She’s the former TV anchor who married a prince, and she's just days away from becoming Spain’s newest queen.
Princess Letizia, 41, has been grabbing worldwide headlines recently not only because of her impending elevation to queen, but because of a camera-ready fashion sense that has been compared to a certain other popular royal. Here’s five things we know about the future Spanish queen:
- She is an award-winning broadcast journalist — she earned both her undergraduate and master's degrees in journalism — who met her husband, Prince Felipe de Borbon, while on assignment. She broadcast live from Ground Zero in New York following the September 11 attacks and also has filed war reports from Iraq.
- She was previously married, which initially raised eyebrows in the predominantly Catholic nation of Spain. Letizia first got hitched at 31, so she will be the country's first divorced queen.
- Her looks have been criticized in magazines that say she doesn’t smile enough and question whether she has had plastic surgery.
- She lacks a royal pedigree. Letizia comes from an ordinary middle-class family, just like another popular royal wife. Her father is a journalist, her mother is a nurse and her grandfather was a taxi driver.
- Speaking of Duchess Kate, the comparison between the two royals are endless, mainly because of their similar fashion choices. They both share sophisticated tastes that often mixes in a common touch — clothes from retail chain stores such as Zara!
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Royal marriages to commoners
From Prince William and Kate Middleton to Prince Rainier II and Grace Kelly, commoners have married into royalty more often than you might think.