From her pictures, Vicky looks lovely, perhaps a little short and plump, but with beautiful eyes, always elegant and, unlike many of her peers, she smiles in most of her portraits. It is nothing more than astounding that she managed to grow into such a forward-thinking woman. Both Victoria and Albert, he especially, were prudish to the extreme, determined that their children would not be spoiled, insisting, for instance, that their diet consist of a large quantity of boiled mutton. The rules in the nursery were severe; Vicky’s wet nurse had to stand while feeding her!

Queen Victoria did nothing for her daughter’s self-confidence. When Fritz asked for Vicky’s hand in marriage, Victoria told him they were concerned Vicky might not have been pretty enough for him. In later years, Vicky wrote in letters to her mother that she was the ugly one, and constantly sought her mother’s illusive approval. Personally, I think she was the prettier of a rather sad-looking bunch.

Whereas Victoria was difficult to please, Vicky could do no wrong by her father. In Vicky, Albert saw the child of his dreams, where Bertie failed so miserably. Vicky was intelligent and absorbed all the knowledge offered to her. When first married, she and Fritz began the day reading together, then took lessons in everything from chemistry to German medieval history. Vicky also composed uncountable essays on topics suggested by her father.

Vicky was very satisfied in her husband. Fritz was tall, blond, handsome, and, most importantly, kind and smart. Throughout his life, he suffered from periods of depression, but considering what fate threw his way, it’s not difficult to sympathize. Fritz spoke of Vicky as the guardian angel of his existence and as perfection itself as a woman.

Vicky and Fritz had a strong marriage and, unlike the majority of royal unions during their time, they shared a bedroom. Fritz was popular with his soldiers and a success at social events. At a wedding when a clumsy partner had torn the lace trim on the bride’s train, Fritz produced a small pair of scissors and cut off the ruined piece. When the bride extended her hand to receive it, Fritz held the small token to his heart before pocketing it, scoring gasps of approval from the other guests.

Becoming a mother was a turning point for Vicky. She loved children and was a devoted parent. It was the one domain in which she dared ignore some of her mother’s advice. Both she and her sister, Alice, breast-fed some of their children. In her disgust, Queen Victoria compared them to cows. When Vicky suffered a tragic blow with the loss of one of her children, Victoria didn’t understand her daughter’s deep and lasting grief. She told Vicky not to tempt providence, since losing a husband would be far worse.

Fitting into life in the Prussian court proved difficult. Whereas Albert and Victoria had adored each other, and did their best to offer a family life to their children, Fritz’s parents could barely stand the sight of each other. With the fighting, jealousy, and pettiness, Vicky found around every corner someone waiting to stab her in the back. Most of the court was uninterested in Vicky’s intellectual activities and viewed her reluctance to entertain as an insult. Instead, fancy dinners and hours at the theatre filled Vicky’s evenings.

The Prussian court was even narrower than the English court—Vicky was once reprimanded for sneezing while standing behind the King’s chair. She felt kindly toward the wife of her cousin by marriage, but was perplexed as to why the woman was so afraid of her husband. A few months earlier, when the eighteen-year-old had delivered a third daughter to her husband, he had severely boxed her ears, damaging her hearing for life. When Fritz and Vicky visited England, the first time in three years, Fritz’s father wrote to Queen Victoria complaining about the length of the visit and, amongst other things, that Vicky went out in a carriage which was led with less than four horses. Throughout An Uncommon Woman, we are taken on a roller coaster ride through nineteenth-century German politics, the rise and fall of Bismarck—a man determined to bring down Fritz and Vicky and their liberal opinions—and the unification of Germany.

One comes to admire Vicky—though certainly she was flawed and made mistakes. The biggest tragedy is her relationship with her eldest son, Wilhelm. During a difficult birth, Wilhelm was born slightly deformed and with a damaged arm. In a country which viewed military honour above all else, it was imperative the heir to the throne be able to lead an army into war. By the age of ten, Wilhelm was given a commission in the Prussian army. Vicky and Fritz, however, made the same mistake with Wilhelm as Victoria and Albert made with their eldest son. Faced with a child of average intelligence and aptitude for study, they engaged a tutor who favoured a harsh system of education. Wilhelm was subjected to twelve hours of schoolwork a day. With his deformity, riding was one of the harder facets to conquer, but his tutor kept putting the eight-year-old Wilhelm back on the horse until he gained his balance. It took days of falling to the ground, of begging and crying for it to stop, before Wilhelm managed to master it.

Wilhelm grew up to detest his parent’s liberal views and his English blood. He was, therefore, clay in Bismarck’s hands, and because fate dealt Fritz a cruel blow, there was nothing Vicky could do. After Wilhelm published his memoirs in the early 1900s, Winston Churchill is said to have made scathing remarks, commenting on how shocking it was to contemplate that a person such as Wilhelm held in the palm of his hand, with his control over the German army, the fate of the world.

There is no happy ending for Vicky. Still, one has to consider her childhood, her love for her father, husband, and children to see that she did have some happiness in her life, and to appreciate what kind of woman she was—brave, intelligent, loving.