One of the things that studying royal weddings teaches you (very quickly!) is that romance often had very little to do with marriage, even among those monarchs who could choose their own spouse, and who claimed to marry for romance. The best example of this is the “romance” and marriage of Napoleon III and  Eugenie de Montijo. Napoleon III was a notorious womaniser, and  Eugenie was a notorious virgin – notorious for such because she refused to enter into affairs for reasons that were more strategically based than morally based. Eugenie and Napoleon first met in the early 1850s when he was president of France.  The Spanish  Eugenie was in Paris on a husband-hunting tour of Europe, and  was the toast of the town for her beauty and grace.  Naturally, Napoleon was intrigued, and began to pursue  Eugenie, to no avail.   One didn’t catch a husband by becoming the mistress of the President of France.  Even once Napoleon staged a coup and became Emperor,  Eugenie was not swayed. By all accounts the young  Eugenie …