Little People (Good and Bad)

Abstract

This ‘dismal’ performance was intended to give the public a chance to celebrate the marriage of Queen Victoria’s eldest child, the Princess Royal, to Prince Frederick William of Prussia. The couple had become engaged at Balmoral in September 1855, when the Princess Royal was only fourteen. The heir presumptive to the throne of Frederick the Great – known in the Royal family as ‘Fritz’ – was twenty-four. The wedding took place nearly two-and-half years later, on 25 January 1858, after the bride had attained the marriageable age of seventeen. In accordance with the Queen’s wishes the ceremony was held in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, where she and Prince Albert had married nearly eighteen years earlier. On ‘the 2nd most eventful day’ in her life, Victoria felt ‘almost as if it were I that was being married over again, only much more nervous’. She trembled so violently that her face appears blurred in a daguerreotype taken with her husband and daughter. The newlyweds enjoyed a brief honeymoon at Windsor Castle before leaving for Prussia.KeywordsRoyal FamilyNational AnthemTheatrical JournalExcellent TasteTheatrical StarThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.