A picture can tell a story all of its own and some images take on a resonance that lasts beyond the moment they were made. In this occasional series, Royal Central looks at some of the pictures that have told the royal tale and examines the story behind them. Today, it’s a poignant moment when a popular royal tradition actually became a final farewell. Here is a look at the last finals…
When Tsarevich Nicholas visited Windsor as a guest of Queen Victoria in the summer of 1894, he spent a brief time with his fiancée, Princess Alix of Hesse, at Marlborough House, the London residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales on the Mall. As Nicholas wrote with…
Descending the hill at Windsor Castle down towards St George’s Chapel, today’s visitor passes the Deanery at St George’s. The upper level of this building, however, has a hidden secret within its sacred architecture. Over the leads of the Deanery was a constructed…
One room at Windsor Castle is perhaps more associated with Queen Victoria’s marriage to Prince Albert than any other. This is what was called the Blue Closet, part of the private apartments. By a curious coincidence, Prince Albert would later die in another room of the same colour, the Blue Room at Windsor Castle, although this is of course, mere royal happenstance. It was in the Blue Closet…
On 25 October 1897, Queen Victoria drafted her last will, the manuscript of which is preserved at Windsor. Typically for the Queen, such a document existed outside of her journal and in her entry for that day – written up at Balmoral – there is no mention of her making…
In honour of The Queen’s Holyrood Week, we’re taking a look at royal history in and around Edinburgh. Our senior reporter Kristin Contino headed to Scotland to find out more about some favourite royal spots.
The first thing that strikes you about the Palace of…
The wedding ring of Queen Victoria has its special poignancy, a symbol of the passionate marriage she enjoyed with Prince Albert. Placed on her finger on the morning of 10 February 1840, her private instructions ensured that she would wear it in perpetuity. What do we know of it?
If we study the paintings and engravings made that show the hands of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert joined, we might…
When the newly-married Queen Victoria returned with Prince Albert to Buckingham Palace, she was with the Prince ‘from 10m. to 2 till 20 m.p.2’, after which the couple went down for the wedding breakfast. During these thirty minutes, Queen Victoria gave Prince Albert his…
Queen Victoria’s wedding veil was an object of singular poignancy because of the enormous sentimental value that it represented to her in personal terms and the context in which she last wore it. She wore in on the monumental day – 10 February 1840 – the day she…
In the summer of 1894, Tsarevich Nicholas of Russia came to stay at Walton-on-Thames, in the house which his fiancée, Princess Alix of Hesse’s eldest sister, Victoria, Princess Louis of Battenberg and her husband, Prince Louis of Battenberg had rented. They would stay in the house for several days before continuing to Windsor Castle, where the Tsarevich came as a guest of his fiancée’s…
