The Children of George III: Augusta

A sister (finally!) for the Princess Royal joined the royal nurseries at Buckingham House on November 8, 1768 in the form of Princess Augusta Sophia, much to the King and Queen’s pleasure.

By all accounts Augusta was a shy child; all the royal children lived sequestered lives, interacting only with members of the royal household. She (and in time her younger sister Elizabeth, to whom she would be close) shared their elder sister’s education at their mother’s knee, studying both academic and more “womanly” accomplishments—lessons which Augusta sometimes shirked in order to keep up a lively correspondence with her elder brothers, whom she dearly loved.  Like the Princess Royal, as she came to adulthood Augusta was a victim both of the political circumstances of the time and of her father’s unwillingness to lose any of his daughters to a foreign marriage. Augusta, who was reckoned quite good-looking by all accounts (her portraits are all charming) received proposals from both the King of Denmark and the Prince of Sweden—both of whom were rejected.

In 1799, when Augusta was 31, the King appointed a new aide-de-camp, an Anglo-Irish general who had served under Augusta’s brother the Duke of York. General Sir Brent Spencer made a strong impression not only on the king, but on his daughter. They seem to have fallen thoroughly in love; in fact, Spencer broke off his engagement to another young woman that summer. Over the next several years they maintained their affection, a period in which Spencer served under fire with high distinction in several military campaigns (and drove poor Augusta mad with worry.) When the king made his final descent into incapacity, Augusta evidently had very serious discussions with her big brother, the Prince Regent, as to whether she and Spencer might be able to contract a “private marriage.”

Unfortunately, the years of dealing with the King’s controlling behavior and his erratic health had soured the temper of the Queen, who continued to cling to her unmarried daughters even while behaving with capricious coldness to them; though legally Augusta could have received her brother's permission to marry, her filial feelings toward the Queen probably made her decide against such a course. Nevertheless, rumors abounded that they had indeed married, and on his death in 1828 Spencer was holding a miniature of Augusta.

And so Augusta lived her quiet life—she was a noted gardener in particular—much loved by all her siblings. She kept up that correspondence with them that she'd begun in childhood as well as with other friends (many former members of the royal household) that show her to have had a lively intelligence and a clear-eyed but kindly appreciation of their faults and foibles. She remained on good terms with Prinny when he became king, and was a favorite of William and his queen Adelaide.  She died in 1840 at the age of 71, a few months after attending the wedding of her beloved niece, Victoria, who seems to also have regarded her aunt with great affection.

The Children of George III: Edward

I’m rather glad, for Queen Charlotte’s sake, that she finally got her baby girl in September of1766...because a year later, on November 2, 1767, yet another boy would be arriving in the nursery at Buckingham House. The new baby happened to arrive while his papa’s favorite brother, Edward, Duke of York, was awaiting burial just a short distance away at St. James’s Palace...so it seemed natural to name this newcomer after his late uncle, Edward.

Though he was fond of telling acquaintances later in life about how he’d been destined from birth to lead a life of gloom and struggle, Edward's first seventeen years seem remarkably gloom- and struggle-free. Just as the King’s two eldest sons were paired together, so Edward and his brother William would be: Edward was sent from the nursery at age nine to live with William in a pleasant house on Kew Green, and after William went to sea, Edward had the house and staff and a generous housekeeping budget to himself.

All that changed when he was sent to Germany in 1785 to start his education as a soldier. His governor, a Baron Wangenheim, was evidently a bit of a hard case, and Edward, himself more than a little spoiled, chafed under his tutelage—enough that finally, after receiving his first commission in Geneva, he bolted back to England without leave in early 1790. His highly annoyed father sent him to Gibraltar in disgrace, but at least he’d rid himself of the Baron...and acquired a “chère amie” in the form of a Madame de Saint-Laurent, who would remain faithfully with him for the next twenty-eight years until...but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Edward did not make himself loved in Gibraltar; he was a stickler for discipline (thanks to his training under Wangenheim, probably) and ferociously extravagant. The soldiers and shopkeepers of the Rock breathed a sigh of relief when he was sent next to Canada, where he would remain for the next nine years, once again deeply unpopular with the army but wildly popular socially. He was briefly stationed in the West Indies, then sent back to Canada, then back to Gibraltar in 1802 as its governor. But he lasted just a year before being recalled to England because his harsh discipline sparked a mutiny among his troops. His recall home pretty much ended his military career, though he retained some honorary military positions and honors (and the governorship of Gibraltar, though he never set foot there again.)

The next decade and a half were spent in his various houses (he seemed to regard four as the minimum he required) in England with Madame de Saint-Laurent while Edward’s debts only grew—he still hadn’t unlearned his habit of extravagance. He might well have lived out his life in this fashion, spending money and taking an interest in science and political theory, but the unexpected death in childbirth of his niece, Princess Charlotte, in 1817 precipitated him into the great matrimonial race of1818, when the sons of George III scrambled to find wives in order to provide a legitimate heir for the next generation. Edward’s choice landed on Victoire of Leiningen, the widowed sister of Charlotte’s husband Leopold; Edward proposed and was accepted...and according to legend, let his chère amie Madame Saint-Laurent find out about his upcoming marriage by reading about it in the newspaper. (She retired to a convent after their parting.)

Edward settled contently with his new bride at her home in Amorbach, where the cost of living was cheaper than in England, spending money he didn’t have on improvements to the ducal manor. But when Victoire became pregnant, Edward resolved that his child, a potential heir to the throne, should be born on English soil, and accordingly, when Victoire was seven months pregnant, Edward ordered an expensive traveling coach and they trundled across Europe and back to England (despite big brother Prinny telling them not to.) Edward’s daughter was born in May and christened Alexandrina Victoria. He was delighted with the sturdy baby and not at all disappointed in her gender; doubtless he assumed a brother or two would eventually join her in the nursery.

But little Drina would have no further brothers and sisters; when she was but eight months old and the family visiting the Devon coast, her papa caught a cold...and though he'd often declared his health vastly superior to that of his brothers and that he'd survive them all, his cold devolved into pneumonia...and within a few days, in January 1820, he was dead. Though Victoria would later idolize her late father (note the miniature of him she's clutching in the picture at right by Henry Bone), he doesn't seem to have endeared himself to many in his lifetime...and yet, you can't think too badly of a man who remained so faithful to his mistress for so many years.

The Children of George III: The Princess Royal

After the birth of three bouncing boys in four years, George III and his consort, Charlotte, were more than ready for a daughter when the Queen again found herself pregnant in 1766. Their hopes were realized on September 29 with the birth of Charlotte Augusta Matilda, who was immediately declared Princess Royal by her delighted papa. It is a style bestowed on the eldest daughter of a reigning monarch—and Royal more or less became her nickname from then on. It was an appropriate name: she would in time be the eldest of six sisters, not to mention six other younger brothers.

Royal and her two next sisters, Augusta and Elizabeth, were raised more or less at their mother’s knee; the Queen involved herself in all aspects of their education, which was rigorous but also emphasized the arts and “womanly” accomplishments such as sewing, painting, and other handiwork. Royal in particular was carefully educated in history and languages, for she was destined to make a very grand European match one day—or so it was planned.

By the time Royal was of marriageable age, however, Europe was a very different place: unrest in France was brewing, unsettling most of Europe...and in 1788, George III suffered from his first attack of “madness,” which lasted a year and changed the dynamics of the family forever. The Queen clung to her daughters, not wishing to lose them to foreign marriages; the King himself, in fragile health, also was reluctant to let them marry, possibly influenced by the terrible experience of his own younger sister’s marriage to the King of Denmark.  So Royal languished, longing for a home of her own; she and the Queen did not bring out the best in each other, and tempers grew short as the Queen continued to treat her grown daughters like children and the King to refuse offers of marriage.

But in 1797, after nearly two years of backing-and-forthing, the King finally consented to allow Royal to marry. Her groom was the widowed Hereditary Prince Frederick of Württemberg, heir to the reigning Duke of Württemberg; though he was enormously fat, rumored to be bad-tempered, and had a previous marriage which had ended mysteriously, Royal was delighted to finally be escaping. Their wedding was in May, and in June the couple left for the continent.

By August, Royal was delighted to write home that she was pregnant; in addition, her father-in-law’s death a few months later made her and her new husband the Duke and Duchess of Württemburg. But a quiet life was not to be theirs: war between France and Austria often overspilled into the duchy, and then Royal’s child, a daughter, was born dead. She had no more children, but became a very loved step-mother to the Duke’s children and indeed was very popular among her new subjects.

In 1800, Württemburg was overrun by the French, and Royal and her new family fled to Austria. The Duke chose to negotiate with Napoleon, and in time was reinstated as Elector of Württemburg and then in 1806 as King, joining the Confederation of the Rhine. Royal’s step-daughter Catharina was married to Napoleon’s brother Jerome. Poor Royal was now officially the enemy of her birth country, which she felt deeply. So it was probably much to her relief that the Duke switched sides again in 1813, and rejoined the Allies. After Napoleon’s fall he was re-confirmed as king of his enlarged kingdom but did not have long to enjoy his position; he died in 1816, leaving Royal a very wealthy widow thanks to her large dowry.

Royal professed herself heartbroken, but her family wondered; rumors over the years of his abusive treatment of her had reached them even during the war years. But she settled into a comfortable widowhood, being very attached to her step-grandchildren, two of whom she was raising, and growing so fat that she was forced to adopt the use of a Bath chair to get around. Various brothers and sisters came to stay with her, and finally, in 1827, she herself returned for a visit to England, thirty years after she'd left it. Her reunion with her remaining siblings and the chance to meet their children, among them Princess Victoria, was on the whole a happy one...and didn’t take place too soon, for growing ill-health was to catch up with her; she died in 1828, and was buried next to her lost daughter.

Note: for anyone interested in Royal and her sisters, I can't recommend highly enough Flora Fraser's excellent group biography, Princesses: the Six Daughters of George III--a highly readable and sympathetic view of these quintessential "poor little rich girls."

Queen Victoria’s Big Brother

No, I’m not referring to our favorite queen mind-controlling her subjects in an alternate dystopian 19^th century England, but to the not-very-well-known fact that Queen Victoria did indeed have a brother—an older half-brother—just as we’ve seen she had an older half-sister. Unlike her strong sisterly feelings for Feodore, however, Victoria did not feel much closeness for her brother—for good reason.

Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Emich was the elder child and son of Prince Emich Carl of Leiningen and his wife Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, born on September 12, 1804 in the tiny principality of Leiningen. Prince Emich was much older than his wife, and did not live to see his children grow up, for young Carl became Prince in 1814, at the age of ten. His mother became regent for him until he reached his majority at age 18...and that same year, married her second husband, Edward, Duke of Kent.

In 1819, when the new Duchess of Kent was nearing the time to deliver Carl's new sibling, the whole family left Leiningen (where it was much cheaper to live) and went to England for the birth. Thereafter, Carl (or Charles, as he was known in England) seems to have moved back and forth between the two...after all, he was the prince of Leiningen and had responsibilities to his principality as well as rapacious paternal cousins to keep at bay. But during his visits to England, he became friendly with his mother’s comptroller, Sir John Conroy...and was drawn into that slithery opportunist's camp, supporting his and the Duchess of Kent's efforts to keep Victoria firmly under their thumbs. To be fair, he probably saw nothing wrong with his mother being regent for Victoria--after all, she'd been regent for him for ten years in Leiningen (and interestingly, relied heavily on her household steward, a Herr Schindler, to run things. Hmm.)

In 1829 Charles married Countess Maria von Klebelsberg, who bore him two sons, but he still found time to visit England...and was on hand during the fraught first half of 1837 when a desperate Sir John Conroy was seeing his chances of power slipping through his fingers. Charles at first supported their efforts; but when their Uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, sent over his eminence grise Baron Stockmar to intervene, Charles began to realize that his little sister was indeed about to become queen, on her own terms...and when just days before the death of King William Conroy stated that Victoria "must be coerced" he did some back-pedaling and advised his mother to do no such thing.

Unfortunately, it's hard to find much about what he did after that, but I was able to find some information: Charles spent some time serving in the Bavarian Army, but Leiningen did not provide much of an income and his family seems to have relied on a pension from Victoria; he and his family were on good terms with Victoria and Albert, and were frequent visitors to England. During the politically restless years of the 1840s in Germany, he became involved in politics, surprisingly on the liberal side, and was (briefly) in 1848 the first prime minister of the first freely-elected parliament for all of Germany, the Frankfurt Parliament. In 1855, he suffered a stroke; a second one the following year proved fatal and he died in November, with his sister Feodore at his side. He was succeeded as prince of tiny Leiningen by his elder son Ernest, who was also an officer in the British Navy.

Victoria’s Grandchildren: Victoria Melita

Princess Victoria Melita...such a pretty, euphonious name. Unfortunately, it was probably one of the only euphonious things in an often tumultuous life.

Victoria Melita, nicknamed “Ducky”, was born in 1876, the third child of Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son, and his wife Marie, daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. She was also the younger sister of the future Queen Marie of Romania, whom we have already met. She was born while her father, Queen Victoria’s second son Alfred, was stationed in Malta with the Royal Navy--hence the unusual second name. Unlike her sister Marie, Ducky seems to have been of a darker, more brooding, and often tempestuous temperament, but despite their differences, the sisters were close and would remain so throughout their lives...even when Marie was married off to Ferdinand of Romania in 1893 at 17.

Marriage for Ducky was not far behind. Queen Victoria had already decided that this grand-daughter would make the perfect wife for another of her grandchildren, Ernest, the new Grand Duke of Hesse and son of her daughter Princess Alice. Although Ernest and Ducky were great chums, Ducky had already fallen hard for another cousin, Grand Duke Kirill of Russia...but neither her grandmother or mother would hear of such a match...and though Ducky’s mother was not in favor, the wedding took place in 1894, an event almost overshadowed by the announcement of the engagement of the groom’s sister, Alix, to Nicholas of Russia.

Unfortunately, the marriage was doomed from the start. Ernest was homosexual, and though Ducky gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, before their first anniversary, they quickly arranged to live as much apart from each other as possible. A visit to Russia in 1896 for Alix and Nicholas’ coronation threw her back into the company of Grand Duke Kirill...and the pair fell in love. Although Ducky desperately wanted a divorce, her grandmother wouldn’t hear of it...and so Ducky and Ernest lived unhappily, occasionally attempting to reconcile, until the old Queen’s death in January 1901. By December, the pair had divorced, to the shock and horror of the royal families of Europe.

Ducky lived quietly with her mother for the next few years, but Kirill was never far from her mind...and in 1905, they married quietly in Germany, much to the fury of the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia (who, after all, was Ernest’s sister). Kirill was stripped of his imperial allowance and naval titles, and the couple went to live quietly in Paris. Only in 1910, when Kirill became third in line to the Russian throne, were they allowed to come back to Russia.

The new Grand Duchess took to her new life until revolution ended the monarchy in 1917. Ducky and Kirill and their children, including a newborn son, managed to flee to Finland, then after the end of WWI, to Germany. Now the pretenders to the defunct Russian throne, they remained in Germany until the mid-twenties, then settled in France, where they lived a very ordinary life, playing golf and bridge with their neighbors, while still insisting on being referred to as Tsar and Tsarina. Ducky died in 1936 after a stroke, and Kirill followed in 1938. Their descendents still to this day still claim their imperial titles.

The Queen’s Indian Servants, Part 1

I promised here that I’d write about Queen Victoria’s Indians servants, so...here we go!

First, a little background.

When you think about it, being Queen Victoria was probably a rather lonely prospect. She had been raised to be very aware of who she was—basically, the very top of a large pyramid. No one was her equal, especially after Prince Albert died (“There is no one to call me Victoria now,” she said on his death.) She just didn’t have any BFFs, especially as she grew older, because how can you be BFF with someone who rules substantial portions of the planet? Her children were afraid of her even though they loved her; her half-sister, though also dearly loved, was scarcely in a position to be her chum. She was almost never alone, surrounded by ladies-in-waiting and equerries and other courtiers almost constantly...but while their relationships with her could be affectionate, there was always that certain something that kept them at arms’ length—not only on the Queen’s part, but on theirs.

One exception to this was the Queen’s “Highland Servant”, John Brown. He somehow managed to remain unimpressed by her position, called her “woman” to her face, and seems to have cared deeply for her in his peculiar, brusque way. Interestingly, all those ladies-in-waiting and equerries and her family all seem to have loathed John Brown, just because of the special place he held as her favorite servant and friend. When Brown died in 1883, the Queen was nearly as devastated as she had been after Albert’s death: she had lost her only friend. The fact that she was buried with mementoes not only of Albert, but also of John Brown, says a great deal about the depth of her feelings.

In 1877, Queen Victoria adopted the title “Empress of India.” She was fascinated by India, and in 1886, after attending the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, decided that she wanted to employ some Indian servants in her household in time for her Golden Jubilee coming up the following year. She asked the man in charge of one of the exhibits, a John Tyler, superintendant of the Central Jail in Agra, to recruit her two servants. As a result, in June 1887, Mohammed Abdul Karim and Mohammed Buksh, the former employed by Tyler as a clerk at the jail and the latter a servant of Major-General Thomas Dennehy who was joining the royal household, came into the Queen’s Service. Though she didn’t yet know it, the Queen had found a new friend...and her family and household found someone to hate as much as they had John Brown.

To be continued...

Victoria’s Grandchildren: Queen Ena of Spain

Princess Victoria Eugenie Julia Ena was born at Queen Victoria’s beloved Balmoral Palace in Scotland on October 24, 1887. One can only hope that the Queen, who notoriously did not allow bedrooms at Balmoral to be heated above 60° F, made an exception for the baby’s mother!

As daughter of the Queen’s stay-at-home daughter Princess Beatrice and her husband, Prince Henry of Battenberg, little Ena (as she was called—the name is Scots Gaelic, in honor of her place of birth) and her three brothers grew up in close proximity to the Queen (whom they called “Gangan”), who doted upon them and was almost a second mother to them. This was a good thing: just like her grandmother and mother, Ena lost her father at an early age when he joined the Ashanti Expedition in 1896 and died of typhoid en route to Africa.

Ena grew into a pretty, golden-haired girl; her uncle, King Edward, was very fond of her as well and took an interest in her future. Her matrimonial possibilities were slightly tarnished; her father was not of royal blood as his mother had been a commoner. But that didn’t stop the young King Alfonso XIII of Spain from being very interested indeed when he met Ena on a visit to England in 1905. Alfonso was on the hunt for a bride; when his first choice, Princess Patricia of Connaught, another granddaughter of Victoria, turned him down, he set his sights on Ena. She accepted his proposal in January 1906, began to prepare herself to convert to Roman Catholicism (which angered both English Protestant extremists and Spanish Catholic extremists), and set herself to falling in love with her not-very-prepossessing but very royal husband-to-be.

Unfortunately, it would not be a happy marriage. Ena’s wedding was nearly destroyed—literally—by an anarchist’s bomb; her wedding dress was soaked with the blood of her murdered guards. Within a year she bore a son and heir for Spain; but it was quickly found that the baby boy was a hemophiliac, as were several of Queen Victoria’s grandsons. The knowledge soured the relationship between Ena and Alfonso, and though she went on to bear him six more children (one was sadly a stillbirth), they were never again close and Alfonso became serially unfaithful. Also sadly, the Spanish people never took to their calm, phlegmatic, very British queen, who held herself as befit a granddaughter of Queen Victoria...but who never appealed to the dramatic Spanish temperament. Though she worked tirelessly on behalf of the Spanish Red Cross and for other causes such as poor relief and education, she was always regarded with suspicion by most of her subjects.

Moreover, European politics were in turmoil both during and after the first world war, and Spain was no exception; unrest through the twenties finally led to Alfonso’s voluntary exile (though not abdication) in 1931 after national elections swept the anti-monarchy Republicans into power. The family went to France; and soon after Ena and Alfonso separated.

Ena eventually settled in Switzerland after time in England and Italy. Her eldest and youngest sons, both hemophiliacs, died in car crashes in the late 1930s; her husband followed in 1941. Ena’s son Juan was the theoretical king of Spain, but the country itself remained firmly in the grip of Generalissimo Franco. Ena returned to Spain only once, a year before her death, to attend the christening of her great-grandson, son of Juan Carlos. She died a year later in spring of 1969, exactly 38 years to the day that she’d left Spain...but on her visit, she was gratified to be rapturously received by the Spanish people as La Reina...an acclamation she never received. Sadly, she didn’t live to see Franco declare her grandson Juan Carlos as his successor, nor to see him become King Juan Carlos I in 1975.

Victoria’s Grandchildren: Empress Alexandra of Russia

Along with Kaiser Wilhelm, Empress Alexandra of Russia is probably the most famous of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren...as well as one of the most tragic.

She was born in Darmstadt on June 6, 1872, the sixth child of Princess Alice and Grand Duke Louis of Hesse, and christened Victoria Alix Helena Louisa Beatrice (though her family nicknames were Alicky or Sunny, because of her cheerful disposition). The Hesse household was a close one; Princess Alice was a loving, involved mother who paid close attention to her children’s upbringing...until tragedy struck in 1878, when diphtheria raged through the ducal house, killing Alicky’s younger sister Marie...and her mother as well. Six year old Sunny underwent a radical personality change as a result, becoming withdrawn and brooding and able to relax only with her closest family members.

Louis loved his children, but he was a soldier and could not replicate his late wife’s care. So the Hesse children began to spend a great deal of time in England at their grandmother’s or various aunts and uncles’ houses. The Queen took a deep interest in their lives, minutely directing their education and upbringing. The Hesse girls grew to be attractive young woman, especially Alix, who drew the matrimonial attention of not only her cousin, the Duke of Clarence (and son of Bertie, Prince of Wales) but also of Ferdinand of Roumania. Both were refused, for Alix was in love with yet another cousin, Nicholas, Tsarevitch of Russia.

But when Nicky proposed, Alix refused, for marrying him would mean converting to the Russian Orthodox church and giving up her Lutheran faith. She suffered agonies of conscience, madly in love yet unable to say yes, until at her brother’s wedding in 1894, with most of the crowned heads of Europe gathered for the event, she relented. Alix and Nicky married just months later, following the death of Nicky’s father, Tsar Alexander III. The orphaned princess from a tiny German principality became Empress of Russia at the age of 22...and took the first steps on the road that would lead to tragedy 23 years later.

Life was difficult for Alix; she remained painfully shy and withdrawn in a country that admired showmanship and appearance. She kept as isolated as she could from the free-wheeling, licentious court and encouraged Nicky to withdraw too, absorbing herself in her children and a small number of trusted friends and, increasingly (and ironically in light of her initial reluctance) in religion. Nicky, kindly but almost painfully weak-willed, followed her lead. Multiple pregnancies (not only the birth of her four daughters and son, but miscarriages as well) undermined her health, and in time she became a semi-invalid, shutting herself away from public view (much as Queen Victoria had after Prince Albert’s death. Coincidence?) Her melancholy nature led her to the mystical end of the Orthodox church; the hemophilia of her long-awaited son pushed her further into withdrawal and religion, including her reliance on an uncouth peasant priest named Grigori Rasputin, who had an uncanny ability to ease her hemophiliac son’s suffering.

Unfortunately, the deteriorating political situation in Russia inspired her to encourage her husband to take a stand and oppose those of his ministers who wanted to curtail imperial powers and introduce some degree of democracy into government. The outbreak of World War I rang the death peal of many monarchies in Europe, Russia’s included. Nicholas abdicated in March 1917, making his younger brother Michael the actual last Tsar. The royal family were placed under house arrest; a plan to send them to a life of exile in England was discussed, nothing came of it. They were shuffled from one place to another as differing faction battled for control of Russia; in the fall the Bolsheviks gained the upper hand. Nicky and Alix were temporarily separated from their family, but reunited with them several weeks later near the city of Ekaterinburg. Their living conditions grew grimmer with each move; by the time of their stay in Ekaterinburg, they had little left and only a servant or two willing to stay with them.

In July 1918, with different factions still struggling for power in Russia, the Bolsheviks who held Nicky and Alix and their family decided that they were too dangerous to be left alive. The entire family—22 year old Olga, 20 year old Tatiana, 19 year old Marie, 17 year old Anastasia, and 14 year old Alexei—were horribly executed in the cellar of their house...on the site of which today stands a cathedral. The devout Alix and Nicky, as well as their children, were made saints in the Orthodox Church.

Queen Victoria’s Big Sister

We’ve talked a lot in previous posts about Queen Victoria’s children, and now her grandchildren. But it’s easy to forget that she had other close family members who weren’t descendents: the Queen actually had a half-brother and sister. They were much older than their little half-sister and did not live in England. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t play an important role in the Queen’s life…especially her sister, Feodore.

As you may recall from posts on the Great Matrimonial Race of 1818, King George III’s sons had to marry quickly in order to provide an heir to the throne. Edward, Duke of Kent, found his bride in the widowed Princess of Leiningen, Victoire. Victoire had two children from her previous marriage: a son, Charles, and a daughter—Anna Feodora Auguste Charlotte Wilhelmine, usually known as Feodore.

Feodore was born on December 7, 1807, the second child of Prince Emich Charles, at her father’s pocket-handkerchief-sized principality around the town of Amorbach, some fifty or so miles south of Frankfurt. Much older than Feodora’s mother, he died when his daughter was only seven. But in 1818, the little girl gained a new step-father, and in April 1819 was whisked away to England, where one month later her baby sister was born.

Feodore seems to have settled happily enough into her new home, learning English rapidly. A governess was found for her in the form of a Fraulein Lehzen (who is perhaps better known as her sister’s governess), and the little family settled down in Kensington Palace after the Duke of Kent’s sudden death from pneumonia only eight months after baby Victoria’s arrival. Baby Victoria was the center of the household, and Feodore adored her plump, cheerful little sister.

But as her teen years came on, she was less content with the highly circumscribed life they led: “When I look back upon those years, which ought to have been the happiest of my life, from fourteen to twenty, I cannot help pitying myself. Not to have enjoyed the pleasures of youth is nothing, but to have been deprived of all intercourse, and not one cheerful thought in that dismal existence of ours was very hard,” she wrote to Victoria decades later. Feodore would have loved to mingle in society but her mother, the Duchess of Kent, loathed King George IV and his profligate court.

The result, of course, was that Feodore rebelled. She conducted a secret flirtation with the son of one of the King’s brothers which was quickly quashed, but a bigger flirt soon occupied her attention—no less a person than the king himself, who paid the pretty nineteen-year-old a great deal of attention on a rare visit of the Kensington family to court—so much attention, in fact, that rumors started to fly that he was considering remarriage—to Feodore. The Duchess of Kent had no intention of seeing one daughter’s right to the throne endangered by her other, so Feodore was packed off to Germany to visit family. The following year, when the rumors hadn’t died away, the Duchess hastily a marriage to a man Feodore had met during her visit to Germany: Prince Ernest of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. The King was gracious enough to agree to give the bride away at their wedding in February 1828 (though in the end he sent his younger brother William to do the task).

The two sisters were desolated by their separation, and soon became faithful correspondents. Unfortunately, though Feodore became fond of her rather older husband (he was her senior by twelve years), married life was not easy. There was little money, and their home, Schloss Langenburg, was large, drafty, and very uncomfortable. Six children were eventually born to the couple; Feodore brought two of them to visit their little aunt in England in 1834. When the little aunt became Queen Victoria in the wee hours of June 20, 1837, one of her first acts that morning was to send Feodore a note assuring her of her undying affection. She also paid Feodore’s way whenever she was able to visit England.

Of Feodore’s children, her eldest son was something of a disappointment, renouncing his throne on the death of Prince Ernest in order to marry a village girl; second son Herman instead became the next Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenbach. Youngest son Victor entered the British navy and served all his life, including during the Crimean War. Feodore’s daughters were frequent visitors to England, where they spent a great deal of time with their cousins; the eldest died young but the second, Adelaide, was proposed to by the new French Emperor Napoleon III but refused him, marrying instead into another German ducal family (and eventually becoming mother-in-law to Kaiser Wilhelm II), as did her younger sister.

Feodore and Victoria remained close all their lives, corresponding frequently and visiting whenever possible. The two shared widowhood together, both losing their husbands within a year of each other; and when Feodore died in 1872, she left Victoria a farewell letter which read in part, “…I can never thank you enough for all you have done for me, for your great love and tender affection. These feelings cannot die; they must and will live on with my soul—till we meet again, never more to be separated—and you will not forget.”

Victoria's Grandchildren: Marie of Romania

Considering that she had so many of them, it’s hardly surprising that Queen Victoria’s grandchildren were, in many ways, a varied bunch. We’ve already met Wilhelm, the near-caricature Prussian…and today we’ll meet his cousin, a woman who was queen of a nearby country but couldn’t have been more different.

Marie Alexandra Victoria was born on October 29, 1875, at her parents’ home in Eastwell, Kent—her parents being Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and second son of Queen Victoria, and Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, only daughter of Tsar Alexander II. Baby Marie, soon nicknamed “Missy” was an unusually pretty child from birth…and not just because she was a princess; she really was genuinely lovely as you can see from her pictures. So lovely, in fact, that from an early age, her cousin George—later King George V— was quite smitten with her. But Marie’s mother loathed most of her English in-laws and did not want any of her children marrying their English cousins…so she stage-managed her innocent and eager-to-please daughter into an engagement to Ferdinand, Crown Prince of Romania (that is the pair at right, at about the time of their marriage). He was a shy, awkward man, ten years older than his bride-to-be. The pair were married in January 1893, just a few months after Marie’s seventeenth birthday.

Life in Romania was difficult for Marie. King Carol, Ferdinand’s uncle, was a stern, austere man, and his wife Queen Elisabeth, who called herself Carmen Sylva and had exaggeratedly artistic tendencies and didn’t care to be upstaged by a beautiful young princess. Romania itself was only 15 years old and not very stable. And when she became pregnant within two weeks of her wedding, she wondered why she felt so ill—no one had told her the facts of life. She gave birth to a son, named Carol after his great-uncle…and with a few months was expecting once again. She was subject to the whims of her husband’s aunt and the control-freakishness of his uncle, and was, in a word, miserable.

So it was no surprise that eventually, she would rebel. She had a series of love affairs, and it is more than probable that the last three of her six children were not Ferdinand’s. But she was discreet (mostly), and she and her husband remained, if not devoted to each other, at least committed to preserving the outward appearance of their marriage. She also began to defy King Carol’s strictures and lead a more public life, endearing herself to Romanians in the process not just with her looks, but with her genuine interest in their welfare.

It took adversity to really bring out Marie’s best qualities. With the outbreak of the Second Balkan War and then WWI, she became a nurse, not only directing nationwide nursing efforts but herself working in wards…and then, only a few months later, became queen after King Carol’s death. Her enormous popularity only grew, and at the end of the war she herself went to Paris to take part in the peace negotiations and obtain aid for her battered country. She also discovered a passion for writing, publishing books of fairy tales and fables, travelogues, and eventually her memoirs.

But what should have been golden years afterward were marred by the antics of her eldest son Carol, heir to the throne. He was spoiled and mentally unstable, and had already run away once during the war and illegally married a commoner. Though that marriage was dissolved and one to a suitably royal princess contracted, Carol remained unsteady, and in 1925 ran away with another woman, abdicating his position as heir to the throne…until Ferdinand’s death two years later, after which he schemed and plotted and finally returned to Romania, overthrowing his own small son and taking his renounced throne back, and doing his best to drive his brother, sisters, and mother from the country.  Furthermore, the 30s saw upheavals in Greece and Yugoslavia, countries into which her daughters had married, and increasingly paranoid Carol instituted a police-state style of government that she hated. So it was perhaps a mercy that she became ill with liver disease and died in 1938, and did not live to see Romania dismantled by Hitler and Stalin, and ravaged later by a Soviet-backed takeover.

This is, necessarily, a highly truncated look at an interestig woman.  For a more in-depth look at Marie's life and times, I highly recommend Hannah Pakula's The Last Romantic, now sadly out of print but still available used through on-line booksellers.

Victoria’s Grandchildren, Part 2: Ella of Russia

Queen Victoria was not fond of Russia, despite having fallen a little in love with the young Tsarevitch Alexander (later Tsar Alexander II) when he paid a state visit to the young queen’s court in 1838 (they danced a great deal, which must have been a sight with the queen so petite and tsarevitch so tall). But two of her favorite grandchildren would marry Alexander’s son and grandson…with disastrous outcomes.

Elizabeth Alexandra Louise Alice was born on November 1, 1864, the second child and second daughter of Princess Alice, Victoria’s second daughter, and her husband, Prince Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. Princess Alice was a devoted mother to her family, which eventually numbered seven, and little Elizabeth’s (her nickname in the family was “Ella”) life up to her early teens was a happy one…until the unexpected and shocking death of first a younger sister, and then her mother, during a diphtheria outbreak in 1878.

Queen Victoria came to the rescue, and from then on Ella and her remaining brother and sisters spend at least as much time in England living with their grandmother as they did in Hesse, becoming especially close to their uncle Leopold, Victoria’s youngest son and a partial invalid who lived with his mother well into his twenties.

Ella grew in, by all accounts, a lovely young woman. All princesses are supposed to be beautiful, but in her case, it actually seems to have been true: she had delicate features, a porcelain complexion, and a graceful, slender figure. Royal suitors began to flock around her after she made her debut, including her cousin Wilhelm, who became quite besotted with her but whom Ella politely refused. Instead, she eventually fell for a very different suitor: Grand Duke Sergei Romanov, son of Tsar Alexander II and his wife, a princess from Hesse-Darmstadt. Sergei was an enigmatic figure: educated and cultured, yet stiff and reserved and with a difficult temper. But he seems to have been fond of his young wife (they married in 1884, when Ella was not quite yet twenty), and the marriage, if not a blissfully happy one, was yet a content one.

Ella threw herself into her new country, studying Russian language and history diligently as a young bride and eventually converting to the Russian Orthodox faith, which she embraced wholeheartedly (much to the dismay of most of her staunchly Protestant family. She and Sergei did not have children, though they did semi-adopt the children of one of Sergei’s brothers, who had been exiled.

Sergei was close to his brother, Tsar Alexander III, and accepted the role of Governor of Moscow, where his stiff, unbending attitude and deep conservatism made him enemies. He remained an influential advisor to his nephew, Tsar Nicholas II, who came to the throne in 1894 (at the same time that he married Ella’s younger sister, Alix of Hesse), and grew to be a deeply hated man…so much so that in 1905, as unrest grew in Russia in the wake of the humiliating Russo-Japanese War, Sergei was assassinated by a revolutionary’s bomb tossed into his carriage in the streets of Moscow.

A devastated Ella slowly began to draw away from her old life at court…and in 1909, withdrew even more, giving away some of her fabulous art and jewelry collection to relatives and selling the remainder, then using the proceeds to buy an estate on the Moscow River. Here she founded a religious order, a convent dedicated to Saints Mary and Martha. She became its abbess, taking the veil and dedicating herself to a life of charity, something she’d learned at the feet of her late mother: Princess Alice had been deeply interested in improving the nursing profession and providing health care for the poor, and in turn her daughter’s new enterprise included a large charity hospital and outreach to the poor of Moscow.

But despite the good work she accomplished for the poor of her adopted land, Ella was never accepted by a certain segment…and it was that segment that came into power with the fall of the Romanov dynasty and the rise of the Bolshevik party. They regarded her as a foreigner and a German sympathizer, and she was arrested early in 1918 and shuttled from location to location, depending on the whim of her captors and the fortunes of the varies parties struggling for power in Russia in those chaotic months. She eventually wound up in Alapaevsk, a town in the Ural Mountains, along with a few other members and connections of the Romanov family. In July, members of Lenin’s secret police, Cheka, came to Alapaevsk with orders to execute the prisoners. They were beaten and thrown down a mine shaft, but somehow survived this brutal treatment until desperate Cheka operatives threw hand grenades into the mine and finally set fire to it.

However, a few months later her body was found and removed from the mine, then smuggled out of Russia for burial in Jerusalem. Sixty-three years later, Queen Victoria’s pretty grand-daughter was canonized as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Victoria’s Grandchildren, Part 1: Kaiser Wilhelm II

Queen Victoria’s most famous (or perhaps infamous) grandchild was probably her first one, son of eldest daughter Vicky and her husband Fritz (Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia). I am speaking, of course, of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, who led his country into the maelstrom of World War I, and lost his throne as a result.

Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert was born on January 27, 1859, in Berlin. It was a long and difficult labor for his 18-year-old mother; a clumsy delivery injured the baby’s left arm, which would be weak and withered his entire life. Some historians conjecture that his difficult birth (he was not breathing and had to be rubbed and slapped into drawing breath) and physical imperfection had a profound effect on the boy; from an early age it was noted that he was clever but hyperactive, aggressive and emotionally unstable.

Willy’s parents loved him dearly (that's him with his father on a visit to Balmoral in 1863), but few of the decisions around the boy’s upbringing were left to Vicky and Fritz. As third in line to the throne of Prussia (and eventually, to the imperial throne of Germany), Willy’s care and education were dictated by his grandfather, the arch-conservative Wilhelm, and indirectly by his Grandfather’s chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who did not want the child influenced by Fritz’s and especially Vicky’s well-known liberalism. Nor was Vicky necessarily the best parent of a difficult child: herself the child of hypercritical parents, Vicky in turn was a hypercritical mother. Trapped between her and the sycophantic courtiers who surrounded him, there is little wonder that Willy had a deeply confused relationship with her that lasted until her death. He respected his father’s sterling record as a soldier, but it was his reactionary grandfather he idolized, and his grandfather’s reactionary view of the world he adopted…though all his life he was fascinated by his English grandmother, Queen Victoria, and by England’s global domination (which he felt should have belonged to Germany).

The Prussian royal family was a strongly military one, and Willy was no exception. Though he spent a few years dabbling at Bonn University (where most of his time was spent at the Borussa, the university’s most exclusive drinking and dueling club), Willy’s main love was the army, in which he was enrolled at age 18; it seems, however, that he was more concerned with the niceties of uniforms and decorations than of actual military science. An Englishwoman who had married into a prominent German family described him as “a high spirited, sensitive boy who had a ready brain and a quick but not profound intelligence…He always thought he knew everything and no one dared to tell him he was sometimes wrong. He hated to be told the truth and seldom, perhaps, never, forgave those who insisted on telling him.”

At the age of 22 he married a distant cousin, Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sondersburg-Glucksburg, a rather lackluster young woman who worshipped Willy and obeyed him unquestioningly. They had seven children together—six sons and a daughter.

In 1888, his grandfather Wilhelm I died, to be followed only 99 days later by his father Fritz, who died of throat cancer...and at age 29, Willy became Emperor Wilhelm II. Though he had long been a disciple of his grandfather’s chancellor, Bismarck, a few short years later he dismissed Bismarck to rule on his own, with weak chancellors to serve as yesmen.

Willy’s obsession with England continued; he longed to have a navy and colonial possessions to rival England’s and spent the next decades trying to building both up, to England’s dismay. He also became increasingly paranoid, sure that England, in the form of his uncle, Edward VII, was out to grind him and Germany into the dust. It was this paranoia, combined with the militarism of the Prussian ruling class, that would lead down the road to the first world war.

This is, necessarily, a very brief overview of a complex person and complicated times. For a deeper and fascinating (and very readable!) look at Willy’s life and how it led to the war, I highly recommend Miranda Carter’s George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I. Happy reading!

Another Miscellany, Actually

These Miscellanies are catching!

First, the important (and fun!) part of this week’s Miscellany: the winner of the drawing for the ARC of Courtship and Curses is mfantaliswrites! Mfantaliswrites, please contact me via my website so that we can arrange getting your book to you.

Second: as we step into summer, our posting schedule at Nineteenteen will shift around a bit (as it usually does). We’ll be taking a couple of vacation weeks (including next week over the Independence Day holiday) and weeks in August to ferry some of our respective offspring off to college…but on the fun side, Regina and I will each be having a book launch event and we’ll do our customary blogging from the Romance Writers of America National Conference where we have our annual get-to-spend-time-together holiday. So there’s some fun stuff to look ahead to over the summer months.

Third: I’m launching a new series! Since we completed the series of brief biographies of Queen Victoria’s nine children, I thought it might be fun to do an occasional series on some of her grandchildren as well.

As a result of having nine children, the Queen ended up with quite a respectable crop of grandchildren: forty-two, in fact, though it is thought she probably had a least a few illegitimate ones that she was not informed of. Here are a few interesting statistics about them, presented in the form of a quiz--do you know their identities? (answers will be posted in the comments column):

1. Her eldest grandchild was born in 1859 when she was not quite 40, less than two years after the birth of her last child in 1857.


2. Her last grandchild was born in 1891, just ten years before her death; he himself would die in 1914, fighting against his cousin.


3. And though the queen outlived several of her grandchildren—don’t forget that the high infant mortality of the 19th century was still an issue even among royalty—her final surviving grandchild lived until 1981, dying at age 98, just a few month before the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

I won’t be writing about all forty-two grandchildren—not all of them lived lives of particular historical significance. But I’ll try to introduce you to some of the more historically important and interesting ones. Stay tuned!

Victoria’s Children, part 9: Beatrice—Dutiful Daughter or Half-crazed Visigoth?

Ha--I knew that would get your attention! And I’m not exaggerating too much, as you’ll see shortly. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

Poor Victoria. The queen actually hadn’t wanted such a large family; but medical knowledge being what it was in the mid-19th century, her doctors gave her less-than-accurate advice on family planning. So it was more or less business as usual when her ninth and last child was born April 14, 1857…except that it wasn’t. She had discovered the blessings of chloroform with the birth of her previous child, Leopold, and was determined to utilize it again…which she did, to the continued grumbling of much of the medical establishment of the day.

Her pain-free birth may or may not have had something to do with it, but little Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore soon became a favorite with her parents, now that their elder children were marrying (Vicky married when Baby, as she was nicknamed, was nine months old). She was a pretty, lively child, and the Queen even overcame her usual dislike of infants in Beatrice’s case.

That pretty liveliness, however, was not destined to remain. The deaths of both the Queen’s mother and husband in 1861 plunged the Queen into gloom, and levity was not welcomed in her household. Gradually, Beatrice’s bright personality and intelligence were worn down, until by her teens, she had become very shy and almost tongue-tied in public and her natural grace dulled. Victoria’s older daughters had, one by one, escaped into marriage, but if the Queen had any say in the matter, Beatrice would not: she would remain at her mother’s side, serving as her personal secretary and companion for the rest of her life.

And so matters continued until 1884. Though Victoria assured everyone that Beatrice was quite content to remain “the daughter of the house”, there had been thoughts of marrying her off, possibly to Louis of Hesse, her late sister’s Alice’s widower. Finding a groom for Beatrice did not appear to be an easy prospect: she was chunky, awkward and gauche in public, and just not very attractive. But at a family wedding in that fateful year, Beatrice fell in love. Her choice was Prince Henry of Battenburg, a minor German princeling. In many ways, he was the perfect choice: he was more or less penniless and landless, and could therefore quite easily move to England and become Beatrice’s husband, rather than her leaving England to become his wife. So after six months of the Silent Treatment (quite literally!) on the Queen’s part, promises were extracted from Henry (nicknamed “Liko”) and Beatrice that they would always live with her, and the pair were allowed to marry in 1885.

Remain with the Queen they did: even after the arrival of four children (Alexander in 1886, Victoria Eugenie—called Ena— in 1887, Leopold in 1889, and Maurice in 1891—the Queen’s 40th and final grandchild) the family followed the Queen on her yearly peregrinations among her residences, while Beatrice continued as her mother’s right hand. The lively “Battenbunnies” helped keep the Queen young for a time; not since the Prince Consort’s death had there been such sunshine in her life. But clouds would soon re-gather: though Beatrice adored him, her Liko eventually chafed under his enforced status as house-husband, and in 1895 got permission to join the British Army to fight in Africa in the Ashanti wars. To everyone’s horror, he contracted malaria and died while en route home.

Poor Beatrice was, of course, devastated, but her aging mother needed her more than ever, not to mention her young family. Though not a very maternal or demonstrative mother, she was, above all, dutiful, and so life continued until 1901..and the real center of Beatrice’s life, her mother, died.

You have to feel sorry for her—for the Queen had occupied almost all of her attention, all her life. And in death, she continued to do so, for Beatrice was named one of the executors of her will and, more importantly, had been requested by the Queen to edit her papers, most notably the diaries she’d kept since 1831 and her private letters. And here’s where the Visigoth part comes in, for edit Beatrice did: by the time she was done copying out what seemed appropriate to her to keep, Beatrice deleted fully two-thirds of the Queen’s diaries and letters...and burned the originals, to the horror of King George and Queen Mary and to generations of historians ever since. Imagine what was lost to history!

The rest of Beatrice’s life remained uneventful, though dramas occurred—the disastrous marriage of her daughter Ena to the last king of Spain and the death of her son Maurice in World War I. She unveiled monuments to her mother’s memory and dabbled in good works (though not to the degree that her sisters Lenchen and Louise did), and lived until 1944…and thus ended an era.

Coming soon, we'll take a look at some of the more interesting of the Queen's forty grandchildren...stay tuned!

Victoria’s Children, Part 8: Leopold

Queen Victoria’s eighth child and fourth son came into the world at Buckingham Palace on April 7, 1853. After seven children, the Queen knew what to expect in childbirth, and she wasn't looking forward to it. So when her personal physician, Sir James Clark, made a radical suggestion, she was all for it—and so the Queen of England became an early adopter of chloroform to help ease the pain of childbirth. She was so delighted with the results that she publicly endorsed the drug’s use, much to the ire of the medical establishment of the time, which felt that pain in childbirth was divinely ordained. Her Majesty thought otherwise.

So it was with relative ease that Prince Leopold George Duncan Albert arrived in the royal family…perhaps the last time anything associated with his life would be easy. He was not an attractive child; and coming after handsome and sunny-natured Arthur, the Queen’s favorite, made his unattractiveness seem even worse. Fortunately, the two brothers loved each other dearly, and would be close all their lives.

But how long would that life be, in Leopold’s case? For not long after his second birthday, disturbing hints that his health was not good began to occur. Though it would be a few years before Leopold’s diagnosis would be confirmed, that year marked the appearance of symptoms of his hemophilia. Unfortunately, Leopold did not like to be coddled: despite his fragility he was an active, adventurous boy, which of course led to accidents. Something as small as a bruised knee could lay him up for weeks of agony and bed-rest, which would make anyone fractious and difficult to deal with. Moreover, he was intelligent (probably the cleverest of the royal sons) and liked to argue—which did not endear him to his mother.

Victoria was determined to keep her son more or less wrapped in cotton wool—a condition which Leopold gamely fought all his life, trying as hard as he could not to be an invalid despite his condition (which included, in addition to the hemophilia, occasional epileptic seizures). With his brothers’ help he fought to be allowed to attend Oxford, and though he wasn’t allowed to complete a full course of studies there, enjoyed a fair sample of university life and made many friends—including a certain Miss Alice Liddell, better known to the world as the heroine of Alice in Wonderland. He became a favorite uncle to his sister Alice’s children, and even visited his favorite sister Louise to tour North America while her husband served as Viceroy of Canada.

Leopold and his mother continued to rub each other the wrong way, but it didn’t keep Victoria from employing him as a private secretary, her interface with her ministers. Though the work eventually came to interest Leopold and he became especially good friends with Benjamin Disraeli, he wanted more from life than to be constantly at his mother’s beck and call, and again with the help of his brothers and sisters, convinced Victoria that he should be allowed to marry and live his own life apart from her. After a good deal of consideration (and, alas, some refusals from eligible princesses) he became engaged to Princess Helen of Waldeck-Pyrmont. They were married in 1882, just after Leopold’s 29th birthday, and though they were barely acquainted, quickly became devoted to each other. They had a daughter, Alice, in 1883, who incidentally was the longest lived of Victoria's’grandchildren, dying in 1981.

In March 1884, Leopold was visiting the south of France as he often did to escape England’s cold, damp winters. A slip on the tiled floor of the villa where he was staying led to a painfully bruised knee and more bed-rest…but this time, Leopold did not recover. He died in the night, whether due to an unknown deep hemorrhage, too much morphine, or an attack of epilepsy. His dear Helen gave birth to their second child, a son, four months later, who inherited his father’s title of Duke of Albany.

Victoria’s Children, Part 7: Arthur

It’s often said that the middle children in families tend to get lost in…well, the middle. But Prince Arthur, seventh of Victoria’s nine children, somehow managed to avoid that fate. In fact, the Queen frequently called him her favorite child (that's her with baby Arthur at right.)

So what earned Arthur his Most Favored Child status?

Prince Arthur William Patrick Albert was born on May 1, 1850, at Buckingham Palace. As he shared his birthday with Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, who by now had reached mythic status as the victor of the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke was asked to be one of his godfathers and lent the new royal baby his name (that's the old Iron Duke giving his namesake a first birthday present below). The Queen seemed to dote on this well-behaved, easy-going child from the start. She “adored little Arthur from the day of his birth”--unusual, for she was not fond of infants; he was her “precious love” who “has never given us a day’s sorrow or trouble” and was “dearer than any of the others put together” (phew!) Young Arthur seems to have shown up well compared to his two older brothers, Bertie and Alfred, which might be the source of his mother’s doting upon him: raised as an only child (her half-brother was much older) she’d had no experience with the occasional boisterousness of some boys…and Bertie and Affie could be boisterous!

Arthur was tutored at home—no school for Victoria’s children, thank you very much—and seemed to have borne well his mother’s restrictions and demands (no fraternizing with Eton boys while at Windsor, rooms must be kept no warmer than 60°). He was delighted to take up the career in the Army that had been chosen for him from early childhood (another tie to his godfatherly namesake) and entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1866, at age 16. He acquitted himself creditably during his training and eventually settled into the famous Rifle Brigade, of which the Duke of Wellington and then his father, Prince Albert, was Commander-in-Chief. In the early years of his career he saw service in South Africa, Canada (where he was made a Chief of the Six Nations by the Iroquois), and Ireland.

The Queen made him Duke of Connaught and Strathern in 1874, and was delighted when he married Princess Louise of Prussia in 1879. Their marriage was a happy one, and produced three children: Margaret (later Crown Princess of Sweden), Arthur, and Patricia. In his later years, and especially after his wife’s death in 1917, he was close to Leonie Leslie, aunt of Winston Churchill.

Arthur continued to perform both his army and royal duties, was made a Field Marshal (though he was disappointed never to become Commander-in-Chief of the Army as his mother hoped he would) and in 1911 became Viceroy of Canada, the only member of the royal family to have served thus. After his return from Canada (where he was quite popular and well-liked) he didn’t hold any further official positions but continued his ceremonial and advisory duties right up to World War II, dying in 1942 at age 91. Not a bad life, when you consider it.