Queen Victoria enjoys luncheon with her daughter Princess Beatrice, her husband Prince Henry of Battenberg and their children. Behind them were The Queen's Indian attendants. Taken at Windsor, 1895. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Princess Beatrice was Queen Victoria's lifelong companion and had remained by her mother's side until the latter died in 1901. The Queen wanted to keep her youngest daughter and child all to herself, but when Beatrice met Prince Henry in Darmstadt on the wedding of her niece Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine and Prince Louis of Battenberg, Henry's brother, she was smitten by the dashing but penniless prince.
They got secretly engaged in Darmstadt and when Beatrice expressed to Queen Victoria her desire to marry Henry, all she received was deafening silence. The Queen only relented when her eldest child, the Empress Frederick, and the Prince of Wales intervened. She finally consented to the marriage on the condition that Henry and Beatrice would settle in England and live with her in the same house.
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