Lady Nicholas Windsor (born Paola Louise Marica Doimi de Lupis, 7 August 1969) is married to Lord Nicholas Windsor, second son and the youngest child of the Duke and Duchess of Kent.

Early life and ancestry

Lady Nicholas Windsor was born as Donna Paola Louise Marica Doimi de Lupis on 7 August 1969, as the eldest child of Don Louis Doimi de Lupis (later added Frankopan Šubić) (1939–2018) and his Swedish wife, Ingrid Detter.^[1][2][3]

Paola used this name as an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1989;^[4] by 1993 her entry includes the added 'Frankopan Šubić', while parenthetically including her original name for clarification.^[5]

Originally, Doimi de Lupis family belonged to an ancient, untitled Croatian nobility of Italian origin that can trace their noble lineage back to 1200, with Domnius Doymi, nobilis traguriensis as their earlist known ancestor.^[6] The family was granted nobility of the Island of Brazza in 1390 by King Tvrtko I of Bosnia and nobility of Spalato in 1413 by Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor as the King of Hungary. Their status was later elevated with a grant of Venetian nobility in 1753, Austrian nobility in 1855 and the hereditary title of Ritter in 1865.^[7][8][9] They also owned an ancestral palace in the town of Vis, built in the turn of the 18th century, on the Adriatic coast.^[10][11] Doimi de Lupis family welcomed and hosted Franz Joseph I of Austria during his official visit to Vis island on 12 May 1875.^[12]

By the time of her marriage she was known as Princess Paola Doimi de Lupis Frankopan Šubić Zrinski.^[13] She has one sister, Christina, and brothers, Peter, Nicholas, and Lawrence.

Education and career

Paola Windsor was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and at Wycombe Abbey, where she was a William Johnston Yapp Scholar. She read Classics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she was a Choral Scholar and took a Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies (M.Phil. equivalent) at Paris IV, La Sorbonne in Philosophy, submitting a thesis in French entitled L'autorité de l'État (English: "The authority of the state").^[14]

As Paola de Frankopan, she has written for Tatler, where she is a contributing editor, and for Vogue USA.^[15]

Marriage and family

She met her husband, Lord Nicholas Windsor, at a millennium party in New York in 1999,^[15] and their engagement was announced on 26 September 2006.^[2] They married on 4 November 2006 in the Church of Santo Stefano degli Abissini in the Vatican City, following a civil ceremony on 19 October 2006 in a London register office,^[16] and she became Lady Nicholas Windsor. This was the first time a member of the British royal family married at the Vatican.^[17] For the ceremony in Vatican City the bride wore a Valentino gown and opted to wear no jewellery.^[18] A House of Commons Early Day Motion welcomed "the first overt marriage within the rites of the Catholic Church of a member of the Royal Family since the reign of Queen Mary I, and the first marriage of a member of the Royal Family to take place within the Vatican City State".^[19] In September 2025 it was reported that the couple had separated.^[20]

Lord and Lady Nicholas have three sons. An Early Day Motion in the House of Commons welcomed the baptism of their first son as the first royal child to be baptised a Catholic since 1688.^[21]

References

External links

• The family website La Casata dei Lupi, (Italian language), contains photos of Lord and Lady Nicholas, their first son Albert, and members of the Lupis family. Retrieved 26 September 2009.
• Doimi de Lupis genealogy (Italian language) hosted by Società Genealogica Italiana – SGI (President- Marchese Marco Lupis) Retrieved 26 September 2009.