Over her father's disapproval, she married his morganatic first cousin Prince Louis of Battenberg, an officer in the British Royal Navy.

Victoria lived most of her married life in various parts of Europe at her husband's naval posts and visiting her many royal relations.

After World War II, her daughter Louise became queen consort of Sweden and her son Louis was appointed the last viceroy of India.

She was the maternal grandmother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, consort of Queen Elizabeth II; and paternal great-grandmother of King Charles III.

[3] During the Prussian invasion of Hesse in June 1866, Victoria and Elisabeth were sent to Britain to live with their grandmother until hostilities were ended by the absorption of Hesse-Kassel and parts of Hesse-Darmstadt into Prussia.

For days, Victoria's mother nursed the sick, but she was unable to save her youngest daughter, Marie, who died in mid-November.

Just as the rest of the family seemed to have recovered, Princess Alice fell ill. She died on 14 December, the anniversary of the death of her father, Prince Albert.

Her father did not approve of the match; in his view Prince Louis—his own first cousin—had little money and would deprive him of his daughter's company, as the couple would naturally live abroad in Britain.

[14] Over the next sixteen years, Victoria and her husband had four children: They lived in a succession of houses at Chichester, Sussex, Walton-on-Thames, and Schloss Heiligenberg, Jugenheim.

[7] In 1887, she contracted typhoid but, after being nursed through her illness by her husband, was sufficiently recovered by June to attend Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee celebrations in London.

[19] In leather-bound volumes she kept meticulous records of books she had read, which reveal a wide range of interests, including socialist philosophy.

During the war, Victoria's two sisters, Alix and Elisabeth, were murdered in the Russian revolution, and her brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, was deposed.

[32] Upon her widowhood, Victoria moved into a grace-and-favour residence at Kensington Palace and, in the words of her biographer, "became a central matriarchal figure in the lives of Europe's surviving royalty".

[34] In the following decade Victoria was largely responsible for her grandson Prince Philip's education and upbringing during his parents' separation and his mother's institutionalisation.

Cecilie's youngest child, Johanna, who was not on the plane, was adopted by her uncle Prince Louis of Hesse and by Rhine, whose wedding the crash victims were en route to, but the little girl only survived her parents and older brothers by eighteen months, dying in 1939 of meningitis.

[37] In World War II Victoria was bombed out of Kensington Palace, and spent some time at Windsor Castle with King George VI.

Her surviving son (Louis) and her two grandsons (David Mountbatten and Prince Philip) served in the Royal Navy, while her German relations fought with the opposing forces.

She spent most of her time reading and worrying about her children; her daughter, Alice, remained in occupied Greece and was unable to communicate with her mother for four years at the height of the war.

[7] With the help of her lady-in-waiting, Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, Victoria wrote a memoir, held in the Mountbatten archive at the University of Southampton, which remains an interesting source for royal historians.

[46] Victoria wrote her own typically forthright epitaph at the end of her life in letters to and conversation with her son: "What will live in history is the good work done by the individual & that has nothing to do with rank or title ...