Princess Alice of The United Kingdom - Legacy

Legacy

Alice's death had an emotional effect both in Britain and Hesse. The Times wrote: "The humblest of people felt that they had the kinship of nature with a Princess who was the model of family virtue as a daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother...Her abundant sympathies sought for objects of help in the great unknown waste of human distress". The Illustrated London News wrote that the "lesson of the late Princess's life is as noble as it is obvious. Moral worth is far more important than high position". The death was also heavily felt by the royal family, especially by Alice's brother and sister-in-law, the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Princess of Wales, upon meeting the Queen after Alice's death, exclaimed "I wish I had died instead of her". The Prince, meanwhile, wrote to the Earl of Granville that Alice "was my favourite sister. So good, so kind, so clever! We had gone through so much together..."

Queen Victoria, shocked by grief, wrote to her daughter Princess Victoria: "My precious child, who stood by me and upheld me seventeen years ago on the same day taken, and by such an awful and fearful disease...She had darling Papa's nature, and much of his self-sacrificing character and fearless and entire devotion to duty!" The animosity that Victoria had towards Alice was no longer present. Princess Victoria expressed her grief to her mother in a 39-page letter, and deeply mourned Alice, the sister to whom she was closest. However, both she and her husband were forbidden from attending the funeral by the Emperor of Germany, who was worried about their safety.

Alice's descendants went on to play significant roles in world history. Her fourth daughter, Alix, married Tsar Nicholas II of Russia; Alix passed her mother's gene for haemophilia on to her son, the crown prince Tsarevich Alexei. Alix, her husband, and her children were shot and killed by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Similarly, Alice's second daughter, Elizabeth, who married Grand Duke Sergei of Russia, was murdered in 1918. Alice's grandson, Louis Mountbatten, was the last Viceroy of India, and her great-grandson, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, married Queen Elizabeth II.

The Alice Hospital, which she founded in Darmstadt, treated the city's sick and wounded. The organisation continued to flourish long after Alice's death, and in 1953, her grandson Louis gave a lecture on the hospital. He spoke highly of Alice, for whom "the point of departure always remained a human being who was ill and needed help, and his needs in war and peace. At his side stood the person willing to give help, wishing to ameliorate his needs and for this purpose could make use of an organisation which was becoming more and more streamlined." Among Alice's other establishments were the Alice Society for Women's Training and Industry, for the purpose of educating women, and the Princess Alice Women's Guild, where nurses were trained. These organisations were especially active and important during the Austro-Prussian war, but the time Alice dedicated to them annoyed her husband, who saw them as consuming his wife's time at his expense.