The Russian Grand Duchess Olga observed of her, ‘Queen Alexandra treated Princess Victoria like a glorified maid’. Instead, Princess Victoria followed her mother wherever obligation or whim took her. In the autumn of her life, Princess Victoria mournfully told a companion ‘we could have been so happy’.īut it was not to be. The widowed Prime Minister the Earl of Rosebery asked for her hand but was rejected by Princess Alexandra. Suitors were attracted to the lonely, studious princess including King Carlos I of Portugal but Queen Victoria would not sanction her granddaughter having to convert to Roman Catholicism. Princess Victoria was selected from childhood to be a companion to her needy mother. Though Bertie and Alexandra rejected much of the example set by Queen Victoria, like her mother-in-law Princess Alexandra clung to her daughters and proved reluctant to offer them for dynastic matches. Princess Victoria was a handsome woman who was infinitely more intelligent than her mother and much-beloved by her father. Queen Alexandra’s daughters were not considered beauties and were secretly described by courtiers as ‘the hags’. Known for all her children’s lives as ‘Motherdear’, Queen Alexandra clung tightly to her brood much to the disapproval of her mother-in-law Queen Victoria though Bertie understandably would not question her devotion to a cloying family life behind the walls of Marlborough House. She bore the Prince of Wales five children: the Princes Albert Victor and George and the Princesses Louise, Victoria and Maud. Though vivacious, elegant and charming, Princess Alexandra was a childlike creature and an indulgent ostrich when it came to her husband’s vices. The Queen indirectly blamed his dalliance with an actress in Ireland for the Prince Consort’s death in 1861 and, after his marriage to Danish Princess Alexandra in 1863, the Prince of Wales continued a lifelong pursuit of pretty women. After a repressive upbringing under the strict eye of his father Prince Albert and mother Queen Victoria, heir to the throne ‘Bertie’ rebelled. To understand the trajectory of Princess Victoria’s rather frustrated life, one has to examine the nature of her parents’ marriage. Princess Victoria ‘Toria’ of Wales (1865-1935) was the second daughter of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra who was born in their London residence, Marlborough House, when her parents were Prince and Princess of Wales.
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