Royalty is a world where the past is as much a part of the present as the future. The past seven days have seen the spotlight fall on celebrations and commemorations in equal measure – here’s the week in royal history.
Queen Victoria will be reigning supreme at Buckingham Palace again next year as she is set to take centre stage in the summer opening at the most famous royal residence…
Royal weddings, eh? You wait ages for one to come along and then two arrive at once. We’ve just had a double dose of regal matrimony with the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in May followed swiftly by the marriage of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank in…
The first thing that Princess Victoria did on the morning of 20 June 1837 was to reach for her dressing gown. This historic moment in the Queen’s life has always held a particular fascination for me, and I have regularly revisited it from various angles, from profiling the…
Personal items of Queen Victoria acquired by Historic Royal Palaces
2nd November 2018
Some personal items belonging to Queen Victoria have been acquired by Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity which maintains Kensington Palace, ahead of the bicentenary of the Queen’s birth in 2019, which the palace will celebrate with a new exhibition and re-presentation of the visitor route, as announced in a Historic Royal Palaces press release on 3 September 2018.
Kensington Palace…
The Royal and Military Order of Saint Ferdinand is a Spanish military order and Spain’s highest military decoration for gallantry. The Royal Military Order of Saint Ferdinand was set up by the Cádiz Cortes in 1811 to honour the heroic fight against the Napoleonic…
It was a famous royal love story that shocked as much as it thrilled. John of Gaunt was the ultra-ambitious prince whose desire to be a king almost cost him his life, Katherine Swynford was the mysterious commoner who supplanted a queen in his affections. Their relationship…
‘Saw good Mrs Clark, returned from Darmstadt, who gave me an excellent account of Alice, the Baby & dear little Victoria’(Quoted in Charlotte Zeepvat, From Cradle to Crown, 13).
With these words, Queen Victoria recorded in her journal for 13 December 1864, that she had seen Mrs Clark, the nurse who had attended the confinement in Darmstadt of her second daughter, Alice, Princess…
The white caps worn by Queen Victoria have – correctly – come to be regarded as a symbol for her widowhood. They represent one of the few contrasts in colour to the deepest mourning that she adopted after 1861, as a declaration in textile, of the colossal…
Following the recent wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank, we take a look at other princesses who have married commoners. Here is the story of Princess Margaret and her photographer husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones.
Princess Margaret was always one to do things her…
Princess Frederica was born into the House of Hanover in 1848. Her parents were George, Crown Prince of Hanover and his wife, Princess Marie of Saxe-Altenberg. The Princess was also addressed as ‘Her Highness’ when in the United Kingdom due to her descent from King George III.
In 1851, Frederica’s father became King George V of Hanover which made Frederica an eligible bride.
When Frederica…
