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| A portrait of Victoria Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven, by Philip de Laszlo, before 1937. |
It was Easter Sunday, April 5, 1863, when Princess Alice, the second daughter and third child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, gave birth to her eldest child in the presence of her mother in Windsor Castle. The baby's father was Prince Louis of Hesse and by Rhine, who, in 1877, became Grand Duke of the German grand duchy.
She was barely 15 years old when her mother succumbed to diphtheria and she was thrust upon the role of taking care of her younger siblings, which included the future Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna, Princess Henry of Prussia, Grand Duke Ernest Louis, and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia.
Despite her father's remonstrations, she married her first cousin once removed, Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was a member of the morganatic branch of the House of Hesse and was serving the British Royal Navy as an officer. The marriage took place in Darmstadt on April 30, 1884.
Prince and Princess Louis resided primarily in the United Kingdom, as well as in other parts of Europe where her husband was posted. Liberal-minded and straightforward, but practical and bright, Princess Victoria was a highly regarded by her family and relatives.
During World War I, she and her husband dropped their German titles and adopted the British-sounding surname of Mountbatten. While she was given the option to retain her title as princess, she opted instead to take her husband’s title, who was created Marquess of Milford of Milford Haven by King George V. Tragedy struck the princess when her two sisters, Elizabeth and Alexandra, were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
Later, Princess Victoria raised a young Prince Philip of Greece after his parents separated and her daughter and Philip's mother, Princess Alice, suffered from nervous breakdown.
She died on September 24, 1950, in her Kensington Palace apartment, surrounded by her family.
The Marchioness of Milford Haven was described as a strong-willed but humorous lady. According to her son, Lord Mountbatten: "My mother was very quick on the uptake, very talkative, very aggressive and argumentative. With her marvellous brain she sharpened people's wits."
Meanwhile, her granddaughter, Patricia, later 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma, called her grandmother a "formidable, but never intimidating... a supremelyhonest woman, full of common-sense and modesty."
"I liked my grandmother very much and she was always helpful,” Prince Philip remembers. “She was very good with children ... she took the practical approach to them. She treated them in the right way—the right combination of the rational and the emotional."
Victoria’s epitaph, which were lifted from her letters and conversations with her son, reflects her lifetime of candour: "What will live in history is the good work done by the individual & that has nothing to do with rank or title ... I never thought I would be known only as your mother. You're so well known now and no one knows about me, and I don't want them to."
- Recollections: The Memoirs of Victoria Marchioness of Milford Haven (2020), annotated and expanded by Arturo E. Beeche and Illana D. Miller.
- The Grand Ducal House of Hesse (2020) by Arturo E. Beeche and Illana D. Miller
- Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918 (2013) by Christina Croft
- The Mountbattens : the illustrious family who, through birth and marriage, from Queen Victoria and the last of the Tsars to Queen Elizabeth II, enriched Europe's royal houses (1981) by Richard Alexander Hough
- From Battenberg to Mountbatten (1968) by E.G. Cookridge
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