Queen Victoria’s daughter takes center stage in Clare McHugh’s slice of history, A Most English Princess. Beginning with her childhood and leading us to her last days, we are given a front-row invitation to witness the life of the young Princess Royal, addressed throughout the novel simply as Vicky. As a child, confused as to why her younger brother Bertie is the heir to the British crown instead of her, her father, Prince Albert, assures her that her life will be no less filled with purpose.
Not even a teenager when she meets the Crown Prince Fritz of Prussia, they immediately forge a connection that will be solidified when he shows up a few years later when she’s 16 to ask for her hand in marriage. To Vicky and to Fritz it’s a union of love, but everyone else can only see the political implications as two great empires come together.
Young Vicky, excited for her eternal union to the man she loves, cannot foresee the future complications that becoming the Prussian Princess will throw her way, when her firm English ways start to clash with the customs of Prussia: Prussian noblewomen do not nurse their own babies, for one. The mourning period in Prussia is much shorter than that in England. The court also finds her too vocal about her opinions on Prussian politics, suspecting her of wanting to implement liberal ideas brought over from England. Vicky must learn the delicate balance between being an English Princess and the future Empress of Prussia all while trying to grow into her own shoes.
McHugh takes care to recreate the life of one of the members of the world’s most popular royal family, with accuracy and creative tact. Through her talented ability to build a story around an established real-life biography, we get to see the Princess Royal of England as she moves through the most meaningful stages of her life as a daughter, a princess, a wife, a mother, and lastly, an empress.
What McHugh also achieves, through her attentive weaving of the threads of this novel, is her portrayal of the British Royals in a more human light. Too often seen as celebrities, as untouchable and unreachable figures, whose lives must be so different from ours, we see Princess Vicky always refer to her parents in the narrative as Mama and Papa. She’s open about her intimate life with her husband Fritz and we even see her fight for the opportunity to nurse and nurture her own children, Prussian customs be damned. This becomes most poignant when she’s asked to attend an event hosted in Paris by Napoleon III and Eugénie falling on the same night as the first anniversary of the death of her fourth child Siggy. Against everyone’s wishes, the Princess rebels and returns home, where she finds the peace and solitude she needs to mourn her lost child.
A Most English Princess is as educational as it is engaging and intriguing, as it traverses page after page demonstrating the unfolding events of the Austro-Prussian and the Franco-Prussian wars, but it is also a heartfelt account of a girl turned woman turned empress, who felt the weight and responsibility of her title pressing on her to leave her two homes, culturally different as they were, a better place for her children and for future generations to follow.