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The title of Prince of Leiningen (German: Fürst zu Leiningen) was created by the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, who elevated Carl Friedrich Wilhelm, Count of Leiningen-Dagsburg-Hartenburg (a younger branch of the House of Leiningen) to the rank of Reichsfürst (Prince of the Holy Roman Empire) on 3 July 1779.
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Titles
The family is extant, and all male-line descendants of the grantee bear the title of Prince(ss) of Leiningen (Prinz(essin) zu Leiningen) with the style of Serene Highness. The head of the house is styled The Prince of Leiningen (Fürst zu Leiningen: see the article Fürst for the difference between it and the other princely title, Prinz).
Family connections and events
The second prince, Emich Carl, was the first husband of Queen Victoria's mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and his children remained close to their half-sister.
The fourth prince, Ernst, pursued a career in the British Royal Navy; his marriage to Princess Marie of Baden, a descendant of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, meant that their children were in the line of succession to the British throne, though rather far down the list.
The sixth prince, Karl, married Grand Duchess Maria Kirillovna of Russia, daughter of Princess Victoria Melita who was in turn daughter of Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Queen Victoria's second son. As a result, their descendants today occupy places higher up the British line of succession, in the early hundreds.
In 1991, the seventh prince, Emich, disinherited his eldest son, the Hereditary Prince Karl Emich, after he married his second wife, Dr Gabriele Thyssen, on May 24 of that same year. The disinheritance was upheld by the German courts, and so on Emich's death later that year, he was succeeded by his second son, Andreas, who has been the eighth prince from that time.