After the war, the exiled Hanoverian royal family took up residence in Hietzing, near Vienna, but spent a good deal of time in Paris.

The former Crown Prince travelled during this early period of exile, and ultimately accepted a commission in the Imperial and Royal Army of Austria-Hungary.

Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria appointed him to succeed his father as colonel and proprietor of the Austrian 42nd Regiment of Infantry.

While visiting his second cousin Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) at Sandringham in 1875, he met Princess Thyra of Denmark (29 September 1853 – 26 February 1933), the youngest daughter of King Christian IX and a sister of the Princess of Wales (later Queen Alexandra).

Although he was a British peer and a prince of Great Britain and Ireland, he continued to consider himself an exiled monarch of a German realm and refused to disclaim his succession rights to Hanover, making his home in Gmunden, Upper Austria.

However, since he still claimed to be the legitimate King of Hanover as well, the German Bundesrat declared that he would disturb the peace of the empire if he ascended the ducal throne.

The Duke of Cumberland was partially reconciled with the Hohenzollern dynasty in 1913, when his surviving son, Prince Ernest Augustus, married the only daughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the grandson of the Prussian king who had deposed his father.

As a mark of regard for his daughter's father-in-law, Kaiser Wilhelm II created the elder Ernest Augustus a Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle.