For Love Or Money? Duchess Gives Away Her Billions To Marry Commoner
Aug. 10 2011, Published 9:00 a.m. ET
They say you can't buy love and an elderly billionairess is trying to prove them right.
The Spanish royal with the long-winded name of Maria del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva (or Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart for short) is sacrificing her fortune to prove that her commoner toy boy isn't a gold digger.
Also known as the Duchess of Alba, the 85-year-old bride to be is giving away her estate, which is valued between $850 million and $5 billion, before she walks down the aisle with civil servant Alfonso Diez, 61, reported the Guardian newspaper in the U.K.
The 24-year age gap and massive difference in bank accounts between the pair ruffled so many feathers amongst Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart's six children that she decided to prove that she was genuinely the object of Diez's affection by giving them her inheritance before walking down the aisle, including gifting all of them (and her eight grandchildren) a palace each.
"Alfonso doesn't want anything. All he wants is me," she said earlier this year.
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Despite the generous gifts, the Duchess' children are still skeptical about the upcoming nuptials.
"If in the end my mother decides to marry, we shall go, although we still don't agree," her son Cayetano recently told Spanish paper El Mundo.
According to Guinness World Records, as well as her riches, Maria del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva also boasts more titles than any noble on earth, being a duchess seven times over, a countess 22 times and a marquesa 24.
As head of the 539-year-old House of Alba, her privileges include not having to kneel before the pope and the right to ride on horseback into Seville cathedral.
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