The visit of the future Tsar Nicholas II to Queen Victoria in the summer of 1894 has a fabled quality; it took place a mere two months after his engagement to Princess Alix of Hesse in Coburg.
This visit has a special poignancy when viewed through later eyes; we know of course, that far from enjoying a period as Tsarevich and Tsarevna of Russia, Nicholas and Alix would, in fact, marry in November…
Queen Victoria began her journal in 1832 at the age of thirteen and continued to keep it until old age, with the last entry made just nine days before she died, constituting, therefore, a remarkable royal record. She took her journal with her wherever she went on her…
‘What sorrows this last year brought us, what endless anxieties, what worries and losses – God grant the new year may be a calmer and happier one for the whole of dear Russia. Sleep well and peacefully…’ With these words, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918)…
Queen Victoria famously wrote of her wedding day – 10 February 1840: ‘“Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!”
The day – 10 February – became one which the Queen – so peculiarly concerned with dates and anniversaries – would ever refer to as having been her wedding day, in her great journal; it formed the exact happy opposite to that grief-stricken 14 December, (the…
A bedroom gives a uniquely personal insight into any historical personality and a royal personage no less so. Many key moments in Queen Victoria’s life also took place in her bedrooms, which help in no small way, to tell the story of that life.
The furnishing of this most…
Queen Victoria’s love of dogs provided the inspiration for royal sculpture and painting, as well, of course, the Queen’s journal entries. References to her dogs abound throughout. Interestingly, her life may in one way, be charted through her dogs, because they were with…
On 25 June 1900, Victoria, Princess Louis of Battenberg – born Princess Victoria of Hesse – gave birth to a son at Frogmore House in Windsor Great Park, the erstwhile residence of Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, until her death in 1861. Princess Louis of Battenberg had been the firstborn child of Queen Victoria’s second daughter, Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of…
Princess Alix of Hesse visited Malta in 1890. Little would appear to have been recorded about it, although it is possible to piece together some details of the trip from surviving accounts, biographies by those that personally knew her and from extracts of letters she wrote…
Biography is also made up of people in the background; so it is with William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury.
The appearances he made in the life of the future Queen Victoria were of extreme significance, in a way that was unique, and whilst these functions formed a natural…
Princess Alix of Hesse – as the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna was known before her marriage to the young Tsar Nicholas II in 1894 – visited Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park on several occasions, as the residence of her maternal aunt, Princess Helena of Schleswig-Holstein and her cousins.
Cumberland Lodge made a circle for Princess Alix around this part of her English family. She was…
