#empress Victoria of Germany

[foreverinthepagesofhistoryy]

Rare photo of King Edward VII (Prince of Wales at the time) and Empress Victoria of Germany (Princess Royal), 1900

This photo was taken while Victoria was battling breast cancer

Source: valevictorian on Instagram

[archduchessofnowhere]

Queen Victoria to her daughter Crown Princess Victoria of Germany, on the engagement of Princess Stephanie of Belgium to Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria:

BUCKINGHAM PALACE, MARCH 12, 1880 On Tuesday 9th the Empress [Elisabeth] of Austria came and stopped for luncheon and was most amiable. She is a little aged, but still very handsome and graceful and distinguished looking and the figure beautiful, only her dress was so tight she could hardly move or sit down. Poor little Stephanie’s engagement took everyone by surprise including the Empress and Leopold of B [King of the Belgians, Stephanie's father]. The poor thing has been completely shut up—never seen anyone—never been to a dance or a play etc. and suddenly the C. Prince of Austria is brought, speaks to her and she is engaged and brought out!! It is a most wonderful arrangement but you like children’s engagements and so you won’t be so astonished.

Crown Princess Victoria's reply:

PEGLI, MARCH 15, 1880 (...) I decidedly think with you that dear little Stephanie’s marriage is very sudden, and taking such a great leap all of a sudden, is of course very trying to a young girl’s mental and moral development! Though I was engaged at 14—and there are many other examples of the same kind, yet in principle I am strongly against it and think it far better to be a little older, but what I always pleaded is that there are cases where peculiar circumstances make it advisable and desirable—and unavoidable. I have heard no details yet. I suppose the Crown Prince (who has been rather wild and flighty) was urged to marry and chose Stephanie young as she was. It will be a great trial to the poor dear child to be grown up on such short notice and engaged to a young man she does not know, and had never seen.

Queen Victoria's reply:

WINDSOR CASTLE, MARCH 22, 1880 (...) Neither Leopold B. or the Emperor of Austria knew anything of the Archduke Rudolf’s plans. It seems Stephanie was entirely his own choice. It is a great thing that the Emperor and Empress have at length allowed the marriage or rather the engagement to be announced, and I hope Willie [Prince Wilhelm, Crown Princess Victoria's son] will travel and see the world a little before he marries, which I trust will be next year. Those very long engagements are very trying and not very good and poor Victoria [Auguste Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, Wilhelm's fiancée] will be 22 in October.

Fulford, Roger [ed.] (1981). Beloved mama: Private correspondence of Queen Victoria and the German Crown Princess, 1878-1885

Pictured: Princess Stephanie and Crown Prince Rudolf's engagement photograph, by Géruzet Frères, 1880 (left); Crown Princess Victoria of Germany, by Alexander Bassano, 1879 (right). Via Wikimedia Commons and the Royal Collection Trust.

[foreverinthepagesofhistory]

royal women + text post memes ✨💗

(thanks friends who participated!)

[queenalexandraofdenmark]

prettiest royal woman iyo?

Queen Alexandra

Empress Maria Feodorovna

Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna

Empress Victoria of Germany

Queen Maud of Norway

Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna

Queen Sophia of Greece

Queen Maria Sophie of the Two Siciles

Princess Margaret

Princess Beatrice of Edinburgh, Duchess of Galliera.

[pokadandelion]

Empress Victoria of Germany nee Princess of The United Kingdom

[queenalexandraofdenmark]

Just imagine having a relationship like their's. 😩❤

could you talk a little about the relationship of Vicky and Fritz? what were they like as a couple?

anon you've made me the happiest!! here are some of my favourite tidbits ♥

♡ It was a love match from the beginning till the end. They shared an intellectual and physical bond that was a rarity in royal circles!

♡ Fritz proposed to Vicky while they were taking a stroll near Balmoral Castle. He picked up some white heather, kissed her and asked her if she would consider coming to Prussia. She said she would and he replied that he’d hoped she would stay ‘always’. 

♡ They were partners in the true sense of the word and they were particularly vilified for it. In the patriarchal Prussian society, their relationship were an anomaly. Bismark enjoyed spreading rumors about them : Vicky was the domineering wife and Fritz the weak husband. Once, Vicky wrote to Fritz that a woman in Germany was : 'not the partner, friend and helper of her husband... does not have the same educational level as he... If a wife lays claim to this status she is considered dangerous, domineering, ridiculous, peculiar. In England, every woman participates in conversations on politics, reads the newspapers, knows what’s going on, etc.. No Englishwoman would accept and adjust to the lowly and not very dignified status of a German wife.'

♡ To make matters worse, Fritz was constantly undermined by his own family. Vicky wrote 'from his own mother he seldom or rather never hears... words of affection' 'I wish more people knew. He is such a good son, such a good husband & such a good brother! & always thinks his duty before his pleasure.'

♡ Fritz suffered from depression (not surprising when you have his family and you espouse liberal values while being the heir of the very conservative Prussia). Vicky helped him a great deal. He wrote to her : 'You know exactly what it takes to make me happy through good times and bad, and you know exactly what is best for me... you accept me the way that I am; you have taught me how to gain confidence and see the world in a better way than I did before” “if “marriages are made in heaven” then God has obviously done so in our case.' 

♡ They were constantly under pressure. Bismark’s propaganda machine against Fritz and Vicky destroyed them in the eye of the Court and of the German people. But damn, they stood their ground.

♡ Vicky and Fritz were against the anti-Semitic movement. And Friedrich made it very clear.

♡ Their home was a space where 'love of art, a real sympathy with the intellectual movement and a wider liberal outlook on life prevailed.'

♡ Fritz helped to promote the development of women and their integration in male bureaucracy. In 1872 he supported a petition sent to the Reichstag which demanded that women were able to work in postal and railway services. *Vicky’s influence*.

♡ 'That you now are everything in the world to me you already know [...] I no longer undertake anything without thinking constantly of you and look upon you as my good angel' Fritz to Vicky.

♡ 'If you only knew how your love moves me, how happy it makes me and how much I return it, I do not deserve so much. Dear, dear Fritz, I think of you day and night.' 'For my precious madly-loved Fritz from is own Vicky.' Vicky to Fritz.

♡ To get away from the oppressive atmosphere of the capital, they bought, in 1863, a farmhouse in the village of Bornstedt, near Postdam. They were popular within the village and they loved this country life. When there, Fritz helped to plant and harvest. They also improved the village: rebuilt the church, created a trade school and a new village school.

♡ Even though Vicky could be very demanding and Fritz often away because of his military duties, they were both attentive and doting parents. Their younger children would come in their room at 7am and sat on their bed to eat their breakfast.

♡ Vicky's first childbirth was a very difficult one and Fritz stayed by her side throughout the ordeal. When she gave birth to her second child, Charlotte, he rubbed her feet during labor.

♡ On the day he became Emperor in 1888 Fritz invested Vicky with the highest honor he could give her: the Order of the Black Eagle. As he was already suffering from cancer and couldn’t speak he wrote to his doctor, Morell Mackenzie : ‘I thank you for having made me live enough to recompense the valiant courage of my wife’. Four months later he would die. 

♡ The royal collection kept a bracelet made from plaited hair of Fritz and Vicky, with an FV monogram surrounded by a serpent (x).The Victorians associated the snake motif with eternal love. 

♡ He took the picture below in 1887 at Buckingham Palace, in the room he occupied 35 years ago, before his marriage to Vicky. And on the table there is the small portrait that Vicky gave him after their engagement in 1855.

if anyone is wondering, most of these tidbits come from an uncommon woman, the empress frederick by hannah pakula, a really good book on Vicky and Fritz!

[foreverinthepagesofhistoryy]

✧.* ~ Three Generations of British Victorias ~ ✧.*

Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland, 1819-1901

Victoria Princess Royal, Crown Princess of Prussia, Empress of Germany, 1840-1901

Princess Viktoria of Prussia, Princess of Schaumburg Lippe, 1866-1929

Princess Victoria of Wales, 1868-1935

Princess Victoria Melita of Edinburgh, Grand Duchess Viktoria Feodorovna of Russia, 1876-1936

Missing from photo:

Princess Victoria of Hesse and By Rhine, Marchioness of Milford Haven, 1863-1950

Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig Holstein, 1870-1948

Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, Queen Consort of Spain, 1887-1969

✧.*

[foreverinthepagesofhistory]

The 8 children of Emperor Fredrick III of Germany and Victoria Princess Royal (edit)

Wilhelm, Charlotte, Henry, Sigismund, Viktoria, Waldemar, Sophia, Margaret

(made by me using iMovie)

[queenalexandraofdenmark]

Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia, mids 1860s.

[queenalexandraofdenmark]

Beautiful Vicky<333

Pss Royal Victoria of Great Britain. Early 1850s.

Courtesy of the RCT

[thehessiansisters]

Portraits of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna wearing uniform of the chief of the 5th Hussar Alexandria regiment, Tsarkoye Selo, 1911.

[kaiserrreich]

October 22 1858: The Birth of Kaiserin Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein

Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein was the eldest daughter of Frederick VIII, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein and Princess Adelheid of Hohenlohe-Lagenburg. Tragedy struck only a week after her birth when her elder brother died from illness. In 1860, her younger sister, Caroline Mathilda, was born. Who was regarded as prettier and a brighter personality than the chubby, serious, submissive Augusta Victoria. Soon Augusta’s mother would give birth to another boy, Gerhard, who died in infancy. Their next male heir and fifth child, Ernst Gunther, was a perfectly healthy baby boy. Augusta would have two other sisters, Louise Sophie in April 1866 and Feodora Adelaide in July 1874.

In her family, she was known affectionately as “Dona.” Augusta’s obedient nature was noted on early in her youth, even by her future mother-in-law Crown Princess Frederick. ‘It is strange how good some children are – and how little trouble they give,’ she wrote to her mother, Queen Victoria, when Augusta Victoria was nine years old.  ‘Ada’s children are patterns of obedience, gentleness – the best of dispositions’. (1)

The thought of a match between Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein and Prince Wilhelm of Prussia was contemplated ever since they were children, as noted by the prince (future Kaiser, ex-Kaiser) later in the future. But was never taken seriously until after the prince was rejected by Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine. Perhaps, Wilhelm was seeking for a rebound in Dona and it was a success. As the couple married on the 27th of February 1881. The marriage has been regarded to be happy but not without struggle. As Wilhelm quickly grew bored at his new wife’s longing for a simple domestic lifestyle, having multiple affairs throughout the years. And in the beginning only saw Dona as a broodmare. It was only after an ear infection gone bad, where Augusta stayed by Wilhelm’s side throughout the duration of it did he start to see her in an adjusted light, but continued to be unfaithful to her.

She bore him seven children:

Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, Crown Prince of Prussia (1882-1951)

Prince Eitel Friedrich (1883-1942)

Prince Adalbert (1884-1948)

Prince August Wilhelm (1887-1949)

Prince Oskar (1888-1958)

Prince Joachim (1890-1920)

Princess Viktoria Louise of Prussia (1892-1980)

Her days as Empress, she was regarded by the court as a prudish, a stickler for rules who punished anyone for the simplest gesture she deemed to be “immoral.” She was deemed by many as unremarkable and plain with a gaudy and tacky sense of fashion. With Nicholas II remarking to his mother, the Dowager Empress. That she ‘did her best to be pleasant but looked awful in sumptuous gowns completely lacking in taste; in particular the hats she wore in the evening were frightful.’

Though as overbearing and a nuisance as she was in public life and a part of her private life, by some family members, such as Empress Frederick (with whom she had a very heated feud with and who Augusta enjoyed snubbing frequently) who wrote to her daughter, Sophie, she was characterized as: ‘very grand and stiff and cold and condescending at first, but became much nicer afterwards.  Perhaps it was also partly shyness.’ and by her younger sister, Louise Sophie that when she was ‘not bowing to the will of her autocratic husband she was easy and indulgent’. “Her cousin Alice of Albany, who was sometimes mildly critical of her older relations, found her ‘most affable and kind’.”(1)

She was her husband’s biggest supporter throughout everything (for better and for worse) and was crushed when she was stripped of her titles as German Empress and Queen of Prussia after the war. Her health, which was already declining ever since the 1890s (causing her to miscarry twice) went down a rapid decline in the 1920s. And it had worsened when she had heard of the news of the death of her youngest son, Prince Joachim. She passed away on the 11th April 1921, in spite of her personal flaws, she was a beloved Empress by the German people and her popularity outshined her husband’s. Thousands lined up to see her off, where she would be buried at the Temple of Antiquities in the gardens near the New Palais in Postdam. Her husband, the ex Kaiser Wilhelm II was forbidden to cross into Germany to see his wife off for the final time.

Her room in Huis Doorn was soon turned into a shrine dedicated to the late Empress. With Wilhelm ordering for the room to regularly be cleaned with flowers and a cross draped over the bed. “Once a week, for the rest of his twenty years, he would retire there on his own, to go and mourn her memory.“ (1)

Wilhelm adhered to his late wife’s wishes for him to marry someone else when she was gone. When only a year later he would marry Princess Hermine of Reuss. He passed away in June of 1941, at age 82, 20 years after her passing.

Source : The Last German Empress

[epoque-victorienne]

[queenalexandraofdenmark]

Awh🥹💞

“I could not choose for a sister-in-law anyone I like better than Louise. She will make Arthur a most delightful wife. Each is the complement of the other, and I foresee that each will make the other supremely happy.”

—the German Crown Princess, (nee Victoria, Princess Royal) on the fiancée of her younger brother Prince Arthur: Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia.

@abigaaal

[foreverinthepagesofhistoryy]

Rare photo of Prince Sigismund of Prussia (1864-1866), son of Victoria Princess Royal and Crown Prince Fredrick of Prussia, showed on a mourning card, circa 1866 ❤️‍🩹

[foreverinthepagesofhistory]

is it just me or do 1860s off the shoulder dresses make you horny af

(Photos of Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia and Princess Alice of Hesse)