Raised by her mother in a close, liberal, and anglophile environment, Viktoria fell in love with Alexander of Battenberg, the Prince of Bulgaria, but there was great opposition to the match and the couple never married.

[4] On 19 June Vicky wrote to her mother Queen Victoria: "...I wish you to know all, you are so kind, darling Mama, that you will wish to hear all about the last terrible days, I cannot describe them.

Still, the Crown Princely couple raised their children away from the Berlin court, which disliked Frederick William and Victoria and their liberal beliefs.

The couple hoped to instill these beliefs in their children through an education system similar to the one created by Vicky's father, Prince Albert.

She attended weekly dance lessons and enjoyed riding her Shetland pony, a gift from Queen Victoria.

[6] As her mother and Queen Victoria recommended Alexander as a possible match, 16-year-old Viktoria quickly caught their enthusiasm and by the time of Sandro's next visit the following spring, she had fallen in love with the attractive prince.

Her elder siblings, paternal grandparents Emperor Wilhelm I and Empress Augusta, and German chancellor Otto von Bismarck were opposed to the match.

Wrote her mother to Queen Victoria in 1889: You would indeed make me most happy and do me the greatest favour, if you could induce Moretta not to be so foolish about her food!

Her one craze is to be thinǃ She starves completely, touches no milk, no sugar, no bread, no sweets, no soup, no butter, nothing but a scrap piece of meat and apples, wh.

[citation needed] Subtly pushed out of the Berlin social sphere by Wilhelm, she lived with her mother and younger sister Margaret at Schloss Friedrichshof in Hesse.

Following the collapse of Viktoria's plans to marry Sandro, her mother (now known as "Empress Frederick") and grandmother, Queen Victoria, continued to look for possible suitors, and enlisted the help of the Duchess of Edinburgh and Princess of Leiningen.

[citation needed] Prince Carl of Sweden, Duke of Västergötland, "refused to consider marrying her"; this news worsened Viktoria's disordered eating.

Crown Prince Carlos of Portugal was proposed by Otto von Bismarck, but Viktoria refused to convert to Catholicism.

[9] As her elder sister, Charlotte, began gossiping about her love life at court, Viktoria became convinced she would never marry, and told her grandmother she was no longer interested in marriage.

[10][full citation needed] In June 1890, Viktoria, with her mother and sister Margaret, visited their cousin Marie of Nassau, the widowed Princess of Wied.

Although Viktoria said in her memoirs that she had loved Adolf at first sight, she wrote to her mother that she had only married him out of "desperation from fear at withering on the vine.

The wedding party and the couple's families attended the opera, and the next day Viktoria's mother held a banquet for the guests.

They were forced to cut this final visit short in order to return to Germany for medical care, as Viktoria had suffered an early miscarriage.

[citation needed] However, Viktoria did not love her husband, and in the later years of her marriage considered divorcing Adolf to marry one of his nephews.

Viktoria lived a quiet life in Bonn, and continued to frequently visit members of her large family.

[citation needed] During this time, Viktoria enjoyed her new public responsibilities as wife of the principality's regent, and her mental health improved.

Queen Victoria was upset when, in September 1895, Adolf requested that Viktoria end her visit to her widowed and lonely mother.

The war years threw Viktoria's life into chaos: Adolf died in July 1916, after nearly thirty years of marriage; in 1917, Viktoria's brother-in-law the King of the Hellenes, who married her sister Queen Sophia of Greece in 1890, was deposed; and in 1918, her brother Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate and the German nobles and royals legally lost their titles under the new Weimar Republic.

After the war, she met her first cousin once removed, the future King George VI of the United Kingdom, and expressed the wish that they "would all be friends again soon".

[citation needed] Infatuated with Zoubkoff, Viktoria provided the young student – 35 years her junior – with lavish gifts; he, in turn, proposed marriage.

[citation needed] Without asking permission from the former Emperor Wilhelm, Viktoria renounced her titles and married Zoubkoff first at the town hall in Bonn, then in a Greek Orthodox ceremony at which none of her family was in attendance.

[15] Before they could be divorced, or her siblings could have their marriage annulled, Viktoria came down with a fever and was taken to the Hospital of St Francis, in Bonn, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia.

Viktoria's letters to her sister Margaret are preserved in the Archive of the House of Hesse, which is kept in Fasanerie Palace in Eichenzell, Germany.