Ernest Louis (German: Ernst Ludwig Karl Albrecht Wilhelm; 25 November 1868 – 9 October 1937) was the last Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, reigning from 1892 until 1918.

Ernest Louis grew up in a loving household, with parents who demonstrated their affection for their children, which was unusual for those with their social standing.

[7][8] On 19 April 1894, at Schloss Ehrenburg, Ernest Louis married his maternal first cousin, Princess Victoria Melita of Edinburgh nicknamed "Ducky", the daughter of his mother's brother, Prince Alfred.

Victoria's cousin, Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark, remembered one stay with them as having been "the jolliest, merriest house party to which I have ever been in my life.

The volatile Victoria shouted, threw tea trays, smashed china against the wall, and tossed anything that was handy at Ernest during their arguments.

[12] Queen Victoria was saddened when she heard of the trouble in the marriage from Sir George Buchanan, her chargé d'affaires at Darmstadt, but because of their daughter, Elisabeth, she refused to consider permitting her grandchildren to divorce.

[14] The couple were divorced 21 December 1901 on grounds of "invincible mutual antipathy" by a special verdict of the Supreme Court of Hesse.

[15][16] Allegedly, she had caught her husband in bed with a male servant when, in 1897, she returned home from a visit to her sister Queen Marie of Romania.

She did not make her accusation public, but told her sister that "no boy was safe, from the stable hands to the kitchen help.

The couple had two sons: In addition to his marriage, Ernest Louis maintained a close friendship with the bisexual Karl August Lingner, the inventor of Odol, one of the first liquid mouthwashes.

Throughout his life, Ernest Louis was a patron of the arts,[25] founding the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, and was himself an author of poems, plays, essays, and piano compositions.

He received what amounted to a state funeral on 16 November 1937 and was buried next to his daughter, Elisabeth, in a new open air burial ground next to the New Mausoleum he had built in the Rosenhöhe park in Darmstadt.

His former sister-in-law, Marie of Romania, described Grand Duke Ernest in her memoirs:Ernie could be the gayest of companions, he was in fact full of almost feverish life.

Ernie, however, often helped him to overcome his inborn diffidence; the young brother-in-law, so to say, conquered Nando’s doubts with his much greater self-assurance.

Having taken it into his head one day that his white pigeons were not in keeping with the old stones of his palace, he had their feathers dyed skye blue.