Archduchess Marie-Astrid of Austria (born Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg on 17 February 1954) is the elder daughter and eldest child of Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Princess Joséphine-Charlotte of Belgium, and the wife of Archduke Carl Christian of Austria, grandson of the last Austrian Emperor, Karl I. Biography Princess Marie-Astrid was born on 17 February 1954, in Castle Betzdorf, Betzdorf, Luxembourg. She is the eldest child of Jean, then Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Princess Joséphine-Charlotte of Belgium. Her godparents were King Leopold III of Belgium (her maternal grandfather) and Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg (her paternal grandmother). The princess was named Marie-Astrid in honour of the Virgin Mary and her maternal grandmother the Queen of the Belgians born Astrid of Sweden who died tragically in 1935. She is the niece of the Kings King Baudouin and King Albert II as well as the cousin of the current King of the Belgians King Philippe. In her youth, as one of the few eligible princesses from European reigning houses, she was considered an ideal candidate by match makers for marriage to Charles, Prince of Wales. Media reports in the 1970s speculated about the prospects of such a marriage, the Daily Express claiming in June 1977 that the couple's engagement was imminent. (Unconfirmed media reports in the British press claimed that Pope Paul VI had prevented a marriage by refusing under Ne Temere to accept that the children of the couple could not be brought up Roman Catholic.) It has been since suggested that the marriage rumours were a result of efforts to detect a leaker in the Privy Council. In reality, a marriage between the British heir and the Roman Catholic princess was unlikely, as the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701 needed to be repealed or modified. Marie-Astrid studied in Luxembourg and also in Belgium. She received her diploma as a registered nurse in 1974, and finished her education in 1977, with a nursing certificate in tropical medicine from the Prince Leopold Institute. She has been the president of the Red Cross for Luxembourg Youth since 1970. Marriage On 6 February 1982 in Luxembourg, she married her second cousin Archduke Carl Christian of Austria, younger son of Archduke Carl Ludwig of Austria (himself the fourth son of Emperor Charles I of Austria) and his wife Princess Yolande of Ligne, of the prominent Belgian noble family, the House