In the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection at Kensington Palace is preserved one of the most important wedding dresses in British history. Worn by Princess Charlotte (1796-1817) for her wedding on 2 May 1816 in the magnificent Crimson Drawing Room at Carlton House to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. It was a wedding dress to celebrate not only the personal happiness of the popular Princess…
On 6 July 1893, another royal wedding was celebrated at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s Palace, between Prince George of Wales – created Duke of York in 1892 – and Princess Mary of Teck, the future George V and Queen Mary. Princess Mary of Teck had been betrothed in…
As Prince Albert reprimanded his second daughter, Princess Alice, for telling her eldest sister the Crown Princess, that their father’s illness had worsened, he said sadly (but correctly): ‘You did wrong. You should have told her I am dying’. The Prince’s fatalism…
As summer approaches, Queen Victoria is the royal everyone is talking about. Even the descendant who supplanted her as longest reigning monarch in British history has been following in her famous footsteps in the past few days as the woman who changed our concept of royalty forever takes centre stage in one of the biggest royal exhibitions of the year. Even Victoria herself might be amused.
Hair works like a symbolic thread throughout a person’s life history. For Queen Victoria, this was no exception. Indeed, for a royal personage, hair plays a massive part in ceremonial display and formal dressing as well as private ritual. The role of royal hairdresser is…
For Queen Victoria, the number fourteen held a terrible power. This date, the ‘14th’, could seem to haunt the Queen like the shadow of death. Much as she later tried to reclaim it as a sacred date, she beheld it with an almost mystical sense of dark fascination and…
In 1888, a year whose numbering Queen Victoria thought odd (‘Never can it be written again!’), her daughter, the Princess Royal and Crown Princess of Prussia, had become German Empress, prompting the proud words from her mother: ‘My OWN dear Empress Victoria… may God bless her!’ (cit., Elizabeth Longford, Queen Victoria, 551). After a reign of a mere ninety-nine days, her husband Emperor…
A fond tradition arose in the lifetime of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, Queen Victoria’s two-time Prime Minister, namely that of his receiving flowers, often primroses from the Queen. To Disraeli, Queen Victoria was the ‘Faery’ – his endearing name for his…
In the British Library five letters from Princess Alix of Hesse, later Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia (1872-1918) are preserved. Initially, I thought there were seven letters of hers at the British Library, but further research has enabled me to establish that these…
The wedding cakes in Queen Victoria’s family were magnificent examples of edible ceremony. Once they reached the age of photography, they were faithfully recorded for posterity. These images still have the power to enchant today, even in long ago albums. Just looking at these gorgeous cakes allows us to almost taste them by sight across the centuries. They were luscious creations. Rich in royal…
