Victoria, Princess Royal

The Princess Victoria, Princess Royal (Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa; 21 November 1840 – 5 August 1901) was the eldest child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert. She was created Princess Royal of the United Kingdom in 1841. She became German Empress and Queen of Prussia by marriage to German Emperor Frederick III. After her husband's death, she became widely known as Empress Frederick (or, in German: "Kaiserin Friedrich").

Early life

Princess Victoria was born on 21 November 1840 at Buckingham Palace, London. Her mother was the reigning British monarch, Queen Victoria, the only daughter of George III's fourth eldest son, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Her father was Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. She was baptised in the Throne Room of Buckingham Palace on 10 February 1841 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Howley. Her godparents were her grand-aunt in law Queen Adelaide, her grand-uncle King Leopold I of Belgium, her paternal grandfather Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (for whom The Duke of Wellington, Tory Leader in the Lords, stood proxy), her maternal grand-uncle The Duke of Sussex, her maternal grand-aunt The Duchess of Gloucester and her maternal grandmother The Duchess of Kent.^[1]

As a daughter of the sovereign, Victoria was automatically a British princess with the style Her Royal Highness, styled HRH The Princess Victoria (and in addition being heiress presumptive to the throne of the United Kingdom before the birth of her younger brother Prince Albert, later Edward VII on 9 November 1841). In 1841, the Queen created Victoria Princess Royal, giving her an honorary title sometimes conferred on the eldest daughter of the sovereign. Victoria was then styled HRH The Princess Royal. To her family she was known simply as Vicky.

The education of Victoria was closely supervised by her parents. She was precocious and intelligent, unlike her brother Albert Edward. She was taught to read and write before the age of five by her governess Lady Lyttelton and to speak French by her French nursery maid. The Princess Royal learned French and German from various governesses, and science, literature, Latin, and history from Sara Ann Hildyard. Prince Albert tutored her in politics and philosophy.

Marriage

• See also: Wedding dress of Princess Victoria, Princess Royal

In 1851, Victoria met her future husband, Prince Frederick William of Prussia (18 October 1831 – 15 June 1888), when he and his parents were invited to London by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to attend the opening of the Great Exhibition. At the time, Frederick, the son of Prince William of Prussia and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar, was second in line to the Prussian throne (after his father). The couple became engaged in 1855 while Frederick was on a visit to Balmoral; Victoria was just fourteen, while her future husband was a young man of twenty-four.

The Prussian Court and Buckingham Palace publicly announced the engagement on 19 May 1857. Seventeen-year-old Victoria married Frederick, at Queen Victoria's insistence, at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace, on 25 January 1858. The marriage was both a love match and a dynastic alliance. The Queen and Prince Albert hoped that Victoria's marriage to the future king of Prussia would cement close ties between London and Berlin, and possibly lead to the emergence of a unified and liberal Germany. At the time of their wedding, Londoners chanted "God save the Prince and Bride! God keep their lands allied!"

Crown Princess of Prussia

In January 1861, on the death of his childless uncle King Frederick William IV of Prussia and the accession of his father as King William I, Prince Frederick became Crown Prince of Prussia, Victoria therefore became Crown Princess. The new Crown Prince and Crown Princess, however, were politically isolated; their liberal and Anglophile views clashing with the authoritarian rule of the Prussian minister-president, Otto von Bismarck. Unfortunately, despite their efforts to educate their son, Wilhelm, in British attitudes of democracy, he favoured his German tutors in aspiring to autocratic rule and thus became alienated from his parents, suspecting them of putting Britain's interests first.

During the three Wars of German Unification – the 1864 Prussian-Danish War, the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, and the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War – Victoria and Frederick strongly identified with the cause of Prussia and the North German Confederation. Their sympathies created a rift among Queen Victoria's extended family, since Victoria's younger brother, the Prince of Wales, was married to Princess Alexandra of Denmark, the elder daughter of Christian IX of Denmark, who was also reigning duke of the disputed territories of Schleswig and Holstein. At Versailles on 18 January 1871, the victorious princes of the North German Confederation proclaimed a German Empire with King William I of Prussia as the hereditary German Emperor (Deutscher Kaiser) with the style Imperial and Royal Majesty (Kaiserliche und Königliche Majestät); Frederick and Victoria became German Crown Prince and German Crown Princess with the style Imperial and Royal Highness (Kaiserliche und Königliche Hoheit).

German Empress & Empress Frederick

On the death of his father on 9 March 1888, the Crown Prince ascended the throne as the Emperor Frederick III (and as King Frederick III of Prussia) and Victoria adopted the title and style of Her Imperial and Royal Majesty The German Empress, Queen of Prussia. Frederick, however, was terminally ill with throat cancer and died after reigning 99 days. From then on she was known simply as Her Imperial Majesty The Empress Frederick.^[2][3]

She was often known as Die Engländerin (the Englishwoman) due to her origins in the United Kingdom, even though her ancestry was predominantly German. Indeed, she continued to speak English in her German household.

The widowed Victoria lived in retirement at Castle Friedrichshof, a castle she had built in memory of her late husband in the hills near Kronberg not far from Frankfurt am Main. Politically, she remained a liberal in contrast with her son Emperor William II. Their relationship had earlier been difficult but improved once she was no longer in the limelight. In Berlin, Victoria established schools for the higher education of girls and for nurses' training. As a talented and gifted artist in her own right, she was a patron of the arts and learning, becoming one of the organizers of the 1872 Industrial Art Exhibition.

Throughout her married life and widowhood, Victoria kept in close touch with other members of the British Royal Family, particularly her younger brother, the future King Edward VII of the United Kingdom.

She maintained a regular correspondence with her mother. According to the Royal Encyclopaedia, some 3,777 letters from Queen Victoria to her eldest daughter have been catalogued, as well as more than 4,000 from daughter to mother. Many of her letters detailed her concern over Germany's future under her son. At her request – in which she made explicit her concern that the letters, which she had had sent back to herself at Kronberg,^[4] should not fall into the hands of her son William II and that he should not know what had happened to them – the letters were brought back to England in a cloak-and-dagger operation by Frederick Ponsonby, her godson, the private secretary of Edward VII, who was making his (Edward's) final visit to his terminally ill sister in Kronberg for a week up to 1 March 1901. These letters were later edited by Ponsonby and put into context by his background commentary to form the book that was published in 1928.^[5]

Death

Victoria was diagnosed with inoperable breast cancer in 1899 during a visit to her mother at Balmoral. By the autumn of 1900, the cancer spread to her spine and after much suffering, she died at Castle Friedrichshof on 5 August 1901, less than seven months after the death of her mother, Queen Victoria. She was buried in the royal mausoleum of the Friedenskirche at Potsdam on 13 August 1901. Her tomb has a recumbent marble effigy of herself on top. Next to her lies her beloved husband. Two of her eight children, Sigismund (died age 2) and Waldemar (died age 11), are buried in the same mausoleum.

Portrayal in film and television

She has been portrayed in a number of film and television productions since her death. Perhaps the most notable was in 1975 when Felicity Kendal played Vicky in Edward the Seventh, including the scenes during her final months when the character was 60 years but Kendal was only in her 29th year.^[6] Other portrayals include Gemma Jones (Fall of Eagles, 1974) and Ruth Hellberg (Bismarck), 1940 as well as Catherine Punch (Bismarck, 1990).^[7] While she is portrayed as a naive English princess in the Bismarck films, the new German film Vicky - die vergessene Kaiserin/The Lost Empress (in preproduction), tries to show her in a different light.

Books

• Thomas Weiberg: … wie immer Deine Dona. Verlobung und Hochzeit des letzten deutschen Kaiserpaares. Isensee-Verlag, Oldenburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-89995-406-7.
• Sir Frederick Ponsonby (Ed.), Briefe der Kaiserin Friedrich. Eingeleitet von Wilhelm II., Verlag für Kulturpolitik, Berlin 1929 [Letters of Empress Friedrich. Introduction by Wilhelm II.]. New Edition H. Knaur Verlag, München, ISBN 5-19-977337-2.
• Karin Feuerstein-Praßer: Die deutschen Kaiserinnen. 1871–1918. Piper Verlag, München 2005. ISBN 3-492-23641-3.
• Franz Herre: Kaiserin Friedrich – Victoria, eine Engländerin in Deutschland. Hohenheim Verlag, Stuttgart 2006. ISBN 3-89850-142-6
• Patricia Kolander: Frederick III – Germany’s Liberal Emperor. Greenwood Press, Westport 1995. ISBN 0-313-29483-6.
• Hannah Pakula: Victoria. Tochter Queen Victorias, Gemahlin des preußischen Kronprinzen, Mutter Wilhelm II. Marion von Schröder-Verlag, München 1999. ISBN 3-547-77360-1
• Wilfried Rogasch (Hrsg.): Victoria & Albert, Vicky & The Kaiser: ein Kapitel deutsch-englischer Familiengeschichte [Cat. of the Exhibition in the Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin] Hatje Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit 1997. ISBN 3-86102-091-2.
• Andrew Sinclair: Victoria – Kaiserin für 99 Tage. Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1987, ISBN 3-404-61086-5.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

• 21 November 1840 – 19 January 1841:^[8] Her Royal Highness The Princess Victoria
• 19 January 1841 – 25 January 1858: Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal
• 25 January 1858 – 2 January 1861: Her Royal Highness Princess Frederick of Prussia
• 2 January 1861 – 18 January 1871: Her Royal Highness The Crown Princess of Prussia
• 18 January 1871 – 9 March 1888: Her Imperial and Royal Highness The German Crown Princess, Crown Princess of Prussia
• 9 March 1888 – 15 June 1888: Her Imperial and Royal Majesty The German Empress, Queen of Prussia
• 15 June 1888 – 5 August 1901: Her Imperial Majesty The Empress Frederick^[2]

Honours

• Dame of the Order of Louise
• Royal Order of Victoria and Albert, First Class^[9]

Arms

With her style of Princess Royal, Victoria was granted use of the royal arms, as then used: with an escutcheon of the shield of Saxony, the whole differenced by a label argent of three points, the outer points bearing crosses gules, the central a rose gules.^[10]

Issue

Victoria and Frederick had eight children:

Ancestry

See also

• Schlosshotel Kronberg, the former home of Empress Frederick.
• Kaiserin-Friedrich-Gymnasium, a Gymnasium in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, bears the name of Victoria, Princess Royal.

Notes and sources

Further reading

• Pakula, Hannah (1995). An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0684842165. 

External links

• Memorial Page at FindaGrave