The Making of a King

When their first son, Bertie, was born Queen Victoria and Prince Albert – both of whom were still so young – sought guidance about his upbringing from Prince Albert’s mentor Baron Stockmar. His advice couldn’t have been more detrimental to the poor Prince of Wales whose memories of childhood were so unhappy that as soon as he became King, he disposed of that great (and beautiful!) symbol of his childhood, Osborne House. As a boy Bertie could never please his parents. He just couldn’t fit their (or Stockmar’s) ideal of the perfect prince. Gauche, not studious or particularly academically intelligent, his natural talents for diplomacy and charm were so often overlooked. I adore Prince Albert and think that the one mistake of his life was his treatment – albeit well-intentioned – of the future King Edward VII. In later life, the perceived traumas of this strict regimen showed up in Bertie’s addictions to food, sex and gambling and anything else that brought him comfort. His life, however, was not a tragedy! He was well-liked, affable, had the common touch alongside great dignity and he was a great statesman and ambassador, though his reign was so brief.

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria wanted to raise the perfect prince.

Seeing the footage of Prince William in New Zealand today, I was over-awed by the thought that it took a few generations and far less strict regimen for that dream to
come into being. Prince William was amazing! One moment dressed in casual clothes, shaking hands with the crowds, crouching to have his photo taken with children, and chatting to them as freely as if they were old friends. When someone in the crowd called out, “I will see you in London on the 29th!” Prince William, with genuine delight replied, “You’re coming? You are all invited!!” The next minute, in a smart suit and a Maori ‘stole’ he was addressing the earthquake victims with a solemnity and wisdom that was so touching. He spoke of his grandmother and the advice she had given him – and who could fail to notice that he, having lost his mother at such a young age, understood grief - and his dignified references to Her Majesty also showed such respect for the Queen (as did the way he sang the National Anthem, ‘God Save the Queen’, with such gusto).

Kipling's wonderful lines immediately came to mind:

“If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings nor lose the common touch...”

If ever the British monarchy needed a lift when the scurrilous newspapers go in search of scandals, I am sure this young prince is the perfect person for the job. Not only would his mother be so proud of him, but also his great-great-great-great-grandparents, Prince Albert and Queen Victoria must surely be looking down at him and thinking, “Well, we got there in the end!”

Succession Series: Born to Be King?

(For background on this series, click here.)

Princess Elizabeth of York was the world’s darling from the moment of her birth in 1926. She was an instant celebrity gracing the covers of magazines with photos of her released at regular intervals. Stories about her seemed to enchant people. How did she dress? What were her favorite toys? How did she turn the gruff old King George V into a tiny girl’s playmate?

Despite this fascination, absolutely no one dreamed she would one day become queen. She was born #3 in the line of succession after her father, Albert Duke of York, and his older brother, Edward Prince of Wales. It was expected that the charming, thirty-something Prince of Wales would marry and beget more heirs. Furthermore, the Duke and Duchess of York would probably have a large family (he had six siblings; she had nine), some of whom would surely be boys who would supplant their older sister.

It seemed that the delightfully celebrated little Princess Elizabeth was destined to grow up as a cadet member of the royal family, probably living a comfortable and pleasant life in the country with her horses and dogs.

Fate, however, intervened.

First, her parents had only one more child, another little princess. Then, when Elizabeth was nine years old, her beloved “Grandpapa England” died. Her now forty-something uncle became king. Since he was still a bachelor, Elizabeth moved up to #2 in the succession. Elizabeth’s darling uncle was spending less and less time with her, but it wasn’t the duties of kingship keeping him away; it was his growing obsession with his married mistress Wallis Simpson. By the end of the year, he had decided that Wallis was more important to him than the throne. He abdicated, Elizabeth’s dad became King George VI, and little Elizabeth was suddenly and unexpectedly the heir presumptive of the British Empire. Just 16 years later, her father’s premature death made her queen at the tender age of 25.

Since the Act of Settlement in 1701, only nine people were born in the direct line of succession. Only half of them inherited the throne. Additionally, four indirect heirs (including Elizabeth) eventually became monarchs. Here is a breakdown:

DIRECT HEIRS

Frederick Prince of Wales (1707-1751)
Born during the reign of Queen Anne, Frederick was the fourth generation direct heir under the guidelines of the recent Act of Settlement. He was #4 after his father (the future George II), his grandfather (the future George I) and his great-grandmother Electress Sophia of Hanover. Sophia (1630-1714) and her descendants had been selected as the only legal heirs of Queen Anne, who had no surviving children. Sophia died shortly before Anne and so did not inherit the throne. George I decided to leave his seven-year-old grandson in Hanover, which meant Frederick grew up separated from his family. By the time, his father became king in 1727, a deep rift had developed and Frederick was left in Hanover for a while longer. He was eventually allowed to come to England, he got married and he fathered nine children. However, he predeceased his father by nine years and never made it to the throne.

Princess Augusta of Wales (1737-1813)

The first child of Frederick Prince of Wales, Augusta was born at #2 after her father. She would have become queen, if only she had had no brothers. As it was, she remained a direct heir for less than a year, when she was supplanted by her little brother George. More brothers and their descendants pushed her further down the line, falling as low as #18. She was even superseded by her own granddaughter. How is that possible? Augusta’s daughter, Caroline of Brunswick, married her oldest nephew, the Prince of Wales, who was #1. So, their only child, Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales, was #2. At the time of her death, Augusta had moved back up a couple of spots to #16.

King George III (1738-1820)
As the first son of Frederick Prince of Wales, George took his older sister Augusta’s place at #2. When his father died in 1751, the 13-year-old prince moved to #1 and eventually became king at the age of 22. Despite being quite a moral stickler (or perhaps because of it!), his giant brood was full of rapscallion sons and overprotected daughters. Sadly, the long-lived George descended into mania likely caused by a metabolic disorder called porphyria and spent the last decade of his reign in oblivion isolated from his large family. When his precious granddaughter Princess Charlotte Augusta’s death caused a succession crisis in 1817 and his beloved wife died in 1818, George was completely unaware of either ocurrence.

King George IV (1762-1830)
George was the first of King George III’s plentiful progeny and the first person to be born at #1 since the Act of Settlement. Young George loved dressing well, building elaborate homes and having a rollicking good time with older, particularly married, women. In 1785, he married the twice-widowed Maria Fitzherbert. This secret marriage invalidated his claim to the throne because not only lacked the he did not have the king’s permission, but Maria was a Catholic. By 1795, George's debts were massive; unaware of the illegal wife, the king agreed to pay George's debts if he married. So, he married his first cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick. In a reaction more violent than when Henry VIII met his “Flanders mare”, the two instantly hated each other, but they miraculously had one child, Princess Charlotte Augusta, exactly nine months after their wedding. George spent the next 22 years trying to get rid of Caroline and even locked her out of his coronation in 1820. He reigned for 10 years. Technically, his bigamous second marriage was also invalid.

Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales (1996-1817)

Princess Charlotte Augusta was the “People’s Princess” of her day. Born at #2 to warring parents, she spent her childhood living in her own household often ignored by both of them and at other times being used as a weapon in their battle with each other. Although hoydenish, Charlotte Augusta’s youth, beauty and unaffected manner set her apart from her dissolute father and his equally disreputable brothers in the minds of the people. She gained even more popularity when she refused to marry the man her father selected because the marriage would require her to live outside of England. When she enacted a kind of reverse fairytale by marrying a man of her own choosing, Charlotte Augusta sealed her position in the hearts of the people. Her death in childbirth devastated the nation and caused a succession crisis. Suddenly, her middle-aged uncles were on the hunt for royal brides, dreaming of capturing the crown for themselves. Charlotte remained #2 throughout her entire life. [Read more about Charlotte Augusta]

Princess Victoria The Princess Royal (1840-1901)
Once the dynastic dust settled after Princess Charlotte Augusta’s death, a young Queen Victoria married and started her own family. Her first child was a bright and beautiful girl whom she named for herself. Vicky was born #1 and is the only person born #1 who did not ascend the throne; she was supplanted by a brother less than a year after her birth. A princessly prodigy, Vicky was the beloved favorite child of her father Prince Albert, far surpassing the heir who never managed to live up to his parents’ expectations. Like the current queen, Vicky fell in love when she was just an adolescent. At 17, she was allowed to marry her sweetheart and the two remained practically inseparable until his death in 1888. Vicky survived another 13 years, but was too ill with cancer to travel to England for the death and funeral of her mother in 1901. She died later that year. After numerous brothers who had numerous children and grandchildren, Vicky had fallen from #1 to #28.

King Edward VII (1841-1910)
Queen Victoria’s firstborn son displaced his older sister at #1. Named Albert Edward in honor of his father and grandfather. He was not clever like his older sister and he got into some adolescent romantic entanglements, which led both of his parents to conclude that he was morally lax. When an already-ill Prince Albert traveled in terrible weather to chastise the prince for one of these peccadilloes, he contracted a fatal illness and died at the age of 43. Queen Victoria blamed her son. For the next four decades, she denied him any responsibilities, leaving the fun-loving prince with no useful occupation. By the time he became king in 1901 at the age of almost 60, his fast-living ways had likely taken their toll. Opting not to use his father’s name, (I wonder why—hmmm?) he reigned as King Edward VII for only nine years.

Prince Albert Victor The Duke of Clarence (1864-1892)
Prince Albert Victor was the first child of the future King Edward VII. Born at #2, he was everything Victoria and Albert had feared his father was. Albert Victor’s tutors were unable to teach him anything and his service in the navy and then the army yielded no achievements. Even more inclined to fast living than his father, Albert Victor rutted in dissipation, likely contracting venereal disease and even being one of the suspects for Jack the Ripper, which is highly unlikely. All that the prince had going for him was his good lucks and amiable charm. When a royal bride was found for him, he obligingly fell in love and proposed. Weeks later, however, he died from pneumonia just days after his 28th birthday. [Read more about Albert Victor]

King Edward VIII (1894-1972)
Born at #3 behind his father, the future King George V, and his grandfather, the future, King Edward VII, Prince Edward was handsome and charming. Dispatched on numerous international tours, he attracted huge crowds and the newfangled newsreel cameras everywhere he went. There was even a song written about him called, “I Danced with a Man Who Danced with the Prince of Wales.” Behind the scenes, however, he was not a happy person. He really did not like the formality of being royal and the limitations it placed upon him. He also enjoyed spending time with married ladies, indulging in a series of affairs kept secret from his adoring public. Meanwhile, the media constantly speculated about which princess he would marry. His father grew increasingly distraught, famously and accurately predicting that after his own death, the prince would ruin himself in a year. Once he became king in January 1936, he decided he would marry his married mistress Wallis Simpson. The British press had kept the affair quiet, so when the news broke, the nation was stunned. Almost as soon as they heard about it, the king abdicated. It was December 1936. Now The Duke of Windsor, he married Wallis and they lived among the international jetset. He died in 1972.


INDIRECT HEIRS

Three eventual monarchs were not born directly in the line of succession. Two of them were younger brothers of the direct heir and two of them, including the current queen (described above) were nieces.

King William IV (1765-1837)
Born at #3, William The Duke of Clarence was the third son of King George III. After joining the navy, he settled down with his mistress and they had 10 children. In the meantime, William’s two older brothers had each married princesses but only had one child between them, Princess Charlotte Augusta. When she died, it was clear that the now 52-year-old sailor prince would eventually become king. He found a royal bride, Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen, who was exactly half his age. Having fathered so many children already, William undoubtedly expected to have numerous royal heirs of his own, but none of Adelaide's children lived. When he ascended the throne in 1830, he accepted his next brother the late Duke of Kent’s only child, Princess Victoria, as his heir. However, he feared dying before the little girl reached 18--he wanted her to rule in her own right instead of under her mother’s regency. Stubborn until the end, he lived just long enough, dying a month after Victoria’s eighteenth birthday.

Queen Victoria (1819-1901)

When King George III’s only legitimate grandchild unexpectedly died in 1817, the old king’s unmarried, middle-aged sons acquired royal wives and started trying for an heir. [Read about the Royal Baby Race] Son number four, Edward The Duke of Kent and his new wife had Victoria 12 months after the wedding. She was #5 and it seemed unlikely they she would eventually ascend the throne: both her Uncle William and her father would probably have a son who would supplant her. But, her father died before her first birthday and Uncle William had no surviving legitimate children. Victoria became queen at 18 and soon embarked, although unintentionally, on creating a huge dynast. Although she repeatedly said she didn’t want a large, she also famously enjoyed her husband’s “company.” The first of their nine children was born ten months after the wedding. When she died in 1901, she was the head of a family that included more than 70 living descendents

George V (1865-1936)
The second son of the future King Edward VII, George was born #3. The good-natured George was believed to have a positive effect on his charming but slow-witted older brother, Prince Albert Victor. So, whatever Albert Victor did, George was sent along too—including being placed in the navy when he was only 10 years old. Fortunately, George adored his older brother and he made a pretty good navy officer. George never had the slightest thought about being king one day. His world changed forever when Albert Victor died in 1894. George was named The Duke of York and encouraged to marry his late brother’s fiancée, which he did. Sixteen years later, he was kept his. George lived until 1936, devoted to his wife, his family, his nation and his stamp collection.

George VI (1894-1952)
Born on the anniversary of his great-grandfather’s death, Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George was the second son of the future King George V. He was #4 following his grandfather, father and older brother. Instead of seeing his unfortunate birthday in a negative light, Queen Victoria surprised everyone by declaring that it was a blessing for him. It’s unclear whether she was right. Bertie, as he was called, developed severe digestive problems following years of abuse by a nanny. He also suffered from knock knees, which were corrected by years of wearing painful metal braces. These two circumstances combined with emotionally distant parents likely contributed to his famous stammer. Bertie was no one’s idea of a king. When it became clear that his brother, King Edward VIII, was going to abandon the throne, some even speculated that Bertie and his daughters might be passed over in favor of one of his younger brothers. But Bertie had an unshakeable sense of duty. Upon his accession, he chose to use the last of his names in honor of his late father. Throughout World War II, he and his young family were symbols of stability and continuity. Unfortunately, Bertie exacerbated his lifelong ill health heavy smoking heavily, which led directly to his death in his mid-50s.

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"The Mind Is Its Own Place"

John Milton's wonderful line from ‘Paradise Lost’ : “The mind is its own place and of itself can make a heaven of Hell or a hell of Heaven” came to mind when I read a very interesting comment by ‘Anonymous’ on a previous post. Referring to Kaiser Wilhelm, s/he wrote:

“His parents were a happy marriage, so I don't know why he became such a complicated character. On the other hand, Emperor Karl grew up in a broken home, his father being an unfaithful husband and his mother a very strict and monotonous woman. That clearly shows that it's up to every person to decide what kind of human being she or he wants to become in life.”
I couldn’t agree more with the last sentence of this comment. Recently I was watching a TV drama in which someone, from the outside, had everything going for him but he was deeply unhappy due to his perception of, and emotional response to the events happening with other members of this family, which – inaccurately as it happened – left him feeling somehow unloved. Children see the world revolving around themselves. If parents are unhappy together, children often believe themselves to be the cause of their unhappiness. If, for some valid reason, which the child does not understand, parents leave the child with other people for a while, the child can feel abandoned. Children are so finely tuned that the slightest snub can seem like a disaster, and the tiniest observation can create immense awe and joy. Most of us dull that fine tuning as we grow up – and we are encouraged to do so by adults - in order to dull our extremes of painful or rapturous emotion. Whether we grow up in idyllic domestic circumstances (did anyone grow up in a thoroughly idyllic home where everything was always rosy?) or in very unhappy circumstances, it seems to me we have a choice. We can either become reactors/victims or creative and perceptive beings. How wonderful it would be to maintain a child’s fine-tuning alongside the wisdom that comes with understanding that, while we truly are the centres of our own universe (in that we have choice how to perceive every encounter and situation), everyone else around us is also the centre of his/her universe.

Kaiser Wilhelm, I think, had a reactor/victim mentality and was in such inner turmoil because he knew he needn’t be that way but couldn’t find a means of overcoming his own demons. The fact of his parents’ happy marriage probably added to his woes. His mother was little more than a child when he was born and she had very little say in his upbringing. Being so young and being a stranger in a foreign country and in a Court that was so different to the one in which she was raised, she felt powerless to influence Wilhelm when he was, almost from the moment of his birth, made the property of the Prussian Court, and had his head filled with grandiose notions from Bismarck and from his paternal grandparents. At the same time, because of the deformity of his arm, he was forced to endure countless hours of humiliation and painful treatments in a futile attempt to correct the deformity. A small child, seeing the love his parents had for each other, yet feeling excluded from that love, he always seems to view his deformity as the cause of his mother’s abandonment of him. To make matters worse, his mother was intellectually brilliant, and didn’t really ‘suffer fools gladly’ – after all, her own mother had been very quick to criticise her children so that was the normal pattern for Vicky. Wilhelm must have felt one minute stupid and weak, and the next minute, hearing Bismarck speak of his role as future Kaiser, amazingly powerful. It was a pattern he continued to act out all his life – swinging between victor and victim to such extremes.

At the outbreak of war, for example, his initial response to the Russian mobilisation was that of a victim. The Willy-Nicky telegrams and his own autobiography show him in an attitude of injured innocence – the poor victim of his family’s treachery. Within a week he was making grandiose and extreme announcements about how he would utterly decimate every British soldier who set foot on the Continent, and how every Russian prisoner should be killed without mercy. Who or what was he really railing against? His own sense of confusion and inadequacy.

The saddest part of his story is, I think, that he was intellectually gifted and he was capable of great love but his inner turmoil prevented him from ever finding balance or harmony within himself. The last video footage of his life shows him at Doorn, carving wood, playing with his dogs, behaving as he probably behaved in the happy hours he spent with his mother and family at Bornstedt (the country ‘farm’ his parents bought to create as normal a family life as possible for their children. There, he had played with local children and lived a ‘normal’ life and felt very close to his mother).

The contradictions in his character are fascinating, and are also a family trait. Few people could be as contradictory as Queen Victoria and several of her children and grandchildren...and perhaps the contradictions, magnified by the loftiness of their position, are what make these people so attractive even today. They mirror everyone’s contradictions in a way that is quite beautiful.

There is so much more to write of Wilhelm’s contradictions...

The Kaiser and his Grandmother

Some years ago, on August 4th (the anniversary of Britain’s entry into the the First World War), I stood on the corridor outside Queen Victoria’s bedroom at Osborne House on the same spot where Kaiser Wilhelm must have once stood, and tried to imagine how it felt to him, wanting to see his grandmother one last time as she lay on her death bed. The Kaiser’s behaviour after the death of his father was so obnoxious and, since I do not believe him to have been for one moment a callous man at heart, I suspect he regretted that impetuous arrogance for many years afterwards. His family, Queen Victoria’s family, were so reluctant to allow him to even visit his beloved grandmother that he arrived quietly and behaved more like a subservient beggar than a pompous Emperor. As a man to whom appearance seemed to matter so much; a man who hardly ever let down his guard and always had to wear a mask, adopt a powerful persona and play the part he had assigned to himself, his presence at Queen Victoria’s deathbed is very striking. It seems like one of the few times in his life when Willy was truly himself – not arrogant, not wanting to be the centre of attention (the very opposite in fact – he skulked in the corridor, wanting only to be allowed into the room) but acting sincerely and out of genuine love.

Fritz Ponsonby, in his wonderful “Recollections of Three Reigns” describes the scene:

“At about half past six we were told the end had come. The Duke of Argyll told me that the last moments were like a great three-decker ship sinking. She kept on rallying and sinking. The behaviour of the German Emperor was beyond all praise. He kept in the background until they were all summoned. The Prince of Wales, Princess Christian, Princess Louise and Princess Beatrice stood around the bed, while the German Emperor knelt down and supported the Queen with his arm....the Emperor never moved for two and a half hours. His devotion to the Queen quite disarmed all the Royal Family.”

Turi and other royal animals/angels

It is very touching that as, 110 years ago tomorrow, Queen Victoria was nearing her passing she asked to see her little dog. According to the report of her physician, Sir James Reid, on 21st January 1901, as she lay in bed at Osborne,

“...the Queen suddenly asked for her favourite little dog ‘Turi’ (Italian Spitz) but unfortunately he was out for exercise and not to be found. However, when he returned he was taken and put on the Queen’s bed, who patted him and seemed pleased to have him beside her.”
This was the day before Queen Victoria died and it is rather beautiful that Turi is mentioned so close to such a momentous historical occasion. Throughout her life, Queen Victoria’s animals had meant so much to her – and to other members of her family – that her letters are speckled with references to them: to Noble’s puppies, to Vicky’s cats at Potsdam, to the ostrich at Windsor, to Beatrice’s poor little dog who was killed by a carriage on the Isle of Wight. Animals were so close to the Queen’s heart that she openly supported the anti-vivisection league and clearly saw her beloved animals as members of the family. It is lovely that, alongside the mythical and family figures who, carved in stone and marble, adorn the corridors and gardens of Osborne, there are are also carvings of Prince Albert’s beloved greyhound, Eos, (who is pictured in the image here) and various other horses and dogs so beloved by the family.

Among the many accounts of the death of Queen Victoria, little mention is made of Turi’s presence and the comfort he brought her. He is rather overshadowed by the presence of Kaisers, Kings, Princes and Princesses...but it was Turi whom the Queen specifically asked for and I would love to know what happened to him afterwards. I hope he wasn’t like Caesar, Edward VII’s dog, who wandered desperately around Buckingham Palace searching for his master after his passing (but was happily given a leading role at the King’s funeral).

People remember the names of horses who carried war leaders into battle – the Duke of Wellington’s ‘Copenhagen’, and Napoleon’s ‘Marengo’ etc. etc. – it’s rather lovely to think of the other animals whose presence graced the lives of great people. Tsarevich Alexei’s spaniel ‘Joy’ and Mary, Queen of Scots’ terrier ‘Gedden’ accompanied their human companions to the death. More faithful than any servant, more comforting than any words offered by friends or family, these half-forgotten angels in animal form remained unflinching to the end and, unmoved by politics or the bickering that goes on between humans, deserve their place in history.

Little Turi deserves his place in history, too, and I am glad his name is recorded.

A Very Happy New Year!

For so many people whom I have met, the year 2010 has been unusually difficult in so many ways. There seems to have been so much illness and bereavement and it has often felt to me that everything was thrown up into the air in order to come down in a different and far better place. With that thought dominant in my mind, I am so looking forward to Midnight tonight and the birth of 2011.

The year 1866 had been particularly distressing for Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Alice. The Austro-Prussian War not only meant a long separation from her husband and the sadness of seeing the wounded Hessians, but also had led to her being on the opposing side to her closest sister, Vicky, in Prussia. By the end of the year the war was over, and as Princess Alice looked forward to 1867, she wrote to her mother:

“May the Almighty give you every blessing of peace and comfort which the world can still give you....May every blessing fall on my dear old home, with all its dear ones! May peace and the glory which peace and order bring with it, with its many blessings, protect my native land; and may, in the new year, your wise and glorious reign, so overshadowed by dear Papa’s spirit, continue to prosper and be a model and ornament to the world!
This year of pain and anxiety, yet for us so rich in blessings, draws to its close. It moves me more than ever as its last day approaches. For how much have we not to thank the Almighty – for my life, which is so unworthy compared to many others; the new life of this little one [her daughter – Irene] and above all the preservation of my own dear husband who is my all in this life.
The trials of this year must have brought some good with all the evil; good to the individual and good to the multitude. God grant we may all profit by what we have learned, and gain more and more that trust in God’s love, which is our guide and support in trouble and in joy! Oh, more than ever, I have felt this year that God’s goodness and love are indeed beyond comprehension!
...I am really glad to hear you can listen to a little music. Music is such a heavenly thing, and dear Papa loved it so much that I can’t but think that now it must be soothing, and bring you near to him....”

Bring on the fireworks and the music....Ring out the old, ring in the new! A Very Happy New Year!

Where the marriage should take place . . .

There can't be many families who have embarked on wedding planning without having, at the very least, a heated debate about some aspect of the Big Day. The venue is often the trickiest decision, simply because it is often hard to book the place of your dreams. This is obviously not such a problem if you are marrying into the royal family.

In 1858 Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, Vicky, the Princess Royal, married Prince Frederick William of Prussia. They had been engaged for two years, since the princess was 14, a relationship cemented in the heather at Balmoral where the 24 year-old Fritz had proposed. Victoria was delighted because the young couple obviously cared for each other (and we must brush aside modern concerns about the wisdom of encouraging your 14-year-old’s relationship with a man ten years her senior). Conveniently, their union also fulfilled a useful political purpose in the wake of the Crimean War, uniting Britain and Prussia against misplaced Russian ambitions in Europe.

Punch Magazine composed a patriotic ode to the happy couple.

Victoria and Albert were determined that the wedding could not take place before Vicky was 17, so their engagement was a long, and for a while, secret one. Early in 1856, rumours of the union appeared in the press, however, and neither English nor Prussian commentators were overwhelmed with happiness at the prospect. The Times sniffly dismissed the Prussian royal family as ‘a paltry German dynasty’. The official announcement did not occur until May 1857, at which point the Prussians issued the ultimate insult, by suggesting that the marriage take place in Berlin. Lytton Strachey, the Queen’s biographer, noted that the Queen was ‘speechless with indignation.’

On paper, however, she let rip, emphatically, imperiously, and slightly hysterically. She asked the Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, to inform the German Ambassador

‘not to ENTERTAIN the POSSIBILITY of such a question . . . The Queen NEVER could consent to it, both for public and for private reasons, and the assumption of its being TOO MUCH for a Prince Royal of Prussia to come over to marry the Princess Royal of Great Britain IN England is too ABSURD to say the least. The Queen must say that there never was even the shadow of a doubt on Prince Frederick William's part, as to where the marriage should take place. . . .Whatever may be the usual practice of Prussian Princes, it is not EVERY day that one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England. The question must be considered as settled and closed.’

And that was that. The wedding took place on 25th January 1858 in the comparatively small Chapel Royal of St James Palace, but it was accompanied by great public festivities – illuminations, state concerts, immense crowds and general rejoicings. Incidentally, the bride and bridegroom left the church to a glorious, but then little-known recessional, Opus 61, by the German composer Felix Mendelssohn. Since Vicky’s nuptials, it has become known as the ‘Wedding March’ and few weddings are complete without it.

Queen Victoria as a Child

In response to search queries, here is a little tidbit about Queen Victoria as a child. Born in 1819, she was the only daughter of King George III's fourth son, the Duke of Kent. Her father died when she was an infant and she was raised at Kensington Palace by her German mother, who did not get along well with the royal British in-laws.

Through a series of tragically young deaths among her cousins, Victoria succeeded her uncles George IV and William IV when she was barely 18 years old. (Read my post about the "Royal Baby Race" at the Unoffical Royalty Site.)

"Who Can Guess What His Tastes May Be?" - More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters

One spring morning in 1892, Grand Duke Louis of Hesse-and-By-Rhine sat down to lunch with his son, Ernie, and youngest daughter, Alix. During the meal he suffered a stroke and was carried, paralysed, to his bed.
“Oh what sad news from Darmstadt!” gasped Queen Victoria, “…Dear dear Louis, so beloved by us all, so adored by his children, a real son to me, to think of him paralysed and helpless…Poor dear Irène how distressed she will be. I can think of nothing else.”
His daughters hurried from Prussia, Russia and Malta to be at his side but by the time they reached the New Palace ‘the best and kindest of fathers’ was barely conscious. He died in the early hours of the morning, 15th March 1892.
‘Broken-hearted, crushed and bewildered’, Queen Victoria’s heart again went out to her orphaned grandchildren and particularly, in the aftermath of the Grand Duke’s death, to his twenty-three-year-old successor, Ernst Ludwig.
Until then, Ernie had been living a carefree existence, indulging his passion for art and enjoying the company of his unmarried sister Alix. Now, suddenly saddled with the weight of responsibility for the Grand Duchy, all that would have to change, and fond as she was of her grandson, the Queen had little faith in his ability to cope at such an early age. She sent him message after message full of sound advice and, above all, recommended that he should find a wife as soon as possible not only to help him carry out his duties but to secure the Hessian dynasty.
There may have been another motive in the Queen’s persistent pestering. Perhaps she had wondered why Ernie seemed disinclined to marry and appeared so content with his artistic friends that he would have been happy to continue his bachelorhood indefinitely. Perhaps, too, she had picked up the hint in Vicky’s letter: ‘who can guess what [his] tastes may be, and whether young Ladies will be forthcoming who return whatever feelings [he] may have.’
Whether the observant Queen suspected Ernie’s bisexual tendencies and hoped to avoid a scandal, or simply believed that he would be happier with a wife, she would not let the matter drop. She had even selected him a bride from among her own granddaughters - Cousin Maud of Wales. As it quickly became apparent that Ernie had little in common with Maud, Queen Victoria simply switched his attention to another cousin: eighteen-year-old Victoria Melita (Ducky) of Edinburgh.
Whenever the couple met in one of her English palaces, the Queen delighted in seeing them laughing together and became increasingly convinced that they were ideally suited. Both were fun-loving and artistic and, since Ducky was living in neighbouring Coburg, she was familiar with all the mores of German Grand Duchies and would, in her grandmother’s opinion, make an excellent successor to Princess Alice as Grand Duchess of Hesse.
Throughout the summer of 1892, Queen Victoria cajoled and beleaguered Ernie to propose but neither he nor his sisters were quite so enthusiastic. To his sisters Ducky appeared too frivolous and flippant to take the duties of a Grand Duchess seriously, while Ernie, who had never quite recovered from the death of his little brother Frittie, feared for the health of his children and had doubts about the wisdom of marriage between first cousins. In response the Queen had her personal physician compile a medical report which assured him that since both parties were perfectly fit, such a marriage would ‘strengthen the stock.’ As Ernie continued to prevaricate the Queen became more impatient. If he did not propose soon, she warned, Ducky might slip away; the Duchess of Edinburgh and Coburg was renowned for marrying off her daughters at an early age and while Ernie dithered there were plenty of other young princes who would be only to happy to step in before him.
In fact Ducky herself had, to her grandmother’s chagrin, already fallen in love with another cousin on her mother’s side: Grand Duke Kyril of Russia. For the Queen, who still ‘grieved as much as ever’ over Ella’s Russian match, it must have come as a relief to hear that the Orthodox Church forbade marriage between first cousins, and consequently nothing could come of Ducky’s hopes.
Queen Victoria bombarded Darmstadt with letters but, frustrated by Ernie’s tardiness in replying, decided to take more direct action. She simultaneously invited both cousins to visit her at Osborne and there at last in the winter of 1893, Ernie proposed, Ducky accepted him and a date was set for a spring wedding.
The following April the splendid gathering of royalties converging on Coburg gave rise to a premature optimism that the marriage would be a success. The streets were crowded with so many guests that passers-by were delighted to see carriages stopping on the road as princes, empresses, duchesses and grand dukes descended to greet one another. The Kaiser, the Empress Frederick, the Prince of Wales, the Tsarevich Nicholas, the Crown Prince and Princess of Roumania, the Grand Duke and Duchess Serge, the Duke of Connaught and his daughters, Daisy and Patsy, and numerous other relatives from Russia, England and Germany enjoyed a family reunion and settled as comfortably as they could into the overcrowded palaces. The highlight of the gathering was the arrival of Queen Victoria, who, having put so much effort into bringing about the wedding, made a special effort to be present.
Not everyone, however, was delighted to see the Queen. Amid all the rejoicing, the bride’s father, Affie, was seething with rage. In his mother’s entourage he had spotted the ‘Munshi’ Abdul Karim, her pretentious Indian secretary and the latest in a line of favourites. Not since the days of John Brown had any of Queen Victoria’s retainers irked the royal family as much as the arrogant Munshi. His constant presence and endless complaints had been unpalatable enough in England, but Affie refused to stomach such behaviour in Coburg. Standing on his authority both as Duke and as the bride’s father, Affie adamantly refused to allow him to join the royal guests in the chapel. For once, the Queen was forced to give way and the Munshi, bristling with indignation, was banished to a stand with lesser members of the household.
“[The Queen] was greatly distressed and cried a great deal! All the servants about her knew and were talking about this and even [the Queen’s courier] spoke …about it in terms of glee at the M[unchi]’s discomfiture.”
The wedding service took place on 19th April in the Lutheran chapel of Schloss Ehrenburg, where the young Tsarevich Nicholas observed that Ernie and Ducky made ‘a lovely couple.’ In the joyful celebrations that followed there was every reason to believe that Ernie might yet prove the ideal husband for his cousin. They both took pleasure in parties, dancing and entertaining, and Ernie’s sensitive nature complimented that of his far more passionate wife. They shared, too, a fervent interest in art for, while Ernie was a connoisseur and collector, Ducky was a talented designer and artist:
“She draws unerringly, never rubbing out or correcting a single line, and her taste is excellent. It is really genius thrown away but it makes her very happy and she works hard as if her livelihood depended upon it.”
In the company of their numerous cousins, the future seemed rosy, but once the merry band had departed and the couple were alone, Ducky quickly discovered that her marriage was doomed to failure. Their wedding night was as disastrous as Missy’s had been and left her ‘completely shattered and disillusioned.’ If she hoped that matters would improve in time, the proud granddaughter of the Tsar soon realised she had overestimated Ernie. His penchant for young men was unabated and, unlike Cousins Ella and Marie Louise, Ducky could not resign herself to life with a homosexual husband. For his part, Ernie had believed that his wife would gladly adopt the numerous charities his mother had founded but Ducky showed no interest whatsoever in the affairs of Hesse and thought her husband and his little Grand Duchy so dull that she seized any chance to escape.
A year after the wedding their first and only child, was born - causing a good deal of wrangling between Queen Victoria and Ducky’s mother about the choice of an English or German obstetrician - but by then the marriage was already rapidly deteriorating. As Ducky complained that her husband was fonder of footmen than he was of her, they were soon living separate lives, held together by two frail bonds: their daughter Elizabeth - whose obvious preference for her father grated on Ducky’s nerves - and the knowledge that Queen Victoria would never consent to a divorce.

In April 1896 Ernie and Ducky returned to Coburg for the wedding of Ducky’s younger sister Sandra to Ernst of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. The Queen complained that nineteen-year-old Sandra was too young to be married, particularly to a man fifteen years her senior, and with typical family histrionics the bride and her younger sister, Baby Bee, wept throughout the service, but the marriage would prove the happiest and most stable of all the Edinburgh princesses. The couple settled into a Schloss near Hesse where, between 1897 and 1911, Sandra gave birth to five children: Gottfried, Marie Melita, Alexandra, Irma and Alfred, the youngest of whom died within his first year.
Two months after Sandra’s wedding, Ducky found another excuse to escape from ‘dull’ Darmstadt to the glamour of Moscow for the coronation of her Russian cousin, the new Tsar Nicholas II. The delights of Russia were all the more alluring for Ducky when she came face to face once more with her first love, the dashing, if taciturn, Grand Duke Kyril Vladimirovich. From then on, there was no hope of saving her marriage; her thoughts were only of Kyril.
Trapped and frustrated, Ducky sought escape from Hesse at every opportunity, visiting her relatives across Europe, in the full knowledge that in her absence Ernie was entertaining his boys. In 1899 she stayed at Balmoral with Queen Victoria and Cousin Thora of Schleswig-Holstein, where her dissatisfaction was obvious to everyone.
“The Grand Duchess is most amusing when describing her life at Darmstadt and her loathing of Germans is most extraordinary,” wrote the Lady-in-Waiting, Marie Mallet. “Though anything but British by birth she adores England with passion and declares a cottage here is preferable to all the Schlosses in the Fatherland.”
Beneath the ‘amusing’ façade, Ducky was in despair and wept to her grandmother that the only solution was divorce. The Queen had no need of her explanations; she had already made own discreet and thorough enquiries into the goings-on in Hesse and genuinely pitied Ducky’s plight but still she remained adamant on the subject of divorce.
Faced with no alternative, Ducky made one final attempt to accommodate her grandmother’s wishes and salvage her marriage. Perhaps, she hoped, another child might draw her and Ernie closer together but, after suffering a miscarriage in the spring of 1900, she gave up all hope of a future with Ernie. Leaving Darmstadt, for her mother’s villa in the South of France, she sought comfort in the arms of her lover, the Grand Duke Kyril.

Intensely disappointed by the outcome of her schemes, Queen Victoria firmly declared she would never again indulge in matchmaking. Not only had the marriage that the Queen so desired, wrought nothing but unhappiness for both parties, it had also led indirectly to the marriage she had been most anxious to avoid - that of her favourite granddaughter, Princess Alix of Hesse.

"A Mere Child and Quite Inexperienced" More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters

In June 1892, members of Queen Victoria’s household were shocked to read in the newspapers the announcement of the engagement of sixteen-year-old Missy of Edinburgh to the twenty-six-year- old heir to the throne of Roumania. For some months there had been much speculation about the young princess’s future; her name had already been linked with several continental princes, including ‘the odious Gunther,’ brother of the German Empress Dona and by the summer of 1892 the Prince and Princess of Wales were under the definite impression that Missy was on the verge of accepting their son, George’s proposal of marriage. The sudden announcement of her engagement brought a swift and unexpected end to all speculation.
“It seems to have come very rapidly to a climax,” wrote a stunned Queen Victoria, “The country is very insecure, the Society dreadful & she is a mere Child & quite inexperienced.”
The Prince and Princess of Wales, believing that George had been snubbed, were incensed but when the they berated Missy’s father, Affie, for his part in settling the affair, they soon learned that he had had no say whatsoever in the matter. His wife, the Anglophobic Duchess of Edinburgh and Coburg, had engineered and arranged everything without so much as consulting her husband. Her own unhappy marriage to unfaithful Affie, left the Duchess with a very low opinion of English princes and, determined to keep Missy from the overbearing influence of her grandmother, she had long ago decided that her daughter would marry a German. Ferdinand of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen, a German-born cousin of the Prussian Imperial family, suited the Duchess’ purpose in every respect. Unassuming to the point of dullness, he was living a lonely existence in Bucharest as heir to his uncle, the childless King Carol of Roumania. According to Vicky, he was popular in Roumania and: ‘Is very nice and good and behaves so well to the King and Queen as is as much liked there as they are capable of liking any foreigner.’
The Duchess had little doubt that her sparkling daughter, ten years his junior, would make an instant impression on the shy young man and arranged a meeting at the home of their mutual cousin, Charlotte of Prussia.
The first encounter appeared unpromising. Unaware of what was expected of her, Missy paid little attention to the prince, who seemed far more engrossed in the scintillating conversation of the more sophisticated Charlotte. But the Duchess refused to give up hope and immediately arranged a further meeting in Munich. Now, in a more romantic setting, Missy, uninhibited by her cousin, found the opportunity to shine. Munich was, as she later recalled:
“…the town of towns for this sort of thing…We were both young, there was love in the air, it was springtime and Mamma had a happy, expectant face.”
By the time they met again that summer at Cousin Willy’s Potsdam palace, the brief courtship culminated in the prince’s proposal. Eager to please her mother, Missy accepted him.
If Queen Victoria was stunned by the news, her Court was horrified. Apart from Missy’s youth, stories of the strange goings-on in Bucharest, made the prospect of sending the innocent girl to Roumania appear even more unsavoury. Ferdinand’s aunt, Queen Elizabeth, was a somewhat eccentric figure who, writing under the pseudonym, Carmen Sylva, had earned a considerable reputation as an author. She surrounded herself with Bohemian friends who shared her literary tastes, among them a young poetess named Hélène Vavarescu. So alarmed was King Carol by his wife’s extreme attachment to the mystical Hélène, that he had exiled the Queen from Court and sent her back to her mother the Princess of Wied.
Throughout her three-year banishment, Queen Elizabeth refused to abandon her protégé and actively encouraged her nephew, Ferdinand, to fall under her spell. Although Hélène was not the most stunning of women, being, in Vicky’s opinion, ‘…not at all handsome, short, rather fat and not distinguee looking, but has fine large oriental eyes and beautiful teeth, with very marked eyebrows and black hair,” the lonely prince fell unashamedly in love. Marriage to a mere poetess was out of the question for the heir to the throne, yet even at the time of his engagement, it was rumoured that Ferdinand’s infatuation remained undiminished.
“Disgusted to see the announcement of the marriage of poor pretty P. Marie of Edinburgh to the P. of Rumania!!!” wrote one of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting, “It does seem too cruel a shame to cart that nice pretty girl off to semi-barbaric Roumania and a man to the knowledge of all Europe desperately in love with another woman.”
With her usual concern, Queen Victoria decided to discover the facts for herself and invited Ferdinand and Missy to Windsor. Satisfied by the appearance and manners of the tongue-tied prince, she commented that ‘Missy looked very pretty, and seemed very happy about her engagement,’ and gave the couple her blessing.
In early January 1893, an excited, if nervous Missy arrived in Sigmaringen with her million franc dowry. In the presence of the usual gathering of royalties the wedding ceremonies took place according to both the Protestant and Roman Catholic rites and the couple departed for their honeymoon. The wrench of leaving her family to begin a new life with a virtual stranger was heart-rending for the young bride, and her diffident groom did little to ease the tension. The wedding night proved disastrous:
“I tried to respond to [Ferdinand’s] passion but…there was an empty feeling about it all; I still seemed to be waiting for something that did not come.”
Matters did not improve in the coming weeks and it was not only in the bedroom that phlegmatic Ferdinand disappointed his exuberant bride. When the brief honeymoon was over, the couple moved on to Bucharest where Missy quickly realised that her husband lived so much in awe of his uncle that he dared not contradict him in anything. When the king forbade the young couple from entertaining or attending social functions to avoid creating an unpleasant rivalry among the Roumanian aristocracy, Ferdinand meekly yielded to his order. Missy’s familiar ladies-in-waiting were dispatched home and the adolescent Crown Princess found herself isolated in a foreign country with a husband she barely knew.
Life in the gloomy and gaudy Byzantine palaces was intolerably tedious for such a high-spirited girl and when, much to her surprise, she became pregnant within a fortnight of her wedding, her loneliness was more acute than ever. Contrary to Missy’s wishes that the baby should be born at her country estate, Sinaia, King Carol insisted on her remaining in Bucharest, and resolved to make all the arrangements even to the appointment of midwives and doctors.
Homesick and friendless, Missy could hardly wait for her mother’s arrival but the appearance of the Duchess merely exacerbated the tension. Not only did the Duchess override all King Carol’s plans, insisting that the baby should be born at Sinaia, but was equally determined to resist Queen Victoria’s attempts to provide an English midwife.
“I had terrible fights with Granny dear about an English nurse…but will not give up the [Russian] one I have already engaged and will bring her with me, instead of the old gossip Granny wants you to have.”
Whatever Missy made of her mother’s choice of midwife, she was at least grateful that the Duchess insisted that she should be given chloroform during labour. Within months of the birth of a son, Carol, in October 1893, Missy was pregnant again and consequently denied the possibility of any social life whatsoever. What was more, as she suffocated in the stifling atmosphere of the Court, her husband, she soon discovered, was happily enjoying affairs with various other women.
The return of the eccentric Queen Elizabeth did little to ease Missy’s plight. With more than a hint of jealousy for the Crown Princess’s youth and charm, the Queen went out of her way to crush Missy’s spirit. Though childless herself, she constantly interfered in the upbringing of Missy’s children, even appointing the nursery staff and giving them instructions to report to her any misdemeanour on the princess’ part. Matters came to a head when the Queen insisted on keeping a governess of whom Missy did not approve. At her wits’ end, Missy ‘ran home to mother’ in Coburg and refused to return until the woman was dismissed.
Such behaviour earned the Crown Princess the reputation of being ‘neurotic and arrogant’ but with her ‘instinctive sense of self-preservation’ she refused to be crushed. By the time she returned to Bucharest, she was determined to take charge of her own life and make use of her many talents. She had never doubted her own fascination and, if Ferdinand did not give her the attention she craved, numerous admirers were constantly on hand to flatter and reassure her.
“Princess Marie was…famous for her beauty,” wrote the Russian Prince Felix Youssoupov, “she had wonderful eyes of such a rare shade of greyish-blue that it was impossible to forget them. Her figure was tall and slender as a young poplar and she bewitched me so completely that I followed her about like a shadow.”
The youthful Prince Felix was not the only one to express his devotion to the beautiful Crown Princess and rumours - fuelled largely by the malevolent tongue of Cousin Charlotte who had recently arrived in Roumania - spread that she had embarked on an affair with a Russian cousin, Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich. When the news reached Coburg, her horrified mother demanded an explanation. Affronted by the accusations Missy vehemently denied any wrongdoing, but even she knew that her passionate personality could not long endure a disappointing marriage to a prematurely aging husband.
“What does one find,” she wrote in frustration, “a man intensely in love with you & who has the right to ask everything of you, when you ask him to read to you in the evening he hurries over it only to get to bed for other amusements, when one wants to talk to him, he is reading he newspapers, when one says she is lonely, he says you have the children, he is perfectly devoted to you and yet he will not even give up a cigar to sit a moment with you!”
The romance with Boris may have been innocent enough but, unlike Sophie in Greece, Missy was not prepared to accept the prevalent view that there were different moral codes for men and women. She had done her duty by providing the country with an heir, and now, aware of her husband’s infidelities, she sought lovers of her own. Tales of her penchant for handsome young men circulated through the Courts of Europe, leading Cousin Willy to refer to her as a ‘meddlesome little flirt’ and ‘English harlot.’
Though the rumours were exaggerated, Missy made little effort to conceal her affairs and so complacent was her husband that he happily employed her long-term lover, the dashing Prince Barbo Stirbey, in his household. For her part, Missy often praised the beauty of Ferdinand’s mistresses. Their mutual acquiescence suited all parties and allowed the Crown Prince and Princess to become good friends.
Whatever her opinion of Ferdinand, Missy loved their six children: Carol, Elizabeth, Nicolas, Marie, Ileana and Mircea (the youngest of whom was probably fathered by her lover Prince Stirbey). Thriving on adulation herself, she lavished praise upon them, refusing to reprimand them and spoiling them so terribly that the result would eventually be disastrous not only for Missy personally but for the whole country.
Her relationship with her eldest son bore striking similarities to that of Aunt Vicky and Cousin Willy. At an early age, Carol was taken from Missy’s care to be placed under the supervision of tutors appointed by the King. The most prominent and influential of his teachers was a repressed homosexual who fell in love with his pupil and filled him with such an inflated sense of his own importance that his arrogance rivalled that of the Kaiser. Like Willy, too, Carol simultaneously worshipped and resented his mother, one moment gazing adoringly at her, the next going out of his way to wound her.
Missy’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth was, like Cousin Charlotte, a difficult and moody child who grew into a cold, unaffectionate woman, intent on stirring up trouble for her family. As was the case with Aunt Vicky, Missy’s chief consolation came from her younger children all of whom, like Moretta, Sophie and Mossy, remained devoted to their mother.
It was characteristic of Missy that, out of a seemingly desperate situation she had risen and would continue to rise in the estimation of her husband’s future subjects. Outwardly she and Ferdinand played the role of a happily married couple and, as Crown Princess, her personal charm endeared her to the people of ‘semi-barbaric’ Roumania in a manner that could never be rivalled by her more puritanical cousin, Sophie, Crown Princess of neighbouring, civilised Greece. With her natural flair and verve, Missy compensated for a loveless marriage in the arms a fervent lover - an example that would soon be followed by her younger sister, Ducky.

"Tell My Granddaughter to Come Home to Me" More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters

‘Poor dear Lenchen,’ dependent on laudanum and placebos, had never found life easy, but her nerves were strained to the limit in the summer of 1900 when an alarming telegram arrived at Cumberland Lodge. The message tersely informed her that her daughter, Marie Louise, must return at once to the little German Duchy of Anhalt to face divorce proceedings. According to the message, her husband found life with her ‘intolerable’ and since she had ‘neglected her marital duties’ and the marriage had never been consummated, her father-in-law, the Duke of Anhalt, intended to declare it null and void.
Reeling with shock, a frantic Lenchen rushed to Windsor Castle to bear the dreadful tidings to the Queen. Divorce under any circumstances was a scandal that Queen Victoria could not countenance and yet in this case, knowing the full facts, the Queen had nothing but sympathy for her maligned granddaughter.
Ten years earlier, eighteen-year-old Marie Louise was living a sheltered existence in Cumberland Lodge, interspersed with frequent trips to German spas with her hypochondriac mother. Fair, slim and graceful with striking blue eyes, the princess had already attracted the unwelcome attention of Crown Prince Ferdinand of Roumania, but it was the dashing Prince Aribert of Anhalt-Dessau who caught her eye when she arrived in Berlin for Cousin Moretta’s wedding. Bored by the interminable torch dance, and flattered by Aribert’s attention Marie Louise was instantly infatuated.
“He was very tall and good-looking, and a very striking personality,” she recalled, “and I suppose to a young girl of eighteen, he was the beau ideal of a cavalry officer. I have no hesitation in saying that I fell completely under his charm - in others words, fell in love. He paid me a good deal of attention which both flattered and bewildered me.”
The Kaiser was quick to encourage the romance and, bewildered or not, then and there Marie Louise decided that this was the man she would marry. Within a week of their meeting Vicky was writing to the Queen:
“I think it would be a very nice marriage. Aribert is a nice and amiable young man and one may hope that it would be for both their happiness.”
Though Queen Victoria was disconcerted at the speed of events, Marie Louise’s parents approved of the match and on ‘a very cold snowy day’ in December 1890 the couple were engaged at Cousin Willy’s home in Potsdam. From there they made the three-hour journey to Anhalt where a nervous Marie Louise was to be formally introduced to Aribert’s family.
“I loved my mother-in-law from the first moment,” she wrote later. “My father-in-law was rather frightening, but I soon found out he was a dear, kindly but not very intelligent old gentleman.”
The following month Queen Victoria invited Aribert to visit Osborne for her usual inspection of future grandsons and found him entirely suitable. English journalists, however, were less convinced. Even before his arrival, newspapers hinted that there was something ‘not quite right’ about the ‘youthful lover’ but Marie Louise was enraptured and the family agreed with Marie Mallet’s opinion that ‘he really is extremely good looking even for a Prince.’ With the Queen’s blessing, plans were made for a July wedding at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor.
The celebrations coincided with a state visit from the Kaiser who ‘insisted on being present,’ though, for once, proud of his part in bringing the couple together, he behaved himself well. When the ceremonials were over, the newly married couple drove in an open carriage through the streets of Windsor, where crowds of Eton schoolboys who had been given a day off in honour of the occasion, gave them a warm reception. The set out for a honeymoon in Cliveden, and spent further ten days in Marie Louise’s childhood home, Cumberland Lodge, before embarking on a tour of Holland. In the autumn, Prince Aribert took his wife home to the quaint sleepy town of Dessau in eastern Germany.
For all her youth and naïveté, it did not take Marie Louise long to discern that her husband was not quite the ‘nice amiable young man’ of Aunt Vicky’s imagination. It soon became clear that, as a serving officer in the German Cavalry, Aribert much preferred the company of his fellow soldiers to that of his wife. Abandoned to her own devices in the medieval atmosphere of dull Dessau, Marie Louise came to the sad and humiliating realisation that her handsome husband had married her solely to conceal his homosexuality and protect his reputation.
“From the Anhalt side I think it was a mariage de convenance.” she wrote many years later, “To marry the granddaughter of the Queen of England was a very important alliance especially as the girl of eighteen was also first cousin to the German Emperor - in fact she was related to the entire Almanach de Gotha.”
Doubtless, Marie Louise had heard the rumours surrounding Cousin Ella’s marriage but at least Ella had the consolation of knowing that, in spite of his difficult nature, her husband loved her. Ella had enjoyed many splendid hours in the glittering ballrooms of St. Petersburg but Marie Louise, denied even that solace, found herself isolated and trapped by the thousand rules that governed the lives of princesses in Anhalt. Every aspect of her existence was organised according to an ancient code of etiquette that had been in existence for centuries. She was not even permitted to leave her rooms without the prerequisite number of attendants and, as she quickly discovered, if she dared to flout the rules there was always someone on hand to reprimand her. On one occasion, Willy’s wife, the Empress Dona, was appalled to hear that Marie Louise had dared to venture out in an ordinary cab, unaccompanied by footmen and pages.
Marie Louise might have coped with her husband’s predilection for young men had he, like Serge, shown her the least consideration but Aribert not only preferred his male friends but made it clear that he resented her being there at all:
“I was not wanted, my presence was irksome to him, and we were two complete strangers living under the same roof. We occasionally met at meals and when we had guests, otherwise days might pass without our even seeing each other - and from the enthusiastic girl of eighteen, I became a disillusioned woman.”
Drawing on her cigarettes, the unhappy princess sought escape from Anhalt whenever possible. She paid regular visits to Aunt Vicky and her circle of interesting artists and intellectuals in Berlin, and taking advantage of Aribert’s apathy, indulged her lifelong love of travel in a series of tours. She visited Italy with her brother and Cousin Charlotte, before journeying further afield to meet with the Roman Catholic White Fathers in their African mission. Her husband, meanwhile, squandered her dowry, sold her jewels and made her life so unpalatable that Marie Louise, disheartened and alone, fell ill.
As usual, the observant Queen Victoria was among the first to detect that something was amiss and in June 1898, and invited her granddaughter to England:
“[Marie-] Louise has been here for two nights,” she wrote to Vicky, “very far from well but not in bad spirits. She is only so weak and everything tires her.”
But, after eight years of marriage, Marie Louise’s spirits were sinking rapidly. She remained with her grandmother at Osborne throughout the summer, enjoying visits from Cousin Sophie and Tino of Greece. On the 12th August, she celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday on the Isle of Wight in the company of her sister, Thora, and her uncle and aunt, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, receiving telegrams from her Wales cousins, then aboard the Royal Yacht Osborne.
The peaceful rest in comfortable and familiar surroundings made Marie Louise’s return to the gloom of Dessau all the more depressing, and the outbreak of the South African War intensified her unhappiness. The strength of anti-British feeling in Germany made life unbearable for an English princess, particularly one whose own brother was serving with the Queen’s forces. Weary with the façade of her sham marriage and desperate to escape from Anhalt, Marie Louise asked her grandmother’s and husband’s permission to take an extended break in America. Aribert, scarcely aware of her absence, was more than happy to agree.
For several weeks in the spring of 1900, she toured the United States and Canada, thoroughly enjoying the break until the telegram from Anhalt brought an abrupt end to the holiday. To her horror, her father-in-law was summoning her back to Dessau. The same day, her parents had received the letter informing them of Aribert’s intentions.
Queen Victoria, utterly indignant, and appalled at Marie Louise’s ‘cruel treatment,’ immediately dispatched a telegram of her own to Lord Minto, the Governor of Canada:
“Tell my granddaughter to come home to me. V.R.”
After a gruelling and anxious sea crossing, Marie Louise returned to the solace of Cumberland Lodge:
“My parents and my sister were there to meet me in the hall. You can imagine all the babel of talk! I was completely bewildered and could not understand or in the least manner grasp why I had been summoned back across two continents in this peremptory manner by my father-in-law.”
As a horrified Marie Louise listened to the list of ‘obscene’ charges that her husband levelled against her, her humiliation was absolute and she could only take comfort in the knowledge that ‘there was one accusation which my husband did not bring against me, because he could not, and that was the charge of infidelity.’
Only later did the princess learn the true reason for the urgent summons. In her absence Aribert had been caught in flagrante delicto with a homosexual lover. To avoid bringing scandal on the family, his father demanded an immediate annulment of the marriage laying the blame for its non-consummation squarely at his wife’s feet. Rather than facing a prolonged and humiliating court battle, the Christians agreed to the annulment and Marie Louise, though deeply distressed by the outcome, was finally released from a life that had brought nothing but disappointment and unhappiness.
She returned to her family and, having acquired rooms for herself in London established a small studio where she made jewellery. Most of her time, however, was devoted to numerous charitable foundations, including the ‘Princess Club’ for the factory workers of Rotherhithe, centres for down-and-outs and former prisoners and those connected with her mother’s nursing foundations. Like Aunt Alice and her Hessian cousins, Marie Louise was often to be found in the homes of the poor, witnessing first hand the lives of workers ‘which otherwise might have remained a closed book to me.’
In spite of all she had suffered, Marie Louise shared Ella’s belief that vows made before God were binding for life. She never saw her husband again yet continued to wear her wedding ring and, to the end of her life, considered herself a married woman.
“The reason I have never married again,” she wrote towards the end of her life, “is because my marriage was according to the Church of England with its solemn and binding vows, and no arbitrary local family law could absolve me from these marriage vows.”
It was hardly likely that her passionate Edinburgh cousins, Missy and Ducky (Victoria Melita) would resign themselves so patiently to life with unfaithful husbands

"All I Can Repeat Is that I am Perfectly Happy." More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters...

When Victoria of Hesse married Louis Battenberg in April 1884, Queen Victoria had more on her mind than the aberration of the bride’s father and the unforeseen romance between Beatrice and Liko. Though, of course, she had been informed in advance, the announcement of Ella’s engagement to a Russian Grand Duke sent a shiver of terror down a fond grandmother’s spine.
Since her formal entry into society three years previously, nineteen-year-old Ella might have had her pick of several European princes. Renowned as one of the most beautiful women in Europe, word of her charm, intelligence and gentleness brought proposals from many quarters. While Cousin Willy was still smarting at her rebuttal, Uncle Leo entreated her father not to throw her away on a dull Scandinavian prince who was earnestly seeking her hand. Ella herself had turned down the son of the Duke of Manchester and in 1883, Queen Victoria was mildly disappointed to hear that she had declined the proposal of her childhood friend, Fritz of Baden. The Queen’s disappointment turned to horror when she discovered that Ella had rejected him in favour of ‘a Russian!’
Apart from his great wealth, there was little to commend Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich to the Queen. Not only was he a Russian and a Romanov - the younger brother of Tsar Alexander III and Marie, Duchess of Edinburgh - but his highly-strung nature and unyielding reactionary views had created many enemies in his native St. Petersburg. His natural reticence had always given him a haughty air and the assassination of his father, Alexander II, had filled him with such a deep hatred of revolutionaries that he would mercilessly oppose any reform that might undermine the Romanov autocracy. Even in Russia, where the power of the Tsar was unlimited, Serge was commonly viewed as a sadistic despot.
Nor was the Grand Duke’s appearance particularly appealing to a Queen. His niece, Ella’s cousin, Missy of Roumania, thought him strikingly handsome, but noticed too the coldness in his steely-grey eyes. The French Ambassador, Maurice Paleologue observed that his face was disagreeable, ‘distinguished by greyish-white eyebrows and a hard look.’ Tall and extremely thin, he accentuated his gaunt figure by wearing whalebone corsets that showed through his clothes.
As if that were not to disenchant the Queen, she may well have heard the more insidious rumours, emanating from St. Petersburg.
“Try as I will,” wrote his cousin Sandro Mikhailovich, “I cannot find a single redeeming feature in his character…obstinate, arrogant, disagreeable, he flaunted his many peculiarities in the face of the entire nation, providing the enemies of the regime with inexhaustible material for calumnies and libels.”
Stories of his alleged ‘peculiarities’ were to haunt the Grand Duke all his life. As a young man, his devotion to the officers of his beloved Preobrazhensky Regiment led to speculation that he was homosexual and his apparent reluctance to marry, added further fuel to rumours.
What on earth, Queen Victoria wondered, could attract ‘dear lovely Ella’ to such an unpleasant man? It was true that Princess Alice had been fond of the shy little boy who, throughout Ella’s childhood, had often accompanied his consumptive mother on her recuperative visits to her native Hesse-Darmstadt. It was equally true that he was so different from bombastic Willy that Ella had responded with affection to his friendship; but now, surrounded by so many more sparkling suitors, the aloof Grand Duke seemed a most unlikely choice. He had made little impression upon her when he accompanied his mother on her final visit to Darmstadt in 1879, and Ella had even confessed to her sister that she found him ‘rather boring.’ Yet, when he returned to Hesse after his father’s assassination, her opinion changed dramatically.
Perhaps it was his heartfelt sorrow at the loss of his father that convinced her that his brittle exterior concealed a more sensitive nature. Having lost her own mother Ella empathised with his grief and, spending more time in his company, gradually came to realise that in spite of their disparate political and religious opinions, they shared the same aesthetic interest in music and art, inspired by a deeply spiritual temperament.
Gossip spread quickly through the family and by the time of Victoria’s engagement, word of Ella’s growing attachment to the Russian had reached a horrified Queen Victoria in Scotland. Summoning her granddaughter to Balmoral, the Queen earnestly attempted to dissuade her from the match. Princess Alice, she claimed, would never have wanted her daughter to marry a Russian. The vast Romanov wealth would ‘turn Ella’s head’; the country was very unstable and St. Petersburg society, immoral. The thought that ‘our sweet but undecided and inexperienced Ella, with her lovely face,’ may be led astray by the unscrupulous Russians was more than the Queen could bear. And if that were not disconcerting enough, Ella need only think of the cold Russian climate that would ruin her health, as it had that of several German princesses including Serge’s own mother.
Chastened by the lecture and unwilling to distress her grandmother, Ella assured the Queen that she had no intention of marrying Serge and that she would ‘hate to live in Russia.’ She returned to Darmstadt in the early autumn determined to put him from her mind and when Serge proposed, she refused him. Though the Russians, including Serge’s sister, the Duchess of Edinburgh, considered the refusal an insult, the relieved Queen was filled with admiration:
“I never gave Ella credit for so much independence of character.”
She had yet to discover quite how independent her gentle granddaughter could be.
Serge’s proposal had come at a time of great upheaval in Darmstadt. The New Palace was buzzing in preparation for Victoria’s wedding and her father was on the point of marrying Madame de Kolomine. Within a month of Ella’s departure from Scotland the Queen was alarmed to hear that Serge had received a further invitation to Hesse and could only pray that, in his presence, Ella would ‘remain firm.’
Her hopes and warnings were in vain. Whether it was the sense of romance in the air, or she had truly fallen in love, when Serge proposed for a second time Ella accepted him. It was left to Victoria to break the news to the Queen, before Ella dared pick up her pen to write to ‘dearest grandmama’ with some trepidation:
“…I am afraid this letter will not give you as much pleasure as I should wish but as it concerns my happiness and you have always been so kind to me, I wish you to know what I think about Serge…though he may have opinions you do not like, do you not think, dear Grandmama, that I might do him good?
…I shall try to keep to the right path and will always keep those I love in my mind and follow their good example...I think I know what I’m doing and if I am unhappy, which I am sure I never will be, it will all be my doing, as you know. Please forgive me if you are vexed with what I shall do, and although I will have to begin a new life, I will always cling to those who have been dearer to me than I can say.”
Queen Victoria could only shake her head in despair:
“Dear Ella, she really is so changeable and unaccountable, she told me how she hated all Russians, she refused Serge three weeks ago and now she takes him and forgets all.”

Six weeks after Victoria’s wedding, the royalties migrated to St. Petersburg where, on 15th June 1884, Ella and Serge were married according to both the Lutheran and Orthodox rites in the chapel of the Winter Palace. Cousin Willy, having made tactful excuses for his absence, missed the beautiful spectacle of his first love, draped in Russian Court dress and the jewels of Catherine the Great, walking down the aisle ‘on the arm of haughty Sergei.’ Even so, the Prussians managed to use the celebrations to humiliate the Battenbergs. Still angered by Moretta’s attachment to Sandro, Bismarck whispered a word in the right Russian ears to ensure that during the wedding banquet Louis was placed as far away as possible from the top table where his wife, Victoria, was seated near the bride.
After the wedding, the celebrations continued for a further ten days before Ella, now Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna Romanova, bade goodbye to her family. She and Serge travelled east for a honeymoon on his country estate, Ilinskoe, not far from Moscow, where her generosity and eagerness to learn everything about her new homeland, quickly endeared her to the villagers. In the autumn, the couple returned to the magnificent Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace in St. Petersburg for ‘the season,’ where Ella threw herself into the social life of the capital and soon made her mark in the ballrooms and receptions of the aristocracy.
“Ravishing beauty, rare intelligence, delightful sense of humour, infinite patience, hospitality of thought, generous heart, all gifts were hers,” wrote Serge’s cousin, Sandro Mikhailovich. “Everybody fell in love with ‘Aunt Ella’ the very first moment she arrived in St. Petersburg.”
The winter days were filled with skating parties, theatre visits and balls where, dripping in the jewels that Serge lavished upon her, she often disappeared partway through the evening only to re-emerge in an entirely new gown and another set of priceless gems. Devoted to her husband, popular at Court and loved by the people, life appeared idyllic for the naïve Grand Duchess but, within months of her wedding, rumours began to surface, that would plague her for the next twenty years.
Marriage had done nothing to improve Serge’s reputation. On the contrary, Ella’s calm passivity contrasted so sharply with his shortness of temper and dictatorial manner that her very presence at his side seemed to highlight the many flaws in his character. Observers, disgusted by the way he criticised and humiliated her in public, were convinced he must be still more cruel when they were alone. It was said that he was so jealous that he spied on all her movements, refused to allow her to go out without his permission and that he even read all her letters.
While Ella could not deny that Serge made every decision affecting their lives - even to choosing her partners at balls - the rumours of his unkindness were greatly exaggerated and caused her far more pain than his supposedly cruel treatment of her. But, however vehemently she protested that she ‘adored’ her husband and was ‘perfectly happy’ in Russia, increasingly outlandish stories spread not only through Russia but via the large family network to all the Courts of Europe.
“These tiresome reports about Ella being divorced etc. are all over the place; and in everyone’s mouth.” Vicky wrote to her mother only six months after the wedding, “I think it would be very good to have them contradicted.”
Queen Victoria was deeply troubled. She had dreaded this marriage from the start and now the rumours that she heard convinced her that her fears were well-founded. Ella’s letters repeatedly assured her that all was well but protestations of happiness served only to increase the Queen’s doubts.
“Ella’s constantly speaking of her happiness I don’t quite like. When people are very happy they don’t require to tell others of it.”
What was more, as the Queen could not fail to observe, there was evidence enough that something was awry in the marriage: many months had passed since the wedding yet Ella showed no sign of conceiving a child. In a family where children were as numerous ‘as the rabbits in Windsor Park’ her childlessness proved to Serge’s detractors that he was homosexual and had no interest in his wife. Increasingly salacious stories proliferated. Some claimed, without justification, that Ella refused to yield to Serge’s ‘unnatural’ perversions while others, more charitably but no less humiliatingly, believed that the shock of his father’s death had left him impotent.
It is possible that Ella was simply unable to have children. Since her adolescence, her grandmother had often commented on her frailty and, with her usual euphemistic references to her ‘health,’ implied that as a young girl Ella suffered from gynaecological problems. Advising Victoria not to ride too quickly or too often she added:
“For Ella it would be bad for her health as well, but then she cannot…ride just now.”
Conversely, though Ella frequently went to great lengths to defend her husband, she never made any attempt to explain away her childlessness. It was not simply a matter of coyness - after all, her Aunt Louise, Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter, also remained childless but had openly sought a cure in various European spas. Other members of the family were equally candid in the correspondence with the Queen, who for all her professed distaste for the subject, was remarkably inquisitive about the married lives of her daughters and granddaughters. Ella’s refusal to discuss the matter seems simply to confirm what the gossips had surmised: due to some failing on Serge’s part, the marriage remained unconsummated.
As the rumours continued unabated, the Queen seized every opportunity to cast a concerned eye over her precious granddaughter. When they met for a christening in Darmstadt in 1885, she was able to observe:
“They seems quite happy and comfortable together but Ella is looking pale and thin – which however they say is caused by the heat.”
Two years later Ella arrived in London for the Golden Jubilee celebrations, totally unprepared for the grilling she was about to receive. It was humiliating enough to hear the rumours and ‘disgusting lies’ that circulated through St. Petersburg, but mortifying to discover that the most intimate details of her marriage were being discussed as far away as Windsor. Deeply embarrassed by the Queen’s probing questions she could only reply with increasing desperation:
“All I can repeat is that I am perfectly happy.”
Ella’s heartfelt protestations were sincere. She loved Serge enough to endure a celibate marriage, but with each passing year the pain of her childlessness became harder to bear. Ella loved children and longed for a child of her own. During a visit to Ilinskoe in 1886, her Aunt Marie of Edinburgh noticed how readily she spoiled her eight-year-old cousin, Sandra, and she could not have been more thrilled to hear of the birth of her first niece, Alice. In Russia, too, she delighted in the company of her friends’ children, whom she frequently entertained by hiding gifts and sweets for them to seek out in the rooms of her palaces. Among the many charitable organisations that she patronised, the dearest to her heart was the ‘Elizabethan Society,’ which she had established to take care of orphans and neglected children. In the early years of her marriage, she entertained the forlorn hope that eventually something would change and she might have a child of her own, but with each passing season her optimism gradually faded.
For an intelligent, well-educated woman dogged by scandalous rumours, the trivial hours in the ballroom soon lost their appeal. She been raised to a life of service and duty, yet now she was little more than a beautiful ornament to a husband who showed her no physical affection and denied her any say in the decisions affecting her life. Had she sought them, the beautiful and charming Grand Duchess would have had no shortage of lovers in the infamously decadent Russian Court, but, believing that vows made before God were binding for life, Ella could not contemplate infidelity. Instead, like her mother before her, she devoted herself to her charities and, with ever greater fervency, to her religion•.
Although stories of Serge’s ‘perversions’ and sadism continued until his death and beyond Ella never spoke so much as one word of criticism against him. If the rumours of his homosexuality were true, she accepted the situation without complaint or self-pity and remained convinced that in his own peculiar way, he loved her. In that, at least, she found the comfort that was denied to one of her cousins, for out of all Queen Victoria’s granddaughters none suffered greater humiliation at the hands of a homosexual husband than the desperately unlucky Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein.