Royal sisters: the tragic lives of Queen Victoria's granddaughters

Summary

History Extra Podcast Summary

Episode: Royal Sisters: The Tragic Lives of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters
Release Date: May 27, 2025
Host: Ellen Evans
Guest: Frances Welch, Author of The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse
Production: Jack Bateman

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Introduction

In this poignant episode of the History Extra Podcast, host Ellen Evans delves into the lives of Queen Victoria's granddaughters, the four Hesse sisters: Victoria, Ella, Irene, and Alex. Joined by historian Frances Welch, the conversation explores the intersection of royal privilege, personal tragedy, and the seismic geopolitical shifts of early 20th-century Europe.

Background of the Hesse Sisters

Frances Welch opens by painting a vivid picture of the Hesse household, governed tightly by Queen Victoria after the tragic death of Princess Alice, the sisters' mother, in 1878 (03:07). The sisters—Victoria, Ella, Irene, and Alex—were orphaned at a young age, leading Queen Victoria to meticulously oversee their upbringing and matrimonial alliances.

Upbringing and Queen Victoria’s Influence

Welch elaborates on the strict and privileged environment the sisters were raised in, highlighting Queen Victoria's paternalistic control over their lives. "Patterns for dresses were even sent to her," Frances notes (03:33), emphasizing the extent of Victoria's involvement. The nanny, Ms. Orchie, and governess, Miss Jackson, played significant roles, instilling a blend of English sensibilities in the Hesse sisters despite their German roots.

Marriages and Geopolitical Implications

The episode meticulously details each sister's matrimonial journey, revealing how their marriages were not merely personal unions but strategic alliances with profound political ramifications:

• Victoria married Prince Louis Battenberg, a naval officer, and settled in England.

• Ella defied Queen Victoria's preferences by marrying Grand Duke Serge of Russia, ultimately anchoring her life in Russia's tumultuous political landscape.

• Irene married Prince Henry, the brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II, aligning herself with German royalty.

• Alex took the bold step of marrying the Tsarevich Nicholas, future Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, a union that would seal her fate alongside the Russian imperial family.

Frances Welch remarks, "They all disobeyed her in a way," underscoring the sisters' defiance of Queen Victoria's marriage arrangements (10:34).

Tragedies: Hemophilia and Assassinations

A recurring theme in the sisters' lives was hemophilia, a genetic disorder that plagued the Hesse family. Welch explains, “Leopold was a hemophiliac and died young… Heinrich died shortly before Alexis was born” (18:35). This hereditary disease not only brought personal sorrow but also influenced political events, as seen in Alex’s desperate reliance on the mystic Rasputin to heal her hemophiliac son.

The assassination of Grand Duke Serge, Ella's husband, in 1905 marked another dark chapter. Frances vividly describes the tragedy: "His heart was found on a rooftop and he was just spread everywhere" (21:05). This event plunged Ella into profound grief and shaped her subsequent decisions, including her eventual turn to monastic life.

The Russian Revolution and the Fall of the Romanovs

As revolutionary fervor surged in Russia, the sisters found themselves on precarious ground. Alex, burdened with the responsibilities of a Tsarina during wartime and influenced by Rasputin, became a focal point of public discontent. Frances Welch highlights Alex’s vulnerability: “She was a German woman who seemed to be in charge… and then had a sort of dissolute, filthy man of God at the court” (23:55).

The culmination of these tensions led to the tragic execution of the entire Romanov family, including Alex, by revolutionaries in 1918. Frances details the swift and brutal nature of their deaths, noting, “They each had their victim… the Tsarina and the Tsar were killed immediately” (27:56).

Ella’s Path to Sanctity and Martyrdom

Post-Serge’s assassination, Ella sought solace in faith, becoming a nun and founding her own order. Her unwavering faith led her to align with the Bolsheviks initially, but ultimately, she faced the same fate as her sister Alex. Frances narrates Ella's final moments with heartbreak and grace: “They sang hymns until dawn the following day” (30:00), portraying her as a figure of spiritual strength even in death.

Legacy and Modern Connections

The episode concludes by connecting the Hesse sisters' legacy to contemporary royalty. Victoria and Irene, the surviving sisters, grappled with their own challenges amidst the post-war political climate. Frances Welch draws parallels between the Hesse lineage and modern figures like Prince Philip, emphasizing the lasting impact of their tumultuous lives.

Welch reflects, “It's a reminder that there were sisters, there were women at the heart of this, perhaps trying on roller skates or trying to live their own lives with their own children” (35:55), humanizing these historical figures beyond their royal titles.

Conclusion

Frances Welch leaves listeners with a thought-provoking image of Victoria's spirited youth, underscoring the human aspect of these grand historical narratives. “All of these figures on this world stage… trying to live their own lives with their own children” (35:55) serves as a poignant reminder of the personal struggles behind public tragedies.

Notable Quotes

• Frances Welch (03:07): “These sisters led lives that were both immensely privileged, but also touched by intense tragedy.”
• Frances Welch (10:34): “They all disobeyed [Queen Victoria] in a way.”
• Frances Welch (27:56): “They each had their victim… the Tsarina and the Tsar were killed immediately.”
• Frances Welch (35:55): “It's a reminder that there were sisters, there were women at the heart of this, perhaps trying on roller skates or trying to live their own lives with their own children.”

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This episode was produced by Jack Bateman.

Transcript

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[Ellen Evans]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Alex of Hess has gone down in history as the doomed wife of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, a woman who placed too much trust in a mystic called Rasputin as political tumult brewed in the country and was then murdered in a basement by revolutionaries in 1918 along with her husband and children. But how did Alix, a favored granddaughter of Queen Victoria, come to be in Russia at all? Well, to understand her life, we can turn to the story of the four Hesse sisters, Victoria, Ella, Irene and Alex. Frances Welch joined us on the podcast recently to share more about these four royal women's lives and marriages and what they can reveal about the Maelstrom of early 20th century Europe. Frances was speaking to Ellen Evans.

[Frances Welch]

So I hoped we could start by acknowledging that these sisters led lives that were both immensely privileged, but also touched by intense tragedy. They were caught up in a story of huge importance and geopolitical in the late 19th and early 20th century. So I hoped you could start this episode for us by situating us in this royal story with a figure that hopefully a lot of listeners would be familiar with. Queen Victoria. So if we start with her, where are these princesses?

In that story, Queen Victoria was the four girls, Grandmama Grosse, Mama, as they called her. And she became incredibly important to them because their mother, Princess Alice, died when she was 35 of diphtheria, leaving the girls orphaned, at which point the Queen decided to take over their lives, completely dictating what they read, what they wore, sort of how they spent their money. I mean, patterns for dresses were even sent to her. And as the girls grew older, Queen Victoria then felt, well, I do need to get them married.

So that's an idea of how Queen Victoria is setting up the lives of this cohort and arranging their marriages. I wonder if we can take a step back quickly. Queen Victoria. We've got Princess Alice, who's her second daughter, is that correct?

Yes.

So she has these girls. So we've got Victoria, who was born at Windsor, the eldest sister. Then she's followed by Ella and Irene, who are born in Germany.

Yes.

And then there's a brother, and then.

There'S the brother, Ernie. And Victoria was very cross. Cause he had more bells tolled for him when he was born, obviously. Cause he was a boy. And then there was Fritty, another son, who died very young and I think had hemophilia. So there was Ernie, Frittie and then Alex. So there was quite a gap between the eldest three and Alex, and then finally May, who died of diphtheria very young at the same time as their mother, Alice.

So we have Victoria, Ella, Irene and Alex. Can you give us a sense of their upbringing? What did their lives look like in this situation? Scene of immense privilege.

Well, I think they would say that the Hesse court was actually quite small in comparison with the Prussian court at Berlin. So in a sense it was seen as not quite so grand as some of the other courts in Europe. But, well, they were Expected to behave themselves, not lose their ribbons, for instance, their hair ribbons, which Victoria, the eldest one, who's a bit of a tomboy, was always losing her ribbons and leading sort of fights on ruined castles. Victoria was kind of the real boss and probably the cleverest of the four. Ella, meanwhile, was the virtuous one who persuaded the children to sort of play fairies and things, you know, more girlish pursuits, known as sort of Aunt Fuss. She was quite bossy. And Irene, meanwhile, was sort of agreeable, I think. But they were raised in a sort of ladylike way, I suppose. They had Ms. Orchie, who was their nanny, who looked after them. She was the one who put quinine on their tongues if they told lies. Then they had a Miss Jackson, a governess, who Queen Victoria took against thought. She was crabbed tempered. So there was this English influence, Ms. Jackson and Orchie and Alice herself, who was English. So the girls to some extent considered themselves English, and they tried to do that for the rest of their lives, particularly when three of them found themselves at war with Germany. They preferred to think of themselves as English because of Queen Victoria.

I want to bring in at this point their close relationship with Queen Victoria, the Grandmama Queen, as you mentioned. How does she go about matching these four sisters? And what is the importance for her of making these good matches in European high society?

Well, very important. Queen Victoria stepped in and said, I do not want them to marry. But the problem in Germany, in Hesse, where the girls grew up, was that one of the Hesse princesses had already married Alexander ii, who was the father of six Romanov grand dukes. So six young boys who came to visit Hesse the whole time with their mother. And Queen Victoria was always paranoid about these young boys who were endlessly appearing. I mean, I suppose she felt it was a matter of life or death. I mean, she felt that if they married Russians, they were dead women walking, which in a sense they were. At the Royal Archive, there are a lot of letters written by the girls to their grandmama. This is before and after the death of their mother, but a lot written before. And they were very fond of her. I mean, in some ways it's hard to know whether they were fond or whether they were respectful and told, she is the person, this is the powerful woman in your life and you need to sort of praise her and thank her, you know, almost like a sort of deity, in fact. But there were things like when Balmoral, the little girls, they gathered stones and Queen Victoria put the stones into sort of necklaces for them and sent them. And so there was gushing letters coming back to England from Germany the whole time. And they're all now in the royal archive and in some ways they're not terribly interesting, but of course they're sad because, well, they're gushing letters from these little girls. Then when their mother dies, I think probably every single one of them says, you've been a second mother. But going back to the marriages, the Queen thought they should marry minor German aristocrats. She felt they were a sort of safe bet. There was a Friedrich of Baden who she'd lined up for Ella, but Ella said she thought that Friedrich of Baden was too good for her. Queen Victoria had a problem with Russians. She had the Crimea. So shortly before the princesses were born, they'd had the Battle of the Crimea where the British had been fighting the Russians. She didn't like the Tsar Alexander, who took the throne after Alexander II was assassinated. Alexander III took the throne and he was a huge man who apparently went through doors without opening them. That's what's said about him. And sort of bent forks in knots at table and he played the tuba. Anyway, she thought he was a bit coarse. I think she didn't take to him at all. Gradually, the young Romanov grand dukes became attached, and so that was. But there were still two left and one of them was Grand Duke Serge and he was son of Alexander ii, brother of Alexander iii, the big one that walked through doors. So that was Serge, and he was one of the grand dukes who would come visiting with his mother, who had been a princess of Hesse. So Serge turned up in Hesse, timed his visit very well because, to put it in modern terms, he chatted up Ella when she just got back from a trip to Venice and all the girls had found Darmstadt, where they grew up a little bit gray after Venice. And here was this glamorous grand duke who was teaching himself Italian. To read Dante in the original, seemed like a very serious minded, fastidious, good looking man, but who took a great pride in his appearance. And Ella fell for him. Queen Victoria then battled to prevent her marrying Sergeant, but she failed. She persuaded Ella to break off the engagement, but then Serge reappeared at Hess and persuaded her.

So we've got Queen Victoria taking an immense amount of interest in the matches that these granddaughters are making. Can you give us a sense you've mentioned a couple, but just the matches they make?

Well, they all disobeyed her in a way. They all went against her wishes. Victoria fell in love with Prince Louis Battenberg, who then became Mountbatten, and there was nothing wrong with him except that Queen Victoria hadn't put him on her list of people that she wanted them to marry. And also some of her relations thought that he wasn't quite grand enough or wealthy enough, so there was some opposition there. Then there was Ella and Serge, then Irene, who married the brother of the Kaiser, Prince Henry, who was the son of Vicki, Queen Victoria's eldest daughter. And although they were first cousins, Queen Victoria should have been pleased with the match, but she thought that the Prussian boys, particularly Willi Kaiser Wilhelm, were sort of arrogant and unpleasant and rude to their mother. They were kind of Anglophobe and slightly took it out on their mother, these two boisterous brothers. So she was still reeling, I think, from the marriages of the older three sisters. I think it's rather important that Ella is obviously a sort of dominant figure. An elder sister is always a dominant figure. And she nearly persuaded Iren to marry a grand Duke and join her in Russia. There was a grand Duke called Mishmish who was cropping up, and Queen Victoria was terribly worried about Mishmish cropping up in the letters, as he did. Luckily, he was dispatched. But then Alex is invited out and she went out to stay, age 17, in St Petersburg for six weeks, and I think that probably determined her future. She and Nikki, the Tsarevich, fell for each other and from then on the die was cast. Queen Victoria believed that Alex, being the youngest daughter, would not marry the Tsarevich, as he was then Nicholas, who became Tsar because she refused to convert to Russian Orthodoxy. And so the Queen thought, well, this is all right, this isn't going to happen. And then all of a sudden, the young Tsarevich proposed in Coburg, actually in Germany, to Alex, and she accepted. She had been persuaded that it was all right to convert. In fact, it was her moral duty to convert to Russian Orthodoxy.

So there are a lot of names flying around there. So I'll just summarize very quickly for listeners who aren't as familiar with some of the figures of the. We've got Victoria, who marries a naval officer, Louis of Battenberg, and she settles in England. We have Ella, who matches with the Grand Duke Serge in Russia and ends up in Russia. She then convinces her younger sister Alix to marry the Tsarevich, the future Nicholas ii, and also ends up in Russia. And we have Aren separately, who ends up in Germany married to Prince Henry, who is the brother of future Kaiser.

Exactly.

So we have two sisters who end up in Russia, one who is in Germany and one who settles in England. So I'm sure listeners will gather that this puts them in various points in a very important geopolitical situation in the early 20th century.

Yes. Finding themselves on opposite sides with their closeness. I mean, they wrote all the time to each other. They decorated their sort of envelopes beautifully, which I felt showed a sort of love and respect in a way for each other to go to the trouble. I can't tell you how ornate those envelopes were. Really lovely. And you'd have thought, well, the closeness will tide them over. And there was a period when at first in their marriages they were all doing rather well, but it all went wrong very quickly. You know, Alex had three daughters and then when the son came, he was hemophiliac. Ella didn't have children and we don't know why. So the Russian marriages started fracturing, but Queen Victoria never saw the terrible consequences because she died in 1901.

So we've got lots of key events to pick up on there, but we can stay on the Queen's death at this stage because this is clearly a very significant relationship in these sisters lives. Grandmama Queen has overseen a lot of their marriages. She's obviously been hugely invested in their happiness and their futures. As you mentioned, she dies in 1901. What does that mean for the sisters at the turn of the century?

Well, I think it was a massive blow. Alex and Ella didn't travel to England to see her buried. Victoria arrived just too late after the Queen had died. But the Kaiser had managed to get there, slightly to everyone's annoyance. He was an unpopular figure with them all. But as they did keep saying, she was a second mother to us and they had lost her. And I think Ella was very grateful when she became Russian Orthodox that Queen Victoria supported her in that and Queen Victoria supported them in their decisions. Even though they were defying her. She would always come round and then slightly be supportive.

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[Frances Welch]

Really wanted to ask about Ella and Alex's differing approaches to their roles in Russia. They approach it very differently, I think it's fair to say, and obviously very different personalities. Can you take us into Ella's role and then what it means for Alex's role when she steps into this role of Czarina?

Yes, the idea of Ella being the elder sister, I think is something. And how she hadn't quite thought what it would be like to have her sisters seven years younger, who she'd been bossing around throughout their childhood, suddenly as the tsarina of all the Russias. And when Victoria, the eldest sister, saw the coronation, she thought that they'd change. She thought the tsarina, Alex, had become a rather big figure and Ella suddenly looked rather small. Ella was someone who's very socially adept and that was kind of important. I mean, when she first writes from Russia, she says, oh, I've organized a little dance in a sort of almost in a cave near their dacha. But this soon progressed. She became very socially adept, whereas Alex unfortunately was very self conscious. She was very awkward and the Russian aristocracy didn't really take to her. They were all a bit wild and they didn't want someone coming in saying that they couldn't get divorced, they couldn't misbehave. And Alex was a sort of puritan and the Russians didn't like that.

I think an issue we should pick up on now is this issue of haemophilia, which is a family problem within the Hess family, becomes more apparent as the sisters have children. Can you talk a little bit about this disease and how it affected the family?

Haemophilia is a disease where the blood doesn't clot. And so you basically bleed to death or you get terrible bruising, hematomas, you know, where it's just more internal bleeding can go on and on. The women in the family, I suppose, were carriers, and Alice, their mother, was a carrier because Fritty, their little brother, had hemophilia and he fell from a window and bled to death. That was something that hung over them. There was also Leopold, Victoria's son. Leopold was a hemophiliac and died young. And I think Queen Victoria was aware of it, but they tried to keep it quiet. Everybody tried to keep it quiet. And Irene had two sons with himophilia, Valdemar and Heinrich. Heinrich who died. There were so many sort of terrible tragedies, really. Heinrich died quite shortly before Alexis, Alex's son, was born. So Heinrich died due to. And then months later, Alexis was born. And days after his birth, it was apparent that he had hemophilia. And that was a terrible blow. And Alex had already gone a little bit spiritual, if that's the word, because of giving birth to four daughters and no son. So she was going a bit mad that she found pregnancies terribly difficult. So Alex was already sort of praying, I think, for a son. She went on a pilgrimage, in fact, in 1904. And then she had her son, but he was ill and the hemophilia meant that she was driven towards Rasputin in the end, because it seemed like Rasputin could cure her son, he could stem the flow of blood. There was a terrible incident in Spala in Poland, where they were at a hunting lodge and Alexis fell over in a boat. Then he seemed to get better. Then he went on carriage ride with Alex, but the jolting of the carriage ride set off some other problem and he very nearly died. That was sort of catastrophic thing, but solved, Alex always thought, by two telegrams from Rasputin. I think they said, the little one will get better. Don't let the doctors bother him too much. And immediately Alexis started getting better, inexplicably.

So we've got haemophilia. And obviously it leads to a number of tragic incidents that mar all of the sisters lives. Another tragedy is the assassination of Grand Duke Serge, Ella's husband. Can you talk us through that incident and the impact on Ella's life?

He became Governor of Moscow, Serge, he was unpopular because he was very, very strict, harsh, and he was expected to be murdered. They felt he was on an assassin's list. People were always saying to Ella, don't travel with Serge, because he's a marked.

Man because of growing revolutionary sentiment.

Yes, growing revolutionary sentiment and being very, very unpopular. And then in 1905, in fact, Serge and Ella just had lunch in the Kremlin. He left in a carriage and she then heard a terrible explosion and she suspected Serge had been killed. And she was right. Anyway, she went out and cleared up. Terrible. I mean, everything. His heart was found on a rooftop and he was just spread everywhere. And one of the bizarre things was that she said, we must clear this up, because Serge hates messages. And then when she came back to her house, her stepdaughter said, well, she just had blood everywhere. And she was very, very shocked. It was an awful, awful thing. Victoria, when she heard the older sister, who always thought of herself as looking after her younger sisters, immediately came out to Moscow to help Ella. Irene also, characteristically, was fretting from the sidelines, saying, do look after Ella. Tell her she must come to stay with me. A change will do her good. Alex, meanwhile, was still breastfeeding Alexis, the baby, and couldn't come. But in a way, Ella and Alex, it was already going a bit wrong because Ella had objected to another mystic who was at the Russian court, who preceded Rasputin.

You've mentioned how the sisters support each other. They write to each other constantly and they are always traveling, often across Europe to support one another. So again, we've got part of the family in England, part of the family in Russia and part of the family in Germany. How do these movements become affected as tensions are gathering between Russia and Germany and Germany and Britain?

Yes, as the revolutionary ferment, I mean, which starts really from 1905, got worse. Ella told her sisters not to come and visit her because it was dangerous and it would worry her. And she was very worried. I think she was more worried than Alex, who was, I think, so preoccupied and so domestic that I think she sort of put it out of her head. She was very into the church and very into her children and rather sort of sealed off, I think. And they'd moved themselves to The Alexander Palace, 15 miles from St Petersburg, where they were additionally sealed off.

Well, let's move on to this period of revolution, then, and what it means for Alex and her family. Obviously, there is a huge amount of tumult in Russia, to put it mildly. Can we say what this means for the Tsarina and ultimately their fate?

Yes, the upheavals got worse and worse, as the Russians did badly in the First World War. People were starving, there were uprisings in England. They kept on thinking, well, this it's not as bad as people make out. One of the disasters, or it's seen as a disaster, was the Tsar deciding to go to the front, to the battlefront in the First World War, leaving Alex effectively in charge. I'm not sure how much she was in charge, but she was seen to be in charge and she was seen as German. And whatever she did, she couldn't sort of shake off that German brand. But when it was seen that Alex, she said, I'm wearing trousers unseen. You know, she having been rather diffident as a younger woman, she was now right there, I'm wearing trousers unseen and I'm in charge. And she was telling Nikki to be firmer with everybody. And he would say, yes, but I need not bellow. I mean, anyway, so there was all that with notes between them. But meanwhile, it was perceived that she was in charge of Russia alongside Rasputin. So it's bad enough having a German woman who seemed to be in charge, but then to have a sort of dissolute, filthy, so called man of God at the court. The sisters were all opposed to Rasputin, by the way, before I started my research, I didn't realize Irene, she calls him a horrid man in her letters to Victoria. Victoria also disliked him. And Alex was furious with Ella. Shortly before Rasputin was murdered, Ella visited Alex and said, look, you must get rid of Rasputin. He's damaging your name, bringing disgrace on us. And she then said Alex drove her away like a dog. And that was the last time they saw each other, which is tragedy for two sisters alone in Russia.

Alex's reliance on Rasputin obviously has key ramifications for the perception of her by revolutionaries. So what happens next to Alex and her children? Can you take us through this? And the sisters reactions to it as well.

What happened was that the Tsar abdicated. There were more uprisings in St Petersburg. The Tsar abdicated and then went back to the Alexander Palace. And Alex was thrilled to have her husband back. They were, you know, very, very close. And so the family was now all together, even in these terrible circumstances. And so the Provisional Government was then in charge from February before the second Bolshevik Revolution. But then they were. The whole family were told to go to Siberia, to Tobolsk, in August. I think at one point after the Revolution, there seemed to be an idea that they could come to England. And, you know, there are various accounts of the Tsar talking about clothes that he would need in England and the Tsari talking about the Isle of Wight, which is where Victoria was by that time. But they didn't move quick enough. And George V, the English king, withdrew his offer. He had offered them an exile, but he withdrew it, which is a very controversial thing. People still talk about it all the time.

The Romanov family are murdered. Can you take us into that aspect of the story?

Right up until the end? And, in fact, it's quite important because they have all been sanctified. That's one of their sort of legacies, is they've all been made saints. Did they know that they were going to be killed? And it seems likely that they didn't. They were transferred from Tobolsk, where they might have been a bit safer. There's less revolutionary sentiment in Tobolsk, transferred to Katerinburg. And they were then told to get ready to move for their own safety. They were then told to go down to the basement and a photograph was going to be taken of them.

And to be clear, they. This is the whole Russian imperial family and her husband.

Four retainers. Yeah, yeah. And then the gunmen came in and they had each been given someone to shoot. It was quite a sort of simple thing. They each had their victim, but they were quite drunk and they weren't so really obeying instructions. And the only people they wanted to kill were the Tsarina and the Tsar. Nobody really wanted to kill the children. And in a sense, they suffered more because the whole thing took about 20 minutes. But I think the Tsarina and the Tsar were killed immediately.

So Alex has gone from a beloved grandchild of Queen Victoria to marrying into the Russian imperial family, to becoming a tsarina who is unpopular with the people, to being murdered in a basement. That's a thoroughly tragic story. And Ella is also caught up in this tumult. Can we turn to another sister in the story? What happens to Ella?

Yes, well, Ella, after the assassination of Serge, she said, well, I want to be worthy of a husband like Serge now he's dead. But she decided to become a nun and found her own order and her own convent. I mean, an amazing thing to do. And when the revolutionary movement started up, she thought she could sort of weather the storm in Moscow. I mean, she even sort of slightly fraternized with the Bolsheviks at the beginning, saying, we might be heading in the same direction on a different path. Anyway, she thought she could weather it through. But eventually they said, you, Sister Alex is in Siberia. Would you like to join her? And I think she said, at that point, whatever is God's will, I will do. And she and another of her nuns went to Siberia. At one point, Ella and Alex were imprisoned, quite close together, but they didn't know they were quite so close. In Katerinbergund, Ella sent some eggs and coffee to Alex, which should have been a sort of conciliatory gesture because they had had this incredible fallout about Rasputin. But I'm not sure whether Alex responded. I think she told one of her daughters to respond. Maria sent a letter saying, thank you. And Ella was then taken with the nun who'd accompanied her from Moscow and several Romanov princes and a grand duke to an old schoolhouse in Alopayevsk. A day after Alex had died, they were taken to an old mine shaft. And apparently they realized they were going to be thrown down the mine and started singing hymns. But a lot of rumors and stories about Ella because everybody loves the idea that she is a sort of a nun and a saint and everything, but apparently they sang hymns as they went to the mineshaft. Anyway, they were then thrown down, and then a couple of grenades were thrown after them. But there is a story that Ella sang hymns. They sang hymns until dawn the following day. But it seems unlikely when Victoria heard. Victoria, the older sister who'd been told by Queen Victoria, look, you know, when your mother's died, you are in charge. You're the older sister. She was obviously absolutely heartbroken by both deaths, but she thought Ella's belief, her strong faith, would have made her death less hard. But of course, she didn't know the details. I mean, she did eventually, and Ella's death was a lot harder because Alex was shot straight away before she could think.

So both of the sisters who married Russian husbands, Ella and Alex, have had this trajectory of tragedy. Where does that leave Victoria and Irene?

Well, they're on sort of opposite sides. You know, Irene was still. I mean, she wasn't particularly sort of patriotic as a German, but unfortunately, Henry, her husband, was. So he was in a rage against the English through the sort of twenties, which didn't help. And both their husbands actually died during the 1920s, but they weren't. I don't feel they were really reconciled. After the First World War had ended, Victoria met Ernie, but didn't meet Iran. Eventually, they did get together, but perhaps it was Henry being too jingoistic, Henry being Irene's husband.

So if I can begin to sort of assess these lives again as a whole. So We've had these four sisters who have married across Europe during the late 19th century. They've married German princes, naval officers for Britain, Russian imperial family, taking in very important events in the early 20th century. Can you give us a sense of them as a cohort as a whole, as four sisters, and the importance of their lives, marriages and alliances during this period?

Yes. Well, I suppose the most important thing was them going to Russia, or rather Ella going to Russia. So first the Romanov grand dukes visiting Hesse, you know, so that over the years, Ella would get to know Serge as she did, and then her sort of enticing Alex out. And the fact is that if the Tsar had married somebody different and he hadn't had a hemophiliac son and they hadn't had Rasputin, I mean, quite often Alex is blamed for the revolution, and so that would mean that she was blamed for the whole Communist era afterwards, which is quite a thing to accuse her of, actually, and that's quite a big consequence. But as against that, the legacy is that she's now regarded as a saint and as is Ella. And I visited Irens a couple of years ago and a Russian citizen had actually picked up some earth which he said was holy because it had been trodden on by the Tsarina and by Ella. So she has several legacies.

A lot of compelling what ifs there.

[Capella University Advertiser]

Yes.

[Frances Welch]

And if we can perhaps begin to finish Victoria's legacy, particularly as well with the current royal family, I think that's just an interesting line to pick out with who might be familiar with today's British royals.

Yes, she's the mother of Dickie Mountbatten. He's actually quite a controversial figure. He was revered in his lifetime. But her daughter Alice was very influenced by Ella, who she saw opening her convent in Moscow all those years before. And Alice became a nun and she is seen as the rather eccentric mother of Prince Philip. So, in a sense, Victoria was rather stealing a march by the end on Irene, because suddenly her grandson was the Queen's consort. So she was suddenly at the center of history in a way that Irene was rather forgotten in Germany and still struggling with people forgetting to call her Princess Heinrich, as she wanted to be called.

We've got a sense from you, then of the lives of these four sisters fitting into history, from Queen Victoria all the way through to the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinbur. So they're clearly very significant lives individually and as four sisters. I wonder if I can leave listeners with just an image that I was left with from your book, and that is of Victoria, the eldest sister, who always had a bit of a derring do attitude and was very sort of active, trying roller skates. What can you tell us about this image.

There's a diary, a sort of piece of writing, which was never in a book or anything, but it's in an archive at Southampton University. And she mentions that she takes up roller skating, but gave it up quite quickly because it wasn't working anyway. She was always up for anything, but then she was the one who was perhaps leading a sort of less hazardous life than her sisters.

Yes, I think a reminder that all of these figures on this world stage, you think of these big geopolitical events and these, you know, sweeping revolutions, and it's a reminder that there were sisters, there were women at the heart of this, perhaps trying on roller skates or trying to live their own lives with their own children.

Yes, yes, that's true. Their countries being opposed in war. But it did create problems, actually, because after the First World War, you only had Victoria and Iran surviving. But the fact that they'd been at war was a factor, actually, and did present problems for the two surviving sisters, which I think they couldn't have anticipated, as they were all so close before.

[Ellen Evans]

That was the author, Frances Welch. Her book, the Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse, is published by Hachette in the uk. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.