Advice Granddauhtr

I love these letters (between Queen Victoria & her eldest Hessian granddaughter, another Victoria). The Queen was full of good advice, and her loving concern for her motherless Hessian grandchildren is so evident...in particular, the letters concerning Princess Alix of Hesse's marriage are so poignant (she became the last Empress of Russia). These letters also help those with a scholarly interest in Queen Victoria & the British Royal family know more about the backgrounds of the various members of the family. But they are also just plain good reading, hard to put down!

"Advice to a grand-daughter" is a collection of letters from Queen Victoria to her granddaughter, Princess Victoria of Hesse, wonderfully selected and edited by Richard Hough. The letters date from April 1870 to July 1900. Victoria of Hesse was the oldest daughter of Queen Victoria's Hessian grandchildren, and after their mother (the Queen's daughter Alice) died in 1878, Queen Victoria undertook to raise them long-distance, often by barraging Princess Victoria with instructions on how to deal with the younger children.As always, the Queen's charming and forceful-- if occasionally overbearing-- personality makes itself felt in her letters. The Hessian royal children grew up to be forceful personalities in their own right. Princess Victoria married Prince Louis of Battenberg; the family changed their name to Mountbatten towards the end of the First World War; Victoria's youngest son is best known as the late Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and one of her grandsons is Prince Philip, the current Duke of Edinburgh. The second girl, Princess Elizabeth, married a son of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and, after his murder by anarchists, took the veil and was herself murdered during the Russian Revolution. The third, Princess Irene, married the only brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The youngest daughter, Alix (or "Alicky", as she appears in these letters), married Tsar Nicholas II of Russia; she and her entire family were killed during the Revolution. The boy, Ernest Louis ("Ernie"), was the last reigning Grand Duke of Hesse, a patron of the arts.These letters provide a detailed and fascinating recounting of some of the childhood events of the Hessians-- Princess Victoria's marriage, the Queen's hissy fits over each marriage, in turn, of the three youngest girls', family births and family deaths, the Queen's trips to Europe. An absorbing book, highly recommended to anyone with an interest in Queen Victoria and the intertwined relationships of European royalty of the period.