The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter by Matthew Dennison

From the Publisher

An engrossing biography of Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter that focuses on her relationship with her willful mother---a powerful and insightful look into two women of signi'cant importance and in'uence in world history.

Beatrice was the last child born to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Her father died when she was four and Victoria came to depend on her youngest daughter absolutely, and also demanded from her complete submission. Victoria was not above laying it down regally even with her own children. Beatrice succumbed to her mother’s obsessive love, so that by the time she was in her late teens she was her constant companion and running her mother’s of'ce, which meant that when Victoria died her daughter became literary executor, a role she conducted with Teutonic thoroughness. And although Victoria tried to prevent Beatrice even so much as thinking of love, her guard slipped when Beatrice met Prince Henry of Battenberg. Sadly, Beatrice inherited from her mother the hemophilia gene, which she passed on to two of her four sons and which her daughter Victoria Eugenia, in marrying Alfonso XIII of Spain, in turn passed on to the Spanish royal family. This new examination will restore her to her proper prominence---as Queen Victoria’s second consort.

Publishers Weekly

After the death of her beloved Prince Albert, Queen Victoria, an only child with a pathological fear of being alone, turned her ninth child, Beatrice, into her permanent companion, infantilizing her and robbing her of any chance of a normal life. The consequences for Beatrice were difficult: as Dennison shows, over the years the spunky young Beatrice turned docile and acquiescent. Some of her siblings resented her proximity to the seat of power. Victoria even determined never to let her companion marry, a vow she abandoned only when Beatrice, at age 27, fell in love with the German Prince Henry of Battenberg, who agreed to abandon his home and career and move in with his wife and mother-in-law. He died 10 years later, in the Ashanti War in Sierra Leone, where he had traveled with British forces in an effort to exert some personal independence. Beatrice mourned, then resumed her duties as her mother's companion. Dennison, a British journalist, does a fine job of laying out facts, but he doesn't spare readers his opinion. Though he's not impressed with Victoria's parenting skills and lack of consideration for Beatrice's emotional well-being, his compassion for his subjects is obvious. That, as much as his detailed portraits, will keep readers engaged. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Feb.)

Elizabeth Mellett <P>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. - School Library Journal

Journalist Dennison has written an entertaining biography of Queen Victoria's youngest child, a Royal known, if at all, for a life devoted to her widowed mother. Beatrice was four when her father, Prince Albert, died and her mother plunged into lifelong mourning. Called Baby for most of her childhood, Beatrice was brought up to believe that she must always stay with Victoria, who displayed considerable selfishness by ensuring that her daughter had no close friends. Marriage, the queen determined, was completely out of the question. After all, as she wrote to her eldest (married) daughter, "Youngest daughters have a duty to widowed mothers." And to another correspondent the queen wrote, "I'll take care that She never marries." When Beatrice, at the advanced age of 27, falls in love with Prince Henry of Battenberg, readers will eagerly turn the pages to see what happens. This well-written biography of an often overlooked Victorian princess offers a fascinating look at a way of life nearly impossible to imagine. Strongly recommended for public libraries where biographies, history, and royalty are popular. (Illustrations not seen.)

Kirkus Reviews

Dull account of the dull life of Beatrice, the final child of Queen Victoria and her beloved Albert. In his book-length debut, British journalist Dennison strives mightily to find some glitter, maybe even some smut, on this ordinary rock in the English royal garden, whom Victoria designated almost from infancy to be her devoted confidante. About all he can discover is that Beatrice (1857-1944), apparently an attractive and bright child, played well the role that history and heredity gave her. The author early and often festoons his skimpy narrative tree with strings of cliches: Golden days are threatened by clouds of sorrow; a stout heart serves her well; a silk dress shimmers; shadows of the past haunt everyone. The queen comes off as profoundly insecure and grasping, Beatrice as doting and largely devoid of personality. Tutored and educated at home, the princess enjoyed writing and eventually published several books, including a couple of translations from German texts. Victoria, who steered some interested men away from Beatrice, eventually allowed her to marry-but only if she would continue to serve as Royal Lapdog. Prince Henry of Battenberg, nicknamed Liko, agreed to those terms, then became so bored that he spent months alone on his yacht before heading off on a military adventure in Africa, where he contracted an illness that cost him his life. Once the queen died, Beatrice's stock fell, and she lived many of her final 40 years in an apartment in Kensington Palace where she expurgated Victoria's journals, then burned the originals, an egregious act that Dennison finds ways to defend. The author's first clause-"It should not have happened"-refers to Beatrice's unexpected birth; thewords also apply to this soporific biography.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0312376987
  
• ISBN-13: 9780312376987
• Format: Hardcover, 320pp
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Pub. Date: February 2008
• Sales Rank: 92,079

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents