Queen Victoria’s tragic aunt who fought to escape a miserable royal marriage

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are considered by many to have had of the most successful of all royal marriages. However, many of their relatives were not so lucky in love. 

Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was the sister of Victoria, Queen Victoria’s mother, and Ernest, Prince Albert’s father. Given that she came from a relatively small German duchy, she made what should have been an excellent marriage when she married the grandson of Empress Catherine the Great. 

In 1796, at the age of fourteen, the young princess married Grand Duke Konstantin. Less than a month earlier, Juliane had chosen to convert to Russian Orthodoxy and took the name of Grand Duchess Anna Feodorovna. She faced an incredible amount of change in a short period of time and it would not be for the better. 

Konstantin was mercurial at best and could be cruel and violent at times. Anna was considered to be charmng and was popular at the Russian court, leading her husband to further resent her. 

Grand Duchess Anna tried to leave her marriage several times but both the Russian Imperial Family, and her own family, forced her to return to court. 

The couple had separated by 1801 when the Grand Duchess took her opportunity to escape life at court permanently. She spent the rest of her adult life living on the continent, spending much of her time in Switzerland. 

While she had other relationships and had two illegitimate sons, she never found lasting love in her life. She died in 1860.