Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom

1.1. Childhood and Education

Princess Beatrice was born on 14 April 1857 at Buckingham Palace in London. She was the fifth daughter and the youngest of the nine children of the reigning British monarch, Queen Victoria, and her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Her birth generated public discussion because Queen Victoria opted to use chloroform for pain relief during delivery, administered by Dr John Snow. This practice was considered dangerous for both mother and child and was generally disapproved of by the Church of England and medical authorities at the time. Despite these concerns, Queen Victoria remained resolute, referring to it as "that blessed chloroform" for her final pregnancy. Two weeks later, she recorded in her journal, "I was amply rewarded and forgot all I had gone through when I heard dearest Albert say 'It's a fine child, and a girl!'"

Albert and Queen Victoria chose the names Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore. Mary was chosen after Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester, who was the last surviving child of King George III of the United Kingdom. Victoria honored the Queen herself, and Feodore was in tribute to Feodora, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the Queen's older half-sister. Beatrice was baptized in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace on 16 June 1857. Her godparents were her maternal grandmother, the Duchess of Kent; her eldest sister, the Princess Royal; and her future brother-in-law, Prince Frederick of Prussia.

From birth, Beatrice quickly became a favored child, especially as the elder favorite daughter of Prince Albert, the Princess Royal, was preparing to move to Germany with her new husband, Frederick of Prussia. Prince Albert observed Beatrice's promise, writing to Augusta, Frederick's mother, that "Baby practises her scales like a good prima donna before a performance and has a good voice!" Although Queen Victoria was generally known to dislike most babies, she was fond of Beatrice, whom she found attractive. This affection gave Beatrice an advantage over her elder siblings. Queen Victoria once described Beatrice as "a pretty, plump and flourishing child... with fine large blue eyes, [a] pretty little mouth and very fine skin." Her long, golden hair was a frequent subject of paintings commissioned by Queen Victoria, who notably enjoyed bathing Beatrice herself, a stark contrast to her preferences for her other children. Beatrice demonstrated early intelligence, further endearing her to the Prince Consort, who was amused by her childhood precociousness. He wrote to Baron Stockmar that Beatrice was "the most amusing baby we have had." Despite sharing the rigorous education program designed by Prince Albert and Baron Stockmar, Beatrice experienced a more relaxed infancy dueys to her close relationship with her parents. By the age of four, as the youngest and acknowledged last royal child, Beatrice was not compelled to share her parents' attention in the same way her siblings had been, and her amusing nature provided comfort to her ailing father.

3.1. Life and Suitors Before Marriage

Although Queen Victoria was determined to keep Beatrice at home and was initially set against her marrying anyone, a number of potential suitors were proposed before Beatrice's eventual marriage to Prince Henry of Battenberg. One prominent candidate was Napoléon Eugéne, the French Prince Imperial, who was the son and heir of the exiled Emperor Napoleon III of France and his wife, Empress Eugénie. After Prussia defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III was deposed, and his family moved to England in 1870. Following the Emperor's death in 1873, Queen Victoria and Empress Eugénie formed a close bond, leading newspapers to report on the imminent engagement of Beatrice to the Prince Imperial. These rumors, however, ceased with the Prince Imperial's death in the Anglo-Zulu War on 1 June 1879. Queen Victoria's journal vividly records their shared grief: "Dear Beatrice, crying very much as I did too, gave me the telegram... It was dawning and little sleep did I get... Beatrice is so distressed; everyone quite stunned."

After the death of the Prince Imperial, the Prince of Wales suggested that Beatrice marry their sister Alice's widower, Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse. Alice had died in 1878, and the Prince argued that Beatrice could serve as a surrogate mother for Louis's young children while spending most of her time in England to care for their mother. He further proposed that the Queen could more easily oversee the upbringing of her Hessian grandchildren under this arrangement. However, at the time, it was legally forbidden for Beatrice to marry her sister's widower. The Prince of Wales strongly advocated for the passage of the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill by the Houses of Parliament, which would have removed this legal impediment. Despite considerable popular support for this measure, and its passage in the House of Commons, it was ultimately rejected by the House of Lords due to opposition from the Lords Spiritual. Although Queen Victoria was disappointed by the bill's failure, she was content to keep her daughter by her side.

Other potential partners, including two of Prince Henry's brothers, Prince Alexander ("Sandro") and Prince Louis of Battenberg, were also put forth as husbands for Beatrice but were unsuccessful. While Alexander never formally pursued Beatrice, merely stating he "might even at one time have become engaged to the friend of my childhood, Beatrice of England," Louis was more genuinely interested. Queen Victoria invited Louis to dinner but deliberately sat between him and Beatrice, having instructed Beatrice to ignore Louis to discourage his advances. Louis, unaware of the Queen's motivations for several years, eventually married Beatrice's niece, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Although her hopes for marriage had faced another setback, it was while attending Louis's wedding in Darmstadt that Beatrice met and fell in love with Prince Henry, who reciprocated her affections.

3.2. Marriage to Prince Henry

Upon her return from Darmstadt, when Beatrice informed her mother of her intention to marry, the Queen reacted with an unsettling silence. Although they remained physically close, Queen Victoria did not speak to Beatrice for seven months, communicating solely through written notes. The Queen's behavior, which even her family found unexpected, appeared to be driven by the looming threat of losing her devoted daughter. Queen Victoria regarded Beatrice as her "Baby" - her innocent child - and seemed to view the physical aspect of marriage as an end to this cherished innocence.

Subtle persuasion from the Princess of Wales and the Crown Princess of Prussia, who reminded the Queen of the happiness Beatrice had brought to the Prince Consort, eventually prompted Queen Victoria to resume speaking to her youngest daughter. Queen Victoria finally consented to the marriage on the condition that Prince Henry would abandon his German commitments and reside permanently with Beatrice and the Queen in England.

Beatrice and Henry were married at St Mildred's Church, Whippingham on the Isle of Wight, near Osborne House, on 23 July 1885. Beatrice, adorned in her mother's wedding veil of Honiton lace, was escorted by Queen Victoria and her eldest brother, the Prince of Wales. Princess Beatrice was attended by ten royal bridesmaids, all her nieces, including Princesses Louise, Victoria, and Maud of Wales; Princesses Irene and Alix of Hesse and by Rhine; Princesses Marie, Victoria Melita, and Alexandra of Edinburgh; and Princesses Helena Victoria and Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein. The bridegroom's supporters were his brothers, Prince Alexander of Bulgaria and Prince Francis Joseph of Battenberg. Notably absent from the ceremony were Beatrice's eldest sister and brother-in-law, the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, who were unable to leave Germany; William Ewart Gladstone; and Beatrice's cousin, Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck, who was in mourning for her father-in-law. The ceremony concluded with the couple's departure for their honeymoon at Quarr Abbey House, located a few miles from Osborne. Queen Victoria, bidding them farewell, later admitted to the Crown Princess that she "bore up bravely till the departure and then fairly gave way."

3.3. Children

After a brief honeymoon, Beatrice and her husband fulfilled their promise and returned to the Queen's side. Queen Victoria made it unequivocally clear that she could not manage alone and that the couple was not permitted to travel without her. Although the Queen relaxed this restriction shortly after the marriage, Beatrice and Henry's travels were limited to short visits with his family. Beatrice's love for Henry, much like the Queen's affection for the Prince Consort, appeared to deepen with each year of their marriage. When Henry traveled without Beatrice, she visibly brightened upon his return.

The inclusion of Prince Henry into the royal family brought new reasons for Beatrice and the Queen to look forward, and the court regained a vibrancy that had been absent since the Prince Consort's death. Nevertheless, Henry, with Beatrice's support, was determined to participate in military campaigns, a desire that displeased the Queen, who opposed his involvement in life-threatening warfare. Conflicts also arose when Henry attended the Ajaccio carnival and kept "low company," prompting Beatrice to dispatch a Royal Navy officer to remove him from temptation. On one occasion, Henry secretly left for Corsica with his brother Louis, resulting in the Queen sending a warship to retrieve him. Henry felt increasingly constrained by the Queen's constant need for his and his wife's company.

Despite her marriage, Beatrice remained loyal to her promise to the Queen, continuing as her full-time confidante and secretary. Queen Victoria, in turn, developed a fondness for Henry. However, the Queen criticized Beatrice's conduct during her first pregnancy. When Beatrice ceased attending the Queen's dinners a week before giving birth, preferring to eat alone in her room, the Queen angrily wrote to her physician, Dr. James Reid, stating, "I [urged the Princess to continue] coming to dinner, and not simply moping in her own room, which is very bad for her. In my case I regularly came to dinner, except when I was really unwell (even when suffering a great deal) up to the very last day." A week later, with the aid of chloroform, Beatrice gave birth to her first son, Alexander.

Despite suffering a miscarriage in the early months of her marriage, Beatrice gave birth to four children:

Portrait	Name	Birth	Death	Notes
	Prince Alexander of Battenberg later Alexander Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Carisbrooke	23 November 1886	23 February 1960	Married Lady Irene Denison (4 July 1890 - 16 July 1956) on 19 July 1917. One daughter (Lady Iris Mountbatten, 1920-1982).
	Princess Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg later Queen of Spain	24 October 1887	15 April 1969	Married Alfonso XIII of Spain (17 May 1886 - 28 February 1941) on 31 May 1906. Two daughters, five sons (one stillborn), (including Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, 1913-1993, father of Juan Carlos I of Spain).
	Prince Leopold of Battenberg later Lord Leopold Mountbatten	21 May 1889	23 April 1922	Suffered from haemophilia; died unmarried and without issue during a knee operation.
	Prince Maurice of Battenberg	3 October 1891	27 October 1914	Died of wounds from action during First World War.

Following the births of her children, Beatrice developed a polite and encouraging interest in social issues. While court entertainments were few after the Prince Consort's death, Beatrice and the Queen enjoyed tableau vivant photography, which was often performed at the royal residences. Henry, increasingly bored by the lack of activity at court, longed for employment. In response, the Queen appointed him Governor of the Isle of Wight in 1889. However, he continued to yearn for military adventure and pleaded with his mother-in-law to allow him to join the Ashanti expedition fighting in the Anglo-Asante War. Despite her misgivings, the Queen consented. Henry and Beatrice parted on 6 December 1895, never to meet again. Henry contracted malaria and was sent home, but on 22 January 1896, Beatrice, who was awaiting her husband at Madeira, received a telegram informing her of Henry's death two days earlier.

Devastated by her loss, Beatrice withdrew from court for a month of mourning before returning to her post by her mother's side. The Queen's journal records that Victoria "[w]ent over to Beatrice's room and sat a while with her. She is so piteous in her misery." Despite her profound grief, Beatrice remained her mother's faithful companion. As Queen Victoria aged, she relied more heavily on Beatrice for handling correspondence. Recognizing Beatrice's need for her own space, the Queen granted her the Kensington Palace apartments once occupied by the Queen and her mother. Victoria also appointed Beatrice to the governorship of the Isle of Wight, a position vacated by Prince Henry's death. In response to Beatrice's interest in photography, the Queen had a darkroom installed at Osborne House. The significant changes in the family dynamics, including Beatrice's absorption in caring for her mother, may have impacted her children, who exhibited rebellious behavior at school. Beatrice noted that Ena was "troublesome and rebellious," and Alexander was telling "unwarrantable untruths."

4.1. Editing Queen Victoria's Journals

Beatrice's life was profoundly changed by the death of Queen Victoria on 22 January 1901. She wrote to the Principal of the University of Glasgow in March, "...you may imagine what the grief is. I, who had hardly ever been separated from my dear mother, can hardly realise what life will be like without her, who was the centre of everything." Beatrice continued to make public appearances, but her position at court diminished. Unlike her sister Louise, she was not close to her brother, who was now Edward VII, and was not included in the King's inner circle. Although their relationship did not completely break down, it was occasionally strained, for instance, when she accidentally (but noisily) dropped her service book from the royal gallery onto a table of gold plate during his coronation.

After inheriting Osborne House, the King ordered his mother's personal photographs and belongings to be removed and some of them destroyed, particularly material relating to John Brown, whom he intensely disliked. Queen Victoria had intended Osborne to be a private, secluded residence for her descendants, away from the pomp and ceremony of mainland life. However, the new king had no personal need for the house and consulted his lawyers about its disposal, planning to transform the main wing into a convalescent home, open the state apartments to the public, and construct a Naval College on the grounds. These plans met with strong disapproval from Beatrice and Louise. Queen Victoria had bequeathed them houses on the estate, and the privacy promised to them by their mother was now threatened. When Edward discussed the fate of the house with them, Beatrice strongly argued against allowing the house to leave the family, emphasizing its importance to their parents.

However, the King did not wish to keep the house himself and offered it to his heir-apparent, Beatrice's nephew George, who declined, citing the high cost of maintenance. Edward subsequently extended the grounds of Beatrice's home, Osborne Cottage, to compensate her for the impending loss of her privacy. Shortly thereafter, the King declared to Arthur Balfour, the prime minister, that the main house would be given to the nation as a gift. An exception was made for the private apartments, which remained closed to all but royal family members, who transformed them into a shrine in memory of their mother.

Upon Queen Victoria's death, Beatrice embarked on the momentous task of transcribing and editing her mother's journals. The hundreds of volumes, dating from 1831 onwards, contained the Queen's personal views on her daily life, encompassing personal and family matters as well as affairs of state. Queen Victoria had specifically entrusted Beatrice with the responsibility of editing the journals for publication, which involved removing private material and passages that, if published, might cause distress or harm to living individuals. Beatrice diligently deleted such extensive material that the edited journals ultimately amounted to only one-third of the length of the originals. The destruction of such large portions of Queen Victoria's original diaries caused distress to Beatrice's nephew, George V, and his wife, Queen Mary, who were powerless to intervene. Beatrice meticulously copied a draft from the original journals and then transcribed her draft into a set of blue notebooks. Both the original volumes and her initial drafts were systematically destroyed as she progressed through the task. This monumental undertaking consumed thirty years of her life, finally being completed in 1931. The 111 surviving notebooks are now preserved in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.

7.1. Positive Assessment

Beatrice was considered the shyest of all Queen Victoria's children. However, because she accompanied Queen Victoria almost everywhere, she became one of the best-known members of the royal family. Despite her shyness, she was a talented actress and dancer, as well as a keen artist and photographer. She was deeply devoted to her children and expressed concern when they misbehaved at school. To those who shared her friendship, she was loyal and possessed a strong sense of humor. As a public figure, she was driven by a powerful sense of duty. She served as Patron of the Isle of Wight Branch of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution from 1920 until her death. Music, a passion shared by her mother and the Prince Consort, was an area in which Beatrice excelled. She played the piano to professional standards and was an occasional composer. Like her mother, she was a devout Christian, remaining fascinated by theology until her death. With her calm temperament and personal warmth, the princess earned widespread approval from the public.

Her considerable effort and unwavering dedication did not go unnoticed by the British public. In 1886, when she agreed to open the Show of the Royal Horticultural Society of Southampton, the organizers sent her a proclamation of thanks, expressing their "admiration of the affectionate manner in which you have comforted and assisted your widowed mother our Gracious Sovereign the Queen." As a wedding present, Sir Moses Montefiore, a renowned banker and philanthropist, presented Beatrice and Henry with a silver tea service inscribed with the biblical verse: "Many daughters have acted virtuously, but thou excellest them all."

7.2. Criticism and Controversy

The demands placed on Beatrice during her mother's reign were exceptionally high. Despite suffering from rheumatism, Beatrice was compelled to endure her mother's preference for cold weather, which exacerbated her condition. Her piano playing, an enjoyment in which she excelled, suffered as her rheumatism progressively worsened; however, this did not diminish her willingness to cater to her mother's needs.

The The Times newspaper, shortly before Beatrice's marriage, published a sentence that, while seemingly complimentary, contained an implicit criticism of the Queen's control over her daughter: "The devotion of your Royal Highness to our beloved Sovereign has won our warmest admiration and our deepest gratitude. May those blessings which it has hitherto been your constant aim to confer on others now be returned in full measure to yourself." This veiled statement suggested a public awareness of the sacrifices Beatrice made due to the Queen's possessiveness.

A significant controversy arose from the inheritance of haemophilia, which she carried from her mother, Queen Victoria. This condition tragically affected her sons Leopold and Maurice, the latter dying from wounds in World War I, and was passed on to her daughter Victoria Eugenie, who then transmitted it to the Spanish royal family. Alfonso XIII of Spain, her son-in-law, openly blamed Beatrice for introducing haemophilia into the Spanish royal house, leading to severe strain and bitterness in his relationship with Ena. This highlights the profound personal and dynastic consequences of the genetic condition within her lineage.

8.1. Titles and Styles

• 14 April 1857 - 23 July 1885: Her Royal Highness The Princess Beatrice
• 23 July 1885 - 14 July 1917: Her Royal Highness The Princess Beatrice, Princess Henry of Battenberg
• 17 July 1917 - 26 October 1944: Her Royal Highness The Princess Beatrice

8.2. Honours

;British honours

• 1 January 1878: Order of the Crown of India
• 8 January 1919: Dame Grand Cross of the British Empire
• 12 June 1926: Dame Grand Cross of St John
• 11 May 1937: Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order
• Royal Order of Victoria and Albert
• Royal Red Cross

;Foreign honours

• Russian Empire: Grand Cross of St. Catherine
• Kingdom of Portugal: 11 September 1875: Dame of the Order of Queen Saint Isabel
• Grand Duchy of Hesse: 25 April 1885: Dame of the Golden Lion
• Spain: 27 May 1889: Dame of the Order of Queen Maria Luisa

8.3. Arms

In 1858, Princess Beatrice and her three younger sisters were granted the right to use the royal arms, which included an inescutcheon featuring the shield of Saxony. Their arms were further distinguished by a label of three points argent. Specifically, on Beatrice's arms, the outer points bore roses gules, while the center point featured a heart gules. However, in 1917, the inescutcheon was removed by a royal warrant issued by George V, reflecting the broader shift away from German ties during World War I.