by Laird o’Thistle
September 24 2010

For some months now I’ve been meaning to get around to writing about Prince Philip’s maternal grandmother, Princess Victoria of Hesse, Marchioness of Milford Haven (1863-1950). She was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, sister to the last Czarina of Russia, mother to a Queen of Sweden and to the “last Viceroy” of India, and the woman who oversaw the upbringing of Prince Philip in the wake of his mother’s illness and the breakdown of his parents’ marriage. In pictures of the christening of the current Prince of Wales, her great-grandson, she appears as a slender austere matriarch opposite her regal counterpart, Queen Mary. She generally seems to have been a somewhat formidable figure.

Princess Victoria of Hesse and the Rhine was the eldest child of the Grand Duke, Louis IV, and his wife Princess Alice of Great Britain. Born at Windsor Castle in the presence of Queen Victoria on Easter Sunday of 1863, she was baptized a couple of weeks later, held in the arms of her namesake grandmother. She grew up primarily in Darmstadt at her father’s court, sharing a room with her sister Ella who later married into the Russian imperial family. (After her husband’s death Ella became an Orthodox nun. She was killed by the Bolsheviks, and later canonized by the Orthodox Church. Her recovered remains were later buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, and those of her niece Alice, Prince Philip’s mother, were later interred nearby.) In 1878 Victoria came down with diphtheria, which spread through the entire immediate family except for Ella. Her youngest sister, Marie, died, and finally, her mother, Princess Alice, succumbed as well. Following her mother’s death, Princess Victoria took on the role of mothering her younger siblings and assisting her father as his hostess.

Princess Victoria married her father’s first cousin, Prince Louis of Battenberg, in 1884. (He lived 1854-1921.) Despite the family connection, Victoria’s father was opposed to the match because Prince Louis was born of a morganatic marriage, and probably because it also cost him his companion and hostess. Princess Victoria, however, didn’t care and prevailed. “Grandmama England” (i.e. Queen Victoria) was all for the marriage and attended the wedding. Prince Louis had early on attracted the notice of Prince Alfred of Great Britain, and of the Prince of Wales (Edward VII). He adopted British nationality in order to serve in the Royal Navy and eventually became First Sea Lord. He served ably before being sacked because of his German origin during WWI.

After their marriage, the Battenbergs lived mostly in England, with short terms in Germany, and Malta. Four children were born to the marriage:

Alice (1885-1969), who married Prince Andrew of Greece and became the mother of Prince Philip. (Once again Queen Victoria presided at the birth, at Windsor Castle.)

Louise (1889-1965), the second wife of the Crown Prince, later King Gustav VI Adolf, of Sweden. (His first wife, the mother of his children, was another British princess, Margaret of Connaught.)

George (1892-1938), Second Marquis of Milford Haven, from who descends the current Marquis and his family.

Louis (1900-1972), Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last Viceroy of India, and – among many other things – First Sea Lord (1955-1959).

By all accounts, especially including those of her youngest son, Princess Victoria had a sharp and brilliant mind, encyclopedic in nature. She was deeply interested in geology and archaeology, and read socialist philosophy. She also painted. This very royal lady developed an odd mix of egalitarian views intermingled with an abiding sense of her rank and privilege. She had a notorious tendency toward argumentativeness, and Queen Victoria worried about her granddaughter’s characteristic coolness and detachment. Others noted her “direct, abrupt, and rather masculine” manner. That said, some of her grandchildren remember an emotional warmth in her, and the tears she shed at the death of her elder son in 1938. She also had a rather adventurous streak. Her cousin the Kaiser taught her to smoke at age 16. At her wedding, she was limping, having twisted an ankle leaping a coal scuttle. In 1906 she flew in a Zeppelin airship, and shortly thereafter enjoyed a perilous flight in an early biplane.

In 1914 Princess Victoria and daughter Louise were in Russia, at Yekaterinburg, when World War I broke out. As they began their journey toward St. Petersburg and home to Britain they actually drove right past the house where Victoria’s sister, Alexandra, and the rest of the imperial family were to be murdered four years later. Victoria is reported to have been one of the ones who tried to get Alexandra to turn away from the influence of the monk Rasputin.

For Princess Victoria of Battenberg the cost of World War I was profound. Two of her sisters, Ella and Alexandra, were murdered by the Bolsheviks, along with all of Alexandra’s children. (Throughout his life Lord Louis Mountbatten treasured the memory of his cousin Anastasia, on whom he’d had a youthful crush.) Her brother also lost his throne. Her husband lost his job, his title, and even his name. In 1917 the Battenberg family morphed into the Mountbattens, and the former “Prince” Louis became the Marquis of Milford Haven. The new Marchioness of Milford Haven was, reportedly, not entirely pleased with the new title, remarking on how Marquis was a title also bestowed on a variety of bankers, lawyers, and brewers. Prince Louis, however, sensibly did not wish to have to support the lifestyle deemed appropriate to a Duke.

In January 1921 the Marchioness of Milford Haven attended the belated burial of her sister, Ella (the Grand Duchess Serge), on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. In June of the same year her grandson, Prince Philip, was born in Greece. In September she was unexpectedly widowed when her husband fell ill on a trip to London and died while she was out filling a prescription written by the doctor.

During the years from 1914 on, the Battenberg / Milford Havens lived on the Isle of Wight in a house given them by Victoria’s aunt, Princess Louise (Duchess of Argyll). After her husband’s death, Victoria moved to an apartment in Kensington Palace provided by George V, where she remained for the rest of her life except for time spent living in greater safety at Windsor during World War II. (Her presence at Windsor probably helps explain some of the wartime visits of Prince Philip noted by Marion Crawford in The Little Princesses.)

The nearly thirty years between the death of Prince Louis and her own death were full. The 1920s saw the marriages Louis to Edwina Ashley (1922) and of Louise to the Crown Prince of Sweden (1923). During these years Lord Louis became a very close friend and traveling companion of the Prince of Wales (Duke of Windsor) and remained so up through the Abdication. (Victoria herself had little use for “that woman”, i.e. Wallis Simpson.) In 1930 her daughter Princess Alice was hospitalized and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. Alice’s marriage had broken down sometime earlier. It was at this point that the Mountbattens, led by the Marchioness, stepped in (along with his elder sisters) to oversee the upbringing of Alice’s youngest child, Prince Philip. In later years Prince Philip has spoken very fondly of his grandmother, with whom he often stayed at Kensington Palace.

Two more major family tragedies occurred in the late 1930s. In 1931 Victoria’s granddaughter, Cecilie (sister of Prince Philip), married Victoria’s nephew, George Donatus of Hesse. In October 1937 Victoria’s brother Ernst Louis, the former Grand Duke, died. Shortly after that Ernst’s widow, son George Donatus, Cecilie, and three of George and Cecilie’s four children were killed in a plane crash while en route to London for the marriage of George’s brother. Just a few months after this tragedy Victoria’s elder son George, the Marquis of Milford Haven, died of bone cancer at age 45.

During World War II the Marchioness had her surviving son and two grandsons (one being Prince Philip) serving in the Royal Navy. Meanwhile, daughter Alice was in occupied Greece and out of contact with the family for four years. Daughter Louise was married to the Crown Prince of officially “neutral” Sweden, which was engaged in an ongoing game of brinksmanship between Germany and the Allies. Other relatives, such as the husbands of Prince Philip’s sisters, were serving in the German armed forces.

When the war was done the elderly Marchioness returned to Kensington Palace. At the beginning of 1947 son Louis became the “Last Viceroy” of India, and then the first Governor-General of the same. 1947 also saw the engagement and marriage of Prince Philip to Princess Elizabeth. Princess Victoria attended the wedding, and a year later was present for the christening of her great-grandson, Prince Charles, at Buckingham Palace. In the summer of 1950, she fell ill at Broadlands, Louis’s home, and insisted on returning home to Kensington Palace to die. She died on September 24, 1950, just 60 years ago. Her great-granddaughter Anne, the Princess Royal, was just over a month old at the time. (One gets the impression that Anne rather resembles her great-grandmother in her direct and sometimes abrupt style.) She was buried with her husband in the churchyard of St. Mildred’s Church at Whippingham, on the Isle of Wight.

Yours Aye,
Ken Cuthbertson