The TRAGIC life of Queen Victoria's daughter-Victoria, The Princess Royal

When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha on 10 February 1840, she wanted at least one year of “happy enjoyment” before starting a family. She hated and dreaded the thought of childbearing, and yet within a few weeks of her wedding, she was pregnant. On 21 November that year, a child – the first of nine – was born. When the doctor informed Victoria that she had a princess, she answered firmly that “the next will be a prince”. Despite any initial disappointment at not immediately presenting her husband and kingdom with a son and heir, Victoria was delighted to have a daughter. Later she would tell this princess – who was by then a mother herself – that “sometimes one buys experience with one’s first child and therefore a girl is sometimes better”. Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, Princess Royal – briefly nicknamed ‘Pussy’ and then a few years later ‘Vicky’ – was the delight of her parents, and would always remain her father’s favourite child.Victoria and Albert’s first born, Victoria, or ‘Vicky’, was a precocious child with a passion for learning and a mischievous sense of humour – although she could also be emotional and highly-strung. She inherited her father’s analytical mind and love of reading, and always remained the apple of his eye. Although Queen Victoria was very fond of her, with characteristic honesty she admitted that her first born was sometimes a difficult daughter: “A more insubordinate and unequal-tempered child and girl I think I never saw!” the queen once wrote to a 17-year-old Vicky.
In 1858 the young Victoria married Prince Frederick William of Prussia, later German Emperor Frederick III. The marriage brought her into conflict with two of her siblings – the Prince of Wales and Alice – whose marriages into the royal and ducal families of Denmark and Hesse respectively placed them on the losing side during the wars of conquest of the Prussian minister-president and later German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Although the bonds between brother and sisters always remained strong, the division of national loyalties resulted in some painful moments during family visits when all three were staying at Windsor at the same time, to the extent that Queen Victoria sometimes had to forbid any conversation about contentious issues in her presence.
Some 30 years after marrying Victoria, Frederick would ascend the throne while dying from throat cancer, no longer able to speak above a whisper. He died following a reign of just three months, taking with him hopes of a united liberal Germany that would be a staunch ally of Britain. In Frederik’s place came William II, Europe’s unstable bête noire, who professed to admire Britain while secretly regarding her as a rival for German supremacy in Europe. It would later be the fate of another grandson of Queen Victoria, King George V, to witness Britain and Germany declare war on each other in 1914.
When Queen Victoria died at Osborne House in January 1901, she was surrounded by most of her surviving children and several grandchildren. However, Vicky – now the widowed Empress Frederick – was notably absent from her mother’s deathbed. Suffering from cancer of the spine and too ill to travel back to England from Germany, she died seven months after her mother, on 5 August 1901.