It might be argued that the lack of a
father in the life of the future Queen Victoria was the singular
most important influence on her emotional life. It is surely
significant that she referred to those men she regarded as fathers
of sorts, in correspondingly filial language, such as her beloved
uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, as “il mio secondo padre”, [a
second father to me] or rather…
Christmas at Windsor to include gifts exchanged by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
23rd November 2019
The bicentenary of the births of Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert will be celebrated by a small display at
Windsor, once the setting for the many Christmases which the royal
couple spent together with their growing family of nine children.
Displayed in the Octagon Dining…
Princess Alix of Hesse, sixth child and
fourth daughter of Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Alice, Grand
Duchess of Hesse and her husband, Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse,
was six years old when her mother died on 14 December 1878,
incidentally the seventeenth…
‘An angel whose brightness shall illume
my life”. The passionate words of a young prince in love, written
to the queen he had just been asked to marry, are among the many
items shared on a new website celebrating the life and achievements
of one of the most famous royals of all. On the 200th anniversary
of the birth of Prince Albert, the Royal Collection Trust is
launching a new…
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…
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 was such that he acknowledged what
the Queen did not dare herself to admit. Indeed, Queen Victoria’s
letters to her uncle…
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…
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 dread. Her feelings for this day of
the month were well founded and can be traced back to the date of
the death of her beloved…
