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

by Matthew Dennison

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312376987
• ISBN13: 9780312376987
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 1.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A Wonderful Book

One of the two solo biographies of Princess Beatrice and the only one recently written, The Last Princess is a wonderfully researched, excellently written book that provides an interesting look at a forgotten Princess, the child of Queen Victoria who spent the most time by her side, but is glossed over in biographies about her mother. The reader gets a picture of the bright child slowly submerged in her mother's grief until the woman emerges as a shadow of her former self. She was separated from most of her family and grew up in a silent and lonely schoolroom and nursery. It is heartbreaking to read how Beatrice watched life pass her by as her siblings, nieces and nephews were married and living independently while she was stuck tending to her mother's every need. Yet when she found love, she clung to it with a tenacity that one would think would have been destroyed during her long servitude to the Queen. Though the book is well-written, it focuses almost exclusively on the relationship between Beatrice and Queen Victoria, to the extent that the reader is left wondering how most of the people in her family dealt with Beatrice. Her relationship with her children is glossed over, as is those with her siblings, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. It is stated that Beatrice saw all of the relatives who came to visit Queen Victoria, and that she cared deeply for them, but very little more. And there is little on how she managed to raise four children after the death of her husband and then her mother, the two people who were her mainstays. In fact, the last 43 years of Beatrice's life are covered in only 50 pages, and a good deal of that is devoted to the marriage of her daughter Ena to Alfonso XIII of Spain. While Beatrice the child and young adult is well-chronicled, Beatrice the independent middle-aged woman is left to the imagination. Additionally, Dennison has the annoying habit of describing pictures and photographs without their inclusion in the pictures section of the book. Hence the 4/5 star rating.

Very Deep

Thank you, needed something to read on the trip to New York, this book recalled many old stories I'd heard as a child, loved it, will recommend to others. I travel a great deal, a week out of every month and so read, make notes and work on these trips. Its always nice to glance through a work and find something worth stopping to finish, very good, well worth the read and money. I shall look for more works by this author.

Was Anyone Ever this Selfless?

Princess Beatrice gave up her private life, her health and most of her happiness in order to be the secretary, confidante and companion of her widowed mother. Starting with the death of her father, Prince Albert, when she was only four years old, her life was a constant reminder of funereal gloom. As her older sisters married and moved away, Princess Beatrice became the Queen's slave in most matters public and private. Such was the Queen's paranoia that her youngest daughter might grow up and want a life of her own, she forbade all talk of marriage in front of the Princess, and punished the girl by not speaking to her for eight months when she dared to fall in love and announced her wish to wed. The marriage was only allowed to go forward, and the Princess forgiven, when the couple agreed to live with the Queen for their married life, with very limited travel (their honeymoon lasted only five days, and the Queen visited for two of them). I don't think I'd realized just how selfish Queen Victoria was until I read this meticulously researched volume. Princess Beatrice was a far more forgiving and patient woman than I could have ever been, and I veer between being in awe of her, and pitying her. Matthew Dennison's writing style takes a while to get used to - sometimes he moves back and forth in eras and you have to go back in order to determine just what time frame he's referring to. The text is at times dangerously close to "scholarly" and for this alone I give the book four stars instead of five. I do recommend it, however, for the insights it gives into this complex, frustrating relationship.

LAST PRINCESS

beatrice was last child of queen victoria and prince albert.after her father death,beatrice became a emotional phsycial slave to a self center and demanding mother .she was not allow to from freidship with people her age or talk of marriage .beatrice did finally find love with prince henry but had to fight her mother who did not talk to her for 6 month to married the man she love.lucky prince henry could put up with his demanding mother-in-law.they share happy marriage for 10 years and 4 childern until his death.beatrice return to being her mother secretary/companion until queen death.even after that she was in charge of her mother papers until her own death.

A Dutiful Daughter

Princess Beatrice was the youngest and least well known of the nine children of Queen Victoria. Born just four years before the death of her father Prince Albert, she did not experience the full rigour of an upbringing and education under her father's control, the only one of the family to escape what seems to modern eyes less raising a child than overwhelming it. Beatrice also seems to have avoided her parents' well known tendency to over criticize and over correct their other children. But Beatrice, as the youngest child, was the one chosen by her incredibly self-centered mother to be an eternal comfort and assistant after Albert's death and the marriage of her siblings. Forced into the role of secretary/confidante (and at times psychologist) to her mother when barely out of her teens, Beatrice developed a personality which was quiet, patient, and undemanding throughout the years during which her peers were getting married and raising families. She seems to have rebelled against her mother only once, when she fell in love with and insisted on marrying Prince Henry of Battenberg, who fortunately was also patient enough to agree to be part of Queen Victoria's household rather than establishing his own independent life. Prince Henry died after a decade of marriage, and Beatrice continued to be Victoria's secretary/companion until the Queen died in 1901. Even then Beatrice was not free from her mother, because she had been given the task of editing/censoring the Queen's journals, a task which took her many years and probably resulted in the loss of much valuable material about Victoria's true thoughts and activities, since Beatrice loyally destroyed the originals after making her copies. This nice, self-effacing lady would not have merited a biography had she not been born royal, but its good to have this one because it sheds light on a life which was lived in the shadow of a more forceful personality. Matthew Dennison writes well, if somewhat archaically (I do not recall running across the word "munificent" even once in a modern book, let alone twice!) There are many photos and reproductions of portraits that I had never seen before, and there are some good descriptions of Beatrice's four children: three sons who were to be even more obscure than their mother (one was a hemophiliac, a tragic reminder of the curse genetics placed on Victoria's descendants) and a daughter who became Queen of Spain (and the mother of two hemophiliac sons.) The Last Princess will make an excellent addition to any collection of royal biographies.