What do you get when you cross a newly widowed and deeply mourning Queen Victoria with what should be the incredibly joyous occasion of Princess Alice’s wedding to a man that, by all accounts, she really liked?

Well,  if you’re Alice, you get the short end of the stick, especially by royal standards. You get a wedding described by your own mother as “more of a funeral,” a wedding so entrenched in grief that the Queen was shrouded by a human wall of her sons and the bride was forced to change into black mourning clothing following the ceremony.

This was a wedding so overwhelmingly sorrowful for a family missing it’s patriarch that it was held in a modest sized dining room in her family’s summer home on the Isle of Wight with the intention of  avoiding a large guest list. So somber was the occasion that one of the bride’s brothers openly wept throughout the ceremony – and they weren’t tears of happiness.

A little background, to put things into perspective. Princess Alice Maud Mary was born on April 25th, 1843, the second daughter and third child of Queen Victoria and her beloved Prince Albert. A sensitive and compassionate child, she reveled in comforting those who were suffering both physically and emotionally, including her mother after the death of her grandmother. As she approached her late teen years, the task for finding her a suitable match fell upon her oldest sister, the newly wed German empress, Victoria, Princess Royal. Or, as I like to call her, Vicky II.

Vicky II had a bit of a reputation as a cut throat matchmaker (she once dismissed a possible suitor for her brother Bertie because she had a “disturbing twitch”) and was able to use her connections in the German court to find a suitable partner for her sister that would provide useful to the family and hopefully also result in love and happiness for Alice.

Her first choice, the Dutch prince William of Orange, turned out to be a complete dud that was as uninterested in Alice as she was in him. William went on to live a life of wanton debauchery and died before reaching 40 years old, never having inherited the throne. Next, the Princess Royal selected Prince Albert of Prussia, who was also her husband’s cousin, which would have made the sisters also cousins-in-law, which by European royal standards is ridiculously common. Turned out that old Albie was a dud as well, with his own cousin basically put a kibosh on the whole thing.

Eventually, Queen Victoria’s eyes turned towards Louis and Henry, Hessian princes who, while not of a very wealthy or powerful kingdom, were still the European Protestants that the family was hopeful for. After inviting both to visit England, Alice and Louis were clearly enraptured with each other and a match was made. Their engagement became official in April of 1861, and tensions rose almost immediately. With a promised dowry that would now value almost $3.5 million USD today, it was expected that Alice would be greeted with the kind of pomp and circumstance she’d come to expect as the daughter of the most powerful monarch in the world. Instead, the Hessians refused to change their lifestyles to meet the lavish demands of the Hanovers, and the entire affair made Alice an unpopular figure in her future kingdom.

Eight months into the betrothal, Prince Albert died from typhoid fever. It was an incredible blow to the family, who had miraculously brought nine children into the world, all surviving into adulthood. He had approved of Alice’s future husband, and had even designed the Strawberry Leaf Tiara to give her as a wedding present.

The death of Albert sent Victoria into an absolute tailspin of grief from which she never fully recovered. The Queen’s mourning impacted her relationship with each of her nine children differently. Alice, not only found her bliss and excitement dimmed by the desolate mourning of her family, but also found her happiness the target of Victoria’s jealousy.

The wedding – described by Victoria as “wretched,”  marked the first major royal event since Albert’s death. A giant painting of the the royal family in happier times hung behind the altar, a glaring reminder of loss. There would be no exalted guests or lavish ball to celebrate the nuptials – it was over by mid-afternoon and Queen Victoria returned to mourning in private. Compared to the wedding of her older sister, conducted at the Chapel Royal of St. James palace and attended by hundreds, poor Alice’s wedding really did feel more like a prolonged wake.

Princess Alice, now the Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine, lived a life befallen by tragedy. Her relationship with her mother never recovered from the strain of her father’s death, and she found her kingdom at war with Prussia – the very nation her dear sister Victoria ruled with her husband. She became very interested in women’s issues and social reform, dedicating herself to nursing pursuits. She gave birth to seven children, losing her two year old son Prince Friedrich due to complications from hemophilia after he survived a fall from a window.

Diphtheria sickened five of her six remaining children in 1878, killing her four year old daughter, Marie. After comforting her ten year old son, Ernest, Alice kissed him and sealed her fate. She was struck by the highly contagious illness and died quickly, two weeks before Christmas.  Sh e was thirty-five years old,

Ernest survived and went on to become the last Grand Duke of Hesse, losing his throne during the Revolution of 1918. Two of her daughters, Elisabeth and Alix, married into the Russian royal family and were murdered by Bolsheviks the same year. Her remaining two daughters, Irene and Victoria, led long and prosperous lives. Victoria became the grandmother of Philip, the current Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

Alice’s wedding started like a funeral, and her mother’s insistence on marrying her children outside of England was, indirectly, one of the causes of the great collapses of Europe leading in World War I.  But that’s a story for another day.

Probably.