|
Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, later Victoria Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven (Victoria Alberta Elisabeth Mathilde Marie; 5 April 1863 – 24 September 1950) was the eldest daughter of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (1837–1892), and his first wife Princess Alice of the United Kingdom (1843–1878), daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Her mother died while her brother and sisters were still young, which placed her in an early position of responsibility over her siblings. She married her father's first cousin, Prince Louis of Battenberg, an officer in the United Kingdom's Royal Navy, in a love match and lived most of her married life in various parts of Europe at her husband's naval posts and visiting her many royal relations. She was perceived by her family as liberal in outlook, straightforward, practical and bright. During World War I, she and her husband abandoned their German titles and adopted the British-sounding surname of Mountbatten, which was simply a translation into English of the German "Battenberg". Two of her sisters – Elizabeth and Alix, who had married into the Russian imperial family – were murdered by communist revolutionaries. She was the maternal grandmother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the consort of Queen Elizabeth II. ==Early life== Victoria was born on Easter Sunday at Windsor Castle in the presence of her maternal grandmother, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. She was christened in the Lutheran faith in the arms of the Queen on 27 April. Her early life was spent at Bessungen, a suburb of Darmstadt, Germany, until the family moved to the New Palace at Darmstadt when she was three years old. There, she shared a room with her younger sister, Elizabeth, until adulthood. She was privately educated to a high standard and was, throughout her life, an avid reader.〔Hough, p. 30〕 During the Prussian invasion of Hesse in June 1866, Victoria and Elizabeth were sent to England to live with their grandmother until hostilities were ended by the absorption of Hesse-Kassel and parts of Hesse-Darmstadt into Prussia.〔Hough, p. 29〕 During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, military hospitals were set up in the palace grounds at Darmstadt, and she helped in the soup kitchens with her mother. She remembered the intense cold of the winter, and being burned on the arm by hot soup.〔Hough, p. 34〕 In 1872, Victoria's eighteen-month-old brother, Frederick, was diagnosed with haemophilia. The diagnosis came as a shock to the royal families of Europe; it had been twenty years since Queen Victoria had given birth to her haemophiliac son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, and it was the first indication that the bleeding disorder in the royal family was hereditary.〔Hough, p. 36〕 The following year, Frederick fell from a window onto stone steps and died. It was the first of many tragedies to beset the Hesse family. In early November 1878, Victoria contracted diphtheria. Elizabeth was swiftly moved out of their room and was the only member of the family to escape the disease. For days, Victoria's mother, Princess Alice, nursed the sick, but she was unable to save her youngest daughter, Victoria's sister Marie, who died in mid-November. Just as the rest of the family seemed to have recovered, Princess Alice fell ill. She died on 14 December, the anniversary of the death of her father, Prince Albert.〔Hough, pp. 46–48〕 As the eldest child, Victoria partly assumed the role of mother to the younger children and of companion to her father. She later wrote, "My mother's death was an irreparable loss ... My childhood ended with her death, for I became the eldest and most responsible."〔Hough, p. 50〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|