Princess Xenia fell asleep on the set, thus showing how Ikea's mattresses passed "the ultimate pressure test". Photo / Ikea
Princess Xenia fell asleep on the set, thus showing how Ikea's mattresses passed "the ultimate pressure test". Photo / Ikea
Her name is nearly as long as a Welsh railway station's, her mother is a hairdresser, and yet she has been recruited as a "real princess" by Swedish chain Ikea to claim that its beds are the choice of royalty.
Blonde, blue-eyed and strutting on inevitable "tall heels", Princess XeniaGabriela Florence Sophie Iris of Saxony appears in Ikea newspaper and radio advertisements. Photographs captioned "Sleep like a princess" depict the 25-year-old teutonic royal wrapped in floral bed linen. With her golden, regal mane cascading over the pillows, she lies apparently fast asleep on the Ikea mattress she chose only hours before.
"We created the ultimate pressure test - helping a princess sleep like a princess," said Katie Mackay, of the Mother advertising agency. "We had to test it with an authentic princess, who incidentally fell asleep on set. Ikea's mattresses passed the test!"
Yet there is a problem with Xenia's claims to royal lineage: under laws determining German nobility, she is not strictly a princess. Her father was a farmer. Her mother, Princess Iris of Saxony, is a four times married Dusseldorf hairdresser and the daughter of the now deceased Timo, Prince of Saxony.
The German house of Wettin, from which Xenia purports to derive her title, angrily rejected her claim last year when the princess revealed that she was writing her biography: Xenia: The Life of a Princess in the 21st Century.
German nobility experts say that Xenia can claim nothing more than to be the great-great-granddaughter of the last ruling monarch of the German state of Saxony, King Friedrich August III. She nevertheless regards herself as a member of Germany's minor nobility. Its most prominent members include Prince Ernst August of Hanover, husband of Caroline of Monaco.
Ikea's princess used her royal status to get on Germany's private ProSieben TV channel in 2004 with her own rock band. Two years ago she took part in the BBC3 reality series Undercover Princesses.
Xenia lives with her dog in a shared, rented flat in Berlin.
