in the line of succession to the British throne. Their second daughter, Athena Elizabeth Rose Mapelli Mozzi, was born on 22 January 2025 at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, several weeks prematurely. Athena is currently 11th in the line of succession. The couple initially lived in a four-bedroom apartment at St James’s Palace, but reportedly moved to a manor house in the Cotswolds in late 2022.
