A Most English Princess: A Novel of Queen Victoria’s Daughter – by Clare McHugh – independent book review – Historical Fiction (England, Prussia, Germany)

No doubt about it, this is quite an impressive first novel! Awarded four stars on Goodreads.

In A MOST ENGLISH PRINCESS: A NOVEL OF QUEEN VICTORIA’S DAUGHTER, London-born author Clare McHugh (now living in the US) gives us a vivid, authentic, and rich portrait of one of the most fascinating (to me) royal women of the 19th century – Princess Victoria, Princess Royal (1840-1901), known as “Vicky.”

Firstborn child of Britain’s Queen Victoria (1837-1901) and her famously loved consort, Prince Albert (1819 – 1961) of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, Vicky grew up surrounded by high expectations. Unable to follow her mother on the throne because of the preference given to males, she was instead destined from birth to make a powerful and strategic marriage. Fortunately for her it also turned out to be a love match. Her husband, Crown Prince Frederick (aka “Fritz”), was the future King Frederick III of Prussia, later German Emperor.

As Prince Albert’s favorite child, Vicky and her father were extremely close. True kindred spirits. Both were intelligent, eager to learn, and well-educated. And thanks to her father’s mentoring, Vicky because much more politically astute than women at her time were thought capable of.

Vicky, in turn, idolized her father and accepted everything he believed. Albert, with German origins of his own, decided Vicky’s destiny was to take England’s model of constitutional government and bring it to Prussia, which was, at the time, still governed by an absolute monarch of the House of Hohenzollern.

This is the essence of Vicky’s story. For decades, as Empress-in-waiting in Prussia (her husband was only the heir; her father-in-law Wilhelm I was King), Vicky was a self-confident and strong vocal advocate for republican principles and individual freedoms in a country that simply wasn’t ready for them. Not surprisingly, this outspokenness (especially for a woman), lack of success, and status as an English outsider wound up limiting her influence and maintaining a permanent distance between Vicky and her adopted country.

This historical novel is full of wonderfully fleshed out characters from history, made real through a combination of rich dialog and believable speculation of what each was likely thinking. And it wound up being a page turner for me.

Besides Vicky, the two most interesting characters for me were:

• Otto von Bismarck, the bellicose but brilliant Prussian Chancellor who engineered the unification of 26 smaller German states into what we know today as Germany and who was the only contemporary whose political brilliance likely exceeded even Vicky’s.

• Wilhelm, Vicky’s physically challenged firstborn son who grows up to become obnoxious Kaiser Wilhelm II*, the German Emperor largely responsible (much later) for World War I.

I WAS bothered by what I felt was an abrupt ending to the novel after nearly 500 pages. Vicky’s story stops at the end of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). Initially, I thought perhaps the author was planning a sequel to cover the last 30 years of Vicky’s life. But then I saw, stuck at the end, a short Epilogue dated 1940, almost 40 years after Vicky’s death. Honestly I think I was just let down because I liked the historical figures Clare McHugh presented and wanted to continue with her take on the rest of Vicky’s life.

I highly recommend A MOST ENGLISH PRINCESS and I’ll keep track of any other historical fiction Clare McHugh writes.

More about the author, Clare McHugh.

* If you read this 2018 New Yorker article about Kaiser Wilhelm II, by Miranda Carter, you will no doubt see similarities between the Kaiser and another contemporary political figure who is known for insulting people while touting his own brilliance.