In 1863, Princess Alexandra of Denmark married Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the heir to the British throne. The British public adored her, drawn to her warmth, beauty, and style. But behind the glittering facade of royal life lay decades of personal hardship, illness, and loss that few outside the palace walls ever fully understood. Alexandra was born on December 1, 1844, in Copenhagen, in a large former burgher’s house at the Yellow Palace.
Her full name was Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia, though her family simply called her Alix. Her father, Prince Christian of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, belonged to one of Denmark’s most senior aristocratic lines. Her mother, Princess Louise of Hesse-Kassel, was a prominent Danish noble. The family was cash poor, relying entirely on her father’s army salary, but the children—Alexandra, her three brothers, and two sisters—lived a happy life.
Everything changed in 1848, when King Christian VIII died. His childless son, Frederick, became king, and with no realistic hope of an heir, plans had to be made for the future succession. In 1852, Alexandra’s father was suddenly placed next in line to the throne. The family moved into Bernstorff Palace in Copenhagen, but their life remained modest.
Alexandra shared an attic bedroom with her sister, made her own clothes, and eventually began working. The family’s financial troubles did not prevent her from receiving a good education, including instruction in several European languages, and she was raised as a devout Christian. All that remained was to see which arranged marriage awaited her. By 1860, Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert, were considering a bride for their eldest son, Albert Edward, the heir to the British throne and empire.
Alexandra soon caught their attention. A meeting was engineered at a high-society gathering in the German city of Speyer in September 1861. The courtship was complicated by Edward’s ongoing affair with an actress named Nelly Clifton, but after Victoria pressed her son on the importance of securing the succession, he proposed in the autumn of 1862. Alexandra, just shy of her eighteenth birthday, accepted.
The marriage took place on March 10, 1863, at Windsor Castle rather than in London. Within a year, Alexandra’s family rose dramatically across Europe: her brother George became King of Greece, her sister Dagmar became Crown Princess of Russia, and her father ascended as King of Denmark. It was also during this period that her lifelong hatred of Germany and the Prussian royal house took root, as her homeland came under invasion in the Prussian-Danish War of the mid-1860s. The early years of her marriage were devoted to raising a family.
Between 1864 and 1871, Alexandra gave birth to six children, all of them premature. Albert Victor arrived in early 1864, George in the summer of 1865, followed by three daughters—Louise, Victoria, and Maud—in 1867, 1868, and 1869. Her final child, John, died just hours after his birth in 1871. Alexandra was a devoted mother who loved spending time with her children and enjoyed riding, hunting, dancing, and ice skating, pastimes of which Queen Victoria loudly disapproved.
Yet the Queen never managed to change her ways. Those who knew the Princess of Wales described her as warm, affectionate, and friendly, and the British public idolized her. Behind the scenes, hardship accumulated. In 1867, Alexandra contracted rheumatic fever, leaving her with a permanent limp.
She also began to lose her hearing due to an inherited disorder, otosclerosis, which gradually curtailed the social life she so enjoyed. Her husband never reformed. Edward kept numerous mistresses over the years, and while Alexandra was aware of his infidelities, she largely tried to ignore them. At times the strain caused friction, but there were also long stretches of harmony in their lengthy union.
For a working royal in the late nineteenth century, life centered on official ceremonies and patronage of charitable causes. Much of this focused on hospitals and poor houses in the era before the National Health Service and the modern welfare state. With the British Empire at its height, the royals were also expected to tour their far-flung territories. Alexandra traveled much of the world during her long decades as Princess of Wales, though sometimes her husband chose to travel alone, displaying their marital difficulties in public.
In the late 1870s, while her two eldest sons were away on a lengthy Royal Navy voyage lasting several years, Alexandra toured Europe independently, visiting the siblings who had married into the continent’s royal houses. In January 1892, tragedy struck again when her eldest son, Albert Victor, died at Sandringham House at the age of twenty-eight. His death, from a virulent form of influenza during a major pandemic that had swept Europe since 1889, devastated Alexandra. She later said she had buried her angel and with him her happiness.
By the dawn of the twentieth century, the question was simply when Queen Victoria would die and open the way for the long-serving Prince and Princess of Wales to take the throne. The Queen died on January 22, 1901, at the age of eighty-one. Albert Edward became King Edward VII, and Alexandra finally succeeded from Princess of Wales to Queen consort of Britain. The monarchs also held the titles of Emperor and Empress of India.
Their coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on August 9, 1902, delayed considerably by the late Queen’s death and the need to prepare the first coronation in over sixty years, as well as by Edward’s illness from an abdominal abscess. The ceremony was an extraordinary display of British military, imperial, and diplomatic power, with contingants from across the empire, though Edward’s health prevented it from being even grander. The aging Archbishop of Canterbury, Frederick Temple, refused to delegate his duties despite his infirmity and had to be physically supported throughout the service. Alexandra’s role as Queen was peculiar.
After so many years of waiting, her husband had succeeded to the throne only as he approached his sixtieth birthday. It was clear his reign would be much shorter than his mother’s, and that their eldest son would soon inherit. Consequently, the new Prince of Wales and his wife, Mary of Teck, were highly prominent throughout the 1900s, touring the British Empire extensively. During these long absences, Alexandra’s interest lay primarily with her grandchildren, and she became a beloved grandmother just as she had been a beloved Queen consort.
In many ways, the years after 1901 continued what had already been true for decades. Since Queen Victoria had been so reclusive, Alexandra and Edward had long performed the public face of the monarchy. Their accession simply formalized an arrangement already long in place. The first months of 1910 were the most turbulent of Alexandra’s long life.
While historians have often focused on the hemophilia carried through Queen Victoria’s descendants, a graver problem for her direct British line was congenital bronchial disease, worsened by heavy smoking. Edward VII was the first victim. By early 1910, he was suffering chronic lung problems. His final illness unfolded amid a major constitutional crisis, after the House of Lords exceeded its traditional remit and blocked a budget put forward by the Liberal government.
The administration collapsed, a general election was called, and the political deadlock remained. With her husband incapacitated and events at a stalemate, Alexandra took an unprecedented step. She became the first queen consort in history to visit the House of Commons to watch the debate on the constitutional crisis. The message was clear: the monarchy was watching, and the crisis had to be resolved regardless of whether Edward lay dying.
He died from his lung condition and other associated ailments on May 6, 1910. He was immediately succeeded by Edward and Alexandra’s eldest surviving son, George, who took the regnal name George V. The constitutional crisis dragged on until 1911 to resolve, but Alexandra’s intervention at its height in the spring of 1910 was notable. With the death of her husband and the accession of her son, Alexandra became Queen Mother, the honorific title given in Britain to the widow of a deceased king.
She declined to attend the coronation of her son and daughter-in-law in the summer of 1911, as was customary, in order to avoid distracting from the new king and queen with the presence of the old regime. Her duties became lighter, though she continued a role in public life. During the First World War, when the German heritage of the royal family came under sustained scrutiny, Alexandra was unequivocal in her criticism of Germany. She had never forgiven Prussia for annexing large parts of Denmark in the war of the mid-1860s, and she tried to steer her son toward an anti-German line throughout the conflict.
By the time the war ended, Alexandra’s health was deteriorating. She had suffered from hearing difficulties since her thirties. In 1920, a blood vessel in one eye burst, partially blinding her, and her memory and speech became increasingly impaired during the early 1920s. She died on November 20, 1925, at Sandringham, at the age of eighty, from a heart attack.
Eight days later, after a state funeral, she was interred next to Edward at Windsor Castle.