Victoria, Princess Royal

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Victoria, Princess Royal bigraphy, stories - German royal

Victoria, Princess Royal : biography

21 November 1840 – 5 August 1901

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 (German: Kaiserin Friedrich).

Crown Princess of Prussia

Victoria in 1867, portrait by [[Franz Xaver Winterhalter]]

Crown Prince of Prussia Crown Princess

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).

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

  • 21 November 1840 – 19 January 1841: 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

Honours

  • Dame of the Order of Louise
  • Royal Order of Victoria and Albert, First Class

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.. In 1917, the escutcheon was dropped by royal warrant from George V. Of course Victoria had died in 1901 and the arms had not been used by her since her marriage to Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, later German Emperor Friedrich III.

Ancestry

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.

Issue

Victoria and Frederick had eight children:

Princess Victoria was born on 21 November 1840 at Buckingham Palace, London. Her mother was Queen Victoria, the only child 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 great-aunt Queen Adelaide, her great-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 great-uncle The Duke of Sussex, her maternal great-aunt The Duchess of Gloucester and her maternal grandmother The Duchess of Kent.

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.

Notes and sources

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