6 Totally Regular People Who Married Into Royal Families Throughout History

The former Mary Donaldson was born in Tasmania, and famously met Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark in Sydney at the Slip Inn during the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Donaldson and Prince Frederick announced their engagement in 2003 and were married in 2004 in an ceremony in which her bouquet included Australian native flowers. They now have four kids, and when Margrethe II of Denmark leaves the throne, Crown Princess Mary will become Queen alongside her husband.

Michiko Shōda, born in 1934 as the daughter of a wealthy flour producer, met the future Emperor Akihito at a tennis match and would marry him in 1959 after a protracted struggle within the royal family about their relationship; Michiko, who has a degree in literature, was the first non-royal to marry into Japan's imperial family in history. But Empress Michiko has not had an easy time of it: She gave an extensive speech in 2007 in which she revealed the difficulty of adapting to life as an imperial wife, including her wish to have an invisibility cloak. She turned 83 in 2017 and expressed relief that her husband, under new law, was allowed to abdicate from his imperial position.

When then-Prince Harald of Norway met Sonja Haraldsen at a dinner in 1959 and started a relationship with her, it caused a major scandal. Haraldsen was the daughter of a clothing retailer, and they had to keep the relationship secret for nine years while the Norwegian court and politicians battled over whether marrying a non-royal would cause a constitutional crisis. Eventually King Olav, Harald's father, gave his consent to their marriage, and they married in 1968 and became King and Queen when Harald took the throne in 1991. In 2018 they'll celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

It was, frankly, too glamorous to last: the marriage of Hollywood star Rita Hayworth to Prince Aly Khan, son of His Highness Aga Khan III, was dubbed the union of the "Goddess And The Playboy" by Vanity Fair. Hayworth, who had recently divorced Orson Welles, would become involved with the hugely wealthy Khan in a whirlwind romance in 1948 and marry him in 1949. They had a daughter, Princess Yasmin, but would divorce in 1951, with Hayworth alleging "extreme mental cruelty." The ensuing custody battle over Yasmin made headlines, but Hayworth won.

One of the most famous queens with non-royal origins in Swedish history, Karin Månsdotter became first the mistress of Sweden's King Eric XIV, then his wife and consort. Månsdotter came from a family of peasants and soldiers, and became involved with Eric in 1565 when she was the 17-year-old personal maid to his sister. Her life is referred to as a "Cinderella story," but it's hardly got an edifying end: when Eric married her (first secretly in 1567, and then publicly in 1568), he appears to have set off a political crisis. The King's brothers rebelled and Karin was imprisoned, first with Eric and their children and then, from 1573, separately. She never saw her husband again, but after his death in 1577 was accepted back into court life and rose to be an important figure in Swedish politics.

The English have their own precedents for regular people-turned-queens. Elizabeth Woodville, known as "the white queen," was very unpopular when King Edward IV of England married her in 1464, for three reasons: she was a "commoner," a widow, and a descendant of the house of Lancaster, the traditional enemies of the Yorks, who held power in Edward IV's court. (She's called the "white queen" because the York symbol is a white rose.) She led an apparently happy life with Edward, but after his death, was pulled from power. She is the mother of the famous "princes in the tower", the two young boys who were allegedly murdered by her husband's successor Richard III.