Princess Alice of Battenberg was born on 25 February 1885 as the daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and By Rhine. Her great-grandmother Queen Victoria was present when she was born. She was diagnosed with congenital deafness and she learned to lip-read and speak in both English and German. She met Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark at the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902. They fell in love and married in a civil ceremony on 6 October 1903 and they went on to have five children together – including Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. Alice worked for the Red Cross, where she helped organise soup kitchens and even flew to Sweden for medical supplies under the pretext of visiting her sister Louise. During this time Alice hid a Jewish widow named Rachel Cohen and two of her five children. In 1993, she was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations and her son Prince Philip said,
“I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special. She was a person with a deep religious faith, and she would have considered it to be a perfectly natural human reaction to fellow beings in distress.”
The Brave Princess and Me by Kathy Kacer is a children’s book based on Alice’s story. It is written from the point of view of-of one of Rachel’s children and is wonderfully illustrated. In addition to the original story, it also includes information on the real-life Alice, making it an excellent introduction to the untold lives of royal women.
The Brave Princess and Me by Kathy Kacer is to be released on 10 September 2019 in the UK and the US.
What amazing information. I was today’s years old before I knew this. Thank you.