The granddaughter of Simeon II's sister gets engaged in Canada: royal lineage, an Ontario degree and a career at an investment firm

In a world where royal titles long ago stopped bringing power but still bring attention, Alexandra of Leiningen announced her engagement with a photo of the ring - a brilliant-cut diamond. The proposal took place in Canada, the country where she was born, with the sea and mountains in the background. Her fiancé's name is Everett, and that's almost all the public knows about him for now.

Her mother, Deborah Cully, also shared the news on social media: "We are overjoyed to announce that our beautiful daughter Alexa is going to marry the love of her life." The couple, she added, will celebrate with love and happiness.

Alexandra is the third daughter of Prince Hermann of Leiningen and Deborah Cully, and her grandmother is Princess Marie Louise of Bulgaria - the older sister of Simeon II, Bulgaria's last tsar. That makes the young bride part of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Koháry line, which the Balkans remember for something more than wedding photos: Simeon became tsar as a child, lost the crown after the Second World War and, decades later, returned to Sofia - as prime minister.

Today the family is scattered across Europe. Boris, Mafalda and Dr Kubrat live in Madrid, Prince Kiril in London, and many of them are expected to fly across the Atlantic for the wedding. A royal family without a kingdom, which gathers like any Balkan family: when someone gets married, everyone comes, no matter where from.

What sets Alexandra apart from the typical portrait of an aristocrat is her CV. She studied arts, majoring in English literature and drama, at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, then completed a master's in digital marketing and spent a year working as a teacher in Ontario. In October 2023 she became a digital account lead at the PR agency 1Milk 2Sugars, in January 2025 she moved to RBC Global Asset Management as a marketing specialist, and in February 2026 she was promoted to manager in global asset management.

In other words: a great-granddaughter of Tsar Boris III who is building her career in an office, not at balls - and who, even so, keeps a low public profile. The wedding will be in Canada, far from Sofia. But judging by the list of relatives, the Bulgarian line will be there in full force.