Increasingly isolated after the weddings of her younger daughters, she died of breast cancer in August 1901, less than 7 months after the death of her mother, Queen Victoria, in January 1901.

The revolution that broke out in Berlin in 1848 further strengthened the links between the two royal couples by requiring the heir presumptive to the Prussian throne to find shelter for three months in the British court.

The meeting was therefore a success, and years later Prince Frederick recalled the positive impression that Victoria made on him during this visit, with her mixture of innocence, intellectual curiosity and simplicity.

In a letter to her uncle King Leopold I of Belgium the British sovereign conveyed the desire that the meeting between her daughter and the Prussian prince would lead to a closer relationship between the two young people.

King Frederick William IV, who had allowed his nephew to marry a British princess, even had to keep his approval a secret because his own wife showed strong Anglophobia.

[23] In the German Confederation the reactions to the announcement of the engagement were mixed: several members of the Hohenzollern family and conservatives opposed it and liberal circles welcomed the proposed union with the British crown.

[24] The Prince Consort, who was part of the Vormärz, had long supported the ‘Coburg plan’, i.e. the idea that a liberal Prussia could serve as an example for other German states and would be able to achieve the Unification of Germany.

[25][26] Eager to make his daughter the instrument of the liberalisation of Germany, Prince Albert took advantage of the two years of Victoria and Frederick's engagement to give the Princess Royal the most comprehensive training possible.

However, the Prince Consort overestimated the ability of the liberal reform movement in Germany at a time when only a small middle class and some intellectual circles shared his views on the German Confederation.

In a letter to the Baron von Stockmar, Prince Albert commented on the situation: To me it is obvious that a certain person is opposed to the financial independence of the princess ... [She] not only has not received a pfennig from Prussia, which is already calamitous, but has also had to use her dowry, which it should not be necessary.

The trip that the couple made to the Mediterranean in October 1862 aboard Queen Victoria's yacht served as a pretext for conservatives to accuse Frederick of abandoning his father in a time of great political tension.

In conservative circles, which demanded exemplary punishment, few joined the voices of Prince Charles, the king's younger brother, and General Edwin von Manteuffel, who believed that Frederick should be tried in a court-martial.

The Times noted: "It is hard to imagine a more challenging role than the crown prince and his wife, who are without a counsellor, between a coward monarch, an impetuous cabinet and an indignant population.

[72] With the final victory over Denmark and the Treaty of Vienna (signed on 30 October 1864), it was decided that the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Saxe-Lauenburg would be administered by a joint Prussian-Austrian government.

[73] Considering the mobilisation illegal, Prussia proclaimed the dissolution of the German Confederation and invaded Saxony, Hanover and Hesse-Kassel, effectively starting the Austro-Prussian War.

In Hamburg, she had built a military hospital, running it regardless of costs, in addition to visiting the war-wounded soldiers in Wiesbaden, Biberach, Bingen, Bingerbrück, Rüdesheim and Mainz.

[89] Eager to understand the principles of socialism, she read the work of Karl Marx and encouraged her husband to frequent the salon of Countess Marie von Schleinitz, a place known for being a meeting point of Bismarck's opponents.

In a letter to her mother, Victoria harshly criticised the essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (Judaism in Music) by Richard Wagner, whom she considered ridiculous and unfair.

[93] In yet another letter, she wrote that she had become ashamed of her adopted country as Stoecker and Treitschke "behave so hatefully towards people of a different faith and another race who have become an integral part (and by no means the worst) of our nation!".

[94] In both the Kronprinzenpalais and Neues Palais in Potsdam, the crown princely couple received many commoners, including some Jewish personalities, which inevitably led to the disapproval of the emperor and the court.

[100][101] In addition, William also underwent electroshock sessions in an attempt to revive the nerves passing through the left arm to the neck and also to prevent his head tilting to one side.

"[104]Sigmund Freud speculated that Victoria, being unable to accept the illness of her child, distanced herself from her first-born, which made a great impact on the behaviour of the future William II.

However, Victoria's influence on her offspring had an important limitation: like all the Hohenzollerns, her sons received a military training from a very young age, and she feared that such education would undermine their values.

Today, several historians (like John C. G. Röhl, Martin Warren and David Hunt) defend the thesis that Charlotte suffered from porphyria as did her maternal ancestor King George III.

The same historians believe that the headaches and skin rashes that Victoria treated with doses of morphine were also a consequence of porphyria, albeit in a weaker form than that suffered by Charlotte.

Bismarck feared that marriage between a German princess and an enemy of Tsar Alexander III of Russia would represent a blow to the League of the Three Emperors, the Austro-German-Russian alliance.

[122] Victoria supported her husband in his decision, which caused a serious argument with her son William, who shortly before had arrived in Italy and accused his mother of being happy with Frederick's disease.

Having inherited several million marks after the death of the wealthy Maria de Brignole-Sale, Duchess of Galliera, the empress dowager was able to finance the construction and expansion of her residence.

Contrary to the desires of the emperor, who preferred that she leave Germany permanently, Empress Frederick formed her own court and maintained close relations with liberal circles.

[137]Empress Frederick devoted part of her final years to painting and to visiting the artists' colony of Kronberg, where she regularly met with the painter Norbert Schrödl.