Dollar princess


Dollar princesses were wealthy American women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who married into titled European families, exchanging wealth for prestige. They were often the daughters of nouveau riche tycoons whose families wanted to gain social standing. The term was also used occasionally in the Danish press for any woman of means marrying into a titled family.
According to a book called Titled Americans, there were 454 marriages between Gilded Age and Progressive Era American women and European aristocrats, most of whom were Britons. The Library of Congress noted in a reference guide that "American heiresses married more than a third of the House of Lords". Between 1870 and 1914, 102 British aristocrats, six of whom were dukes, married American women.

Women called dollar princesses

The phrase seems to appear frequently as a trope of fiction, such as in Georgina Norway's Tregarthen :
The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, an 1892 short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, has Sherlock Holmes solving the mystery of the American heiress who married the fictitious "Lord Saint Simon" then immediately disappeared after the wedding.
The Buccaneers, a 1938 novel by Edith Wharton, is set in this milieu.
Cora Crawley, the Countess of Julian Fellowes's Downton Abbey, is written as a wealthy American heiress who married the Earl of Grantham, and whose dowry helped save Downton from financial ruin.
In The Gilded Age, also created by Fellowes, Gladys Russell, the only daughter of robber baron George Russell, is likewise pressured by her mother into an arranged marriage with the Duke of Buckingham, who needs funds to maintain his estate.