How Beatrice the Contessa is marrying into a family much posher than her own

When he walks back up the aisle of the Chapel Royal at St James’s this spring, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi will have one of the most eligible women in Europe by his side.

For his bride, Princess Beatrice – the elder daughter of the Duke of York and ninth in line to the Throne – the nuptials will be an equally glorious moment.

There is no doubt that handsome Edoardo, known as Edo, is a good match for the 31-year-old Princess, with his multi-million-pound fortune and debonair Latin charm. 

What is perhaps less well known is that Beatrice is following the most traditional route for Royal marriages by uniting two of the oldest families in Europe.

For Edo’s pedigree stretches back all the way to the 10th Century and means that the union will not only hand Beatrice a set of ancient Italian titles to add to her Royal designations, but will allow her to inherit one of the grandest villas in Italy.

Now Edo’s father, Count Alessandro Mapelli Mozzi, has spoken for the first time since the couple announced their engagement in September to reveal that the wedding will allow Beatrice to style herself as an Italian ‘Contessa’ and ‘Nobile Donna’, or noble woman.

It means that Beatrice and Edo, 36, the count’s eldest son, will also inherit the family’s ancestral seat, the 18th Century neoclassical-style Villa Mapelli Mozzi, in northern Italy.

The nine-bedroom palazzo, an hour from Milan, is used by the family as a summer residence and is surrounded by four acres of parkland.

For those who wish to take a closer look – and have the deep pockets to suit – the villa is available for holiday rentals on the website Booking for £14,700 for a week in May.

If the marriage appears to have all the features of a fairy tale romance, in truth there have been some bumps along the way.

For a start, Count Alessandro, 68, has revealed he is yet to meet his future daughter-in-law. The groom already has a three-year-old son, Wolfie, with his former girlfriend Dara Huang. And who could forget that the bride’s father, Prince Andrew, has suffered a very public fall from grace, one which is said to have caused the wedding to be delayed?

But this is of no matter to the count, who declares he is very much looking forward to the marriage – and to a new chapter in the noble history of the family.

‘They are very suited to each other and have known each other for a long time,’ he told The Mail on Sunday. ‘I’ve never seen him so happy.

Beatrice and Edo, 36, will inherit his family’s ancestral seat, the 18th Century neoclassical-style Villa Mapelli Mozzi, in northern Italy

Edo’s father, Count Alessandro Mapelli Mozzi, represented Britain at the Olympics as a skier (pictured in 1972)

‘Edoardo is the only male descendent taking the family into the next generation. He is a count – his wife will be a countess automatically and any of their children will be counts or nobile donna.’

The ceremony, set for the end of May, will be low-key by Royal standards. The Chapel Royal can seat only 150 guests, but the reception will be held at Buckingham Palace. It is expected that the Queen and the most senior members of the Royal Family will be in attendance. Both Princess Beatrice and her sister Eugenie are close to their cousins William and Harry – the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Duke and Duchess of Sussex all attended Eugenie’s 2018 wedding to Jack Brooksbank.

The Mapelli Mozzis have enviable credentials of their own, as the count explains: ‘The family boasts eight ambassadors, 15 judges, 29 doctors of law, two bishops, ten abbots, 91 councillors, many knights, six captains, five doctors, 21 writers and poets, 59 notaries, five goldsmiths…’

There are more recent claims to fame. The count skied for Britain at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Japan and met Beatrice’s mother, the Duchess of York, in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier when she was dating racing driver Paddy McNally, before her marriage to Prince Andrew.

The groom already has a three-year-old son, Wolfie, with his former girlfriend Dara Huang (pictured in Malta)

Later, the Duchess was named godmother to Edo’s half-brother Alby, now 29, from his mother’s second marriage. It means Edo, a successful property developer, has known Beatrice all his life. Among those expected to attend the wedding are Edo’s stepfather, David Williams-Ellis, a celebrated sculptor who is married to Edo’s mother Nikki Burrows, and his uncle Mark Wiggin, a senior director at estate agency Strutt & Parker, who lives in the 18th Century Grade II-listed Downton Hall in Ludlow.

According to historical records, the count’s family dates back to 985AD, a time when King Ethelred II was on the throne of England.

‘We as a family celebrated 1,000 years in 1985 with unbroken documented archives,’ the count says proudly. ‘We are one of the only families in Italy to have all the records from that period to today.’

There is such a long bloodline that a distant cousin, Carlotta Mapelli Mozzi Parodi, published a book about the family to celebrate its millennium. Entitled La Famiglia Mapelli Mozzi, it describes how two families derived their names from the towns of Mozzi and Mapelli, ten miles from Bergamo. The former landowners began a ‘rapid social and economic ascent’ in the 12th Century through trade and banking, flourishing in the 13th Century as they became some of the most successful merchants in Europe. By 1270, they owned ‘majestic palaces’ such as the Mozzi Palace in Florence, where Pope Gregory X was lodged three years later.

Appointed to be administrators of the pontiff’s treasure, they became known as ‘the most important bankers of Christianity’.

However, it was not until the 19th Century, when Edo’s great-great-great-great-grandfather Gerolamo Mapelli married Angela Mozzi, that the surname Mapelli Mozzi was formed.

Hereditary titles were granted in 1913 to Edo’s great-great-grandfather, Count Dr Paolo Mapelli Mozzi, and his younger brothers Luigi and Vittorio. But they were no longer officially recognised after the Italian monarchy was abolished in 1943.

Lucy Hume, associate director of Debrett’s Peerage, said: ‘Titles are not recognised by the Italian government but are apparently still used in society circles.’ The family’s British connections were not established until the 1960s.

Bea’s fiance, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, has asked his son, Christopher — known as Wolfie — to be best man when they tie the knot

Edo’s grandfather, Count Gianpaolo Mapelli Mozzi, a painter, moved from Italy to a ranch in Buenos Aires with his wife, the sculptor Gigliola Stoppani, and the infant Alessandro. When Alessandro was old enough, he was sent to the Catholic boarding school Downside, in Somerset, in 1963. Shortly afterwards, the family moved to the UK, to a house on an estate in the shadow of Warwick Castle.

‘My father looked after the estate. He was also a modern painter, staging exhibitions throughout Europe and South America,’ says the count. ‘My mother was very arty.

‘They travelled a lot and lived in Switzerland, Italy and South America to name but a few. So I suppose Edo has got an artistic influence from my parents.’

After leaving Downside, the count, who is fluent in English, French and Italian, studied at Milan University before he became a member of the British ski team.

He married Nikki Burrows in 1978, when he was 26 and she was 21, and they had two children – Natalia, now 38, and Edo, who was born in London’s Portland Hospital in November 1983. However, the couple split five years later.

A friend of Bea and Edo says they have asked Wolfie to carry out the role because they want to show that he is loved and embraced by his stepmother

The count went on to date Sarah Hunt, the former wife of Formula 1 racing driver James, after meeting at a dinner party in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier. ‘The attraction was instant,’ he said at the time. Sadly that relationship also failed.

He then married his second wife, horse breeder Fiona Wilson, in 1994. But the couple grew apart and he moved to France, where he set up a real estate company.

It meant Edo spent more time with his mother and her second husband, Christopher Shale, David Cameron’s constituency chairman. Edo saw his father in the holidays, as Alessandro recalls. ‘Certainly, in the winter, I did lots of skiing, which my children loved and had a passion for.’

But there was tragedy for the family when Mr Shale collapsed and died of a heart attack, aged just 56, at the Glastonbury Festival in 2011. A subsequent inquest found he had been suffering from undiagnosed heart disease. Afterwards, Edo spoke movingly about the loss.

‘He was a father to me, the only father I have ever known,’ he said, pointedly. ‘The best father we could ever have.’ Certainly, Edo has not seen his own father recently, as the count himself reveals: ‘The last time I saw Edo was briefly last autumn just before the announcement of the engagement.’

For his part, the count tours Europe and America running his latest venture, holiday rental agency Hidden Secret Villas.

‘Edo travels a lot,’ he continues, ‘and is very busy with his work. I haven’t meet Beatrice yet and I don’t know when I will meet her. But I am looking forward to the wedding.’

Not everyone in Edo’s life will have quite such straightforward feelings.

In 2015, he met architect Dara Huang, the Chinese-American daughter of a Nasa scientist, and the couple had a whirlwind romance. Within a year they had moved in together, got engaged and had their son.

It is not known when they separated, but Edo is believed to have started seeing Beatrice after Eugenie’s wedding in 2018 and proposed a year later. The relationship with his ex-fiancee and the mother of his child appears to be amicable. ‘Edo has always been a kind person,’ says his father. ‘I don’t think he’s changed.’

At the end of 2018, Dara shared a photograph of Wolfie, captioned: ‘Love, laugh, share, forgive,’ which was widely interpreted to mean she held no grudges. When Edo and Bea got engaged, she wrote: ‘I wish the best for Edo and Beatrice and look forward to uniting our families.’

At least Beatrice need not harbour concerns that Wolfie could one day inherit the noble titles or property. He was born out of wedlock, which means that Edo and Beatrice’s children will take precedence.

‘The title Conte is recognised to all male family descendants but only by marriage,’ explains the Collegio Araldico historical society in Rome.

‘Edo’s son Wolfie, although recognised by his father, carrying his surname, has not the title of count. Wolfie is not a count, as Edoardo is not married to his mother. If Edoardo and Beatrice marry and have a son, he will be a count.’ Not to mention an heir to the magnificent Villa Mapelli Mozzi.

It remains to be seen whether the couple choose to base themselves in Italy. The count says: ‘Edo loves Italy, loves Italian food and architecture. I think Beatrice loves Italy, too. I think that’s why he decided to propose there.’

As the Windsors deal with an unending series of controversies at home, Beatrice might find life as an Italian Contessa rather more appealing.