Princess Louise of Battenberg,
born “Louise Alexandra Marie Irene”, was the second child and daughter of
Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, the daughter of Princess Alice of the U.K. (herself a daughter of Queen Victoria), and Prince Louis of Battenberg.
Louise was born on July 13, 1889 at Heiligenberg Castle in Seeheim-Jugenheim,
located in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. Her middle names were all the first names
of a few of her close relatives: “Alexandra” was for her maternal aunt, Empress
Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, “Marie” was for her paternal aunt, Princess
Marie of Battenberg, and “Irene” was for another one of her maternal aunts,
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine. Louise had one older sister, Princess Alice of Greece and Denmark, and two younger brothers, George, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, and Louis, Earl Mountbatten of Burma.
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| Louise as an infant with her parents and older sister, Princess Alice (1889) |
Since her father was an Admiral
of the Fleet in the Royal Navy, Louise and her family were constantly moving
around to follow Prince Louis on his various escapades. Though their main
residence was in London, they also had homes in Darmstadt, Jugenheim, and Malta
(a British territory Louise’s father was often stationed in). Louise grew up in
a happy and loving family, as her parents had married for love and thus
maintained a devoted relationship to one another and their children. Louise was
particularly close with her younger brother, Louis, and even when the two
married and had lives of their own in separate countries, they continuously
wrote to each other until Louise’s death. As Louise spent most of her childhood
in England, she was able to mingle with her many British relatives residing
around London, including her royal great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, who she
would visit on the Isle of Wight with her mother. Louise also spent much of her
time with her older and only sister, Alice, as the two were both educated
together by their mother and governesses.
The first few years of the
twentieth century were quite eventful for Louise’s family. Queen Victoria died
in 1901 and Louise’s great-uncle, Edward VII, ascended to the throne. In 1903,
Alice married Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and although their marriage
would be an unhappy one, Alice would have five children with her husband,
including the current Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. In 1914, a twenty-five
year old Louise went with her mother to Russia on a visit to her maternal aunts
that lived there, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna (who her mother was
particularly close to), and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. During their visit,
both mother and daughter became wary of Alexandra’s close confidant and
advisor, Rasputin, and warned Alexandra of his dangerous influence with no
success. During their visit, World War I broke out so suddenly that Prince Louis
quickly sent a telegraph to his wife demanding that she and Louise come home
right away. On their way out of Russia, they unknowingly passed the house that
Alexandra and her family would be murdered in four years later. Louise and her
mother left Russia by boat and stayed in neutral Sweden for one night before
returning home to England. During their short stay in Sweden, they were guests
of the Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf and his wife, Princess Margaret of Connaught,
a first cousin of Louise’s mother. Unbeknownst to Louise, her host and father
of four at the time would be her husband in nine years.
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| Princess Louise during her time as a nurse in France (1915-17) |
During the start of the Great
War, Louise worked for the Soldiers and Sailors Families Association as well as
the Smokes for Soldiers and Sailors but she eventually dropped these jobs to
serve as a nurse in the Red Cross. She went to Nevers in France to provide aid at
a military hospital and later to a war hospital outside of Montepellier. Her
time in France as a nurse lasted from March of 1915 until July of 1917. The war
affected her family as a whole quite personally. Her father had to resign his
position in the Royal Navy because of strong anti-German sentiment and the
royal family, as well as Louise’s family, changed their German surname of
“Battenberg” to the Anglicized version of “Mountbatten”. They also had to give
up their German titles but Louise’s first cousin once removed, George V,
compensated her parents by naming Prince Louis the Marquis of Milford Haven. By
the end of the war, Louise’s aunts in Russia had been murdered and her maternal
uncle, Ernest Louis, lost his title of the Grand Duke of Hesse after the fall
of the German Empire in 1918. Since Louise’s family had invested most of their
wealth in Russian securities and assets, they lost a good portion of their
fortune after the Russian Revolution and had to relocate to a smaller house in
Southampton. Louise continued to work after the war’s conclusion by
volunteering at a charity that helped children who lived in the slums of
Battersea, London.
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| Princess Louise of Battenberg (Philip de László, 1907) |
By the time the war ended, Louise
was twenty-nine and still unmarried. Her brother, George, had married a Russian
countess during the war and her youngest brother, Louis, would marry in 1922 to
the daughter of a British baron. Back in 1909, Louise had received a marriage
proposal from King Manuel II of Portugal and although her great-uncle, Edward
VII, wanted her to marry the Portuguese king, she refused because she wanted to
marry for love as her parents had. The rejected Manuel II married Princess
Augusta Victoria of Hohenzollern (the granddaughter of Duchess Mathilde Ludovika in Bavaria, Countess of Trani) in 1913 instead, three years after
being deposed. Louise turned Manuel down because at the time, she was secretly
engaged to Prince Christopher of Greece, the brother-in-law of her older
sister, Princess Alice. But since both Louise and her fiancée had no money to
support their marriage or future together, they unfortunately had to break off
their engagement. Before the war broke out, Louise fell in love with a man who
her parents approved of but their romance didn’t last for long, as he was
killed in the beginning of the war. Louise did find love during her time as a
nurse in Nevers when she fell in love with a Scottish artist living in Paris
named Alexander Stuart-Hill. When the two became engaged, Louise thought that
her parents would never approve of her relationship with a lowly commoner, so
she kept her relationship with Stuart-Hill a secret. Eventually, she did reveal
her engagement to her parents and, surprisingly enough, they were understanding
and invited Stuart-Hill to their home on two occasions. However, her family did
find him to be somewhat odd looking and rather “eccentric” and “affected”.
Since the couple didn’t have enough money between the two of them to marry,
they decided to postpone the wedding until after the war. But once the war
ended in 1918, Louise’s father told her that he suspected Stuart-Hill was
homosexual, so Louise called off the engagement.
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| Princess Louise with her husband, Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden (1923) |
In 1923, Crown Prince Gustaf
Adolf of Sweden visited London and to Louise’s shock, he began courting her
after they met at a party. Gustaf Adolf had been widowed for three years after his
wife, Margaret of Connaught (Louise’s first cousin once removed), died in 1920
at the age of thirty-eight from an infection following a mastoid operation. At
the time of her death, she was eight months pregnant with her sixth child, who
did not survive. Margaret was the daughter of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught
and Strathearn, a younger son of Queen Victoria, and Princess Louise Margaret
of Prussia, herself a great-granddaughter of Frederick William III of Prussia
and his famous wife, Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The beautiful Margaret
fell head over heels for Gustaf Adolf, the son of Gustaf V of Sweden and
Princess Victoria of Baden, and the two married in 1905. They had five children
together, four sons and one daughter, including: Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten (the father of the current King of
Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf) and Princess Ingrid, the wife of King Frederick IX of
Denmark.
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| Princess Louise on her wedding day to Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden (1923) |
When she was a young woman,
Louise had vowed that she would never marry a king or a widower but she went
against her own promise when her engagement to the Crown Prince was made public
on July 1, 1923. There was some controversy over whether Louise could become
Queen since the Swedish succession law said that a Swedish prince would forfeit
his place in the succession if he, “with or without the King’s knowledge or and
consent, married a private Swedish or foreign man’s daughter.” After the
engagement was announced, the Swedish government clarified the succession law
by saying that “a private Swedish or foreign man’s daughter” meant “he who did
not belong to a sovereign family or to a family which, according to
international practice, would not be equal thereto”. On November 3, 1923, the
thirty-four year old Louise married Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, himself just
days away from his forty-first birthday, at St. James’s Palace in a ceremony
attended by the British and Swedish royal families, including George V.
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| Crown Princess Louise of Sweden (1925) |
Louise and Gustaf Adolf had a
very happy and successful marriage together and they genuinely loved each
other. Louise got along well with her husband’s family, especially her friendly
mother-in-law, Queen Victoria. But since Victoria spent most of her time in
Italy instead of Sweden, Louise had to take on the royal duties of the Queen in
her absence. Initially, it was hard for the shy and humble Louise to act like a
regal queen in a strange and foreign court but eventually, she became quite
adept at her role. When Queen Victoria died in 1930, Louise officially became
the first lady of the nation and she took over the protection of the various
organizations and associations customarily given to the queen. She focused
especially on furthering the working conditions for nurses because of her own
previous experience in nursing. Though she had five stepchildren from her
husband’s previous marriage, she never had any children of her own with Gustaf
Adolf. Her only pregnancy resulted in the birth of a stillborn daughter on May
30, 1925. Louise and her husband were quite popular not only with their
subjects but also the rest of the world. Louise was a strong supporter of
gender equality and once stated in an interview: "Women are completely
intellectually equal to men and, provided they are given sufficient education,
are just as capable to deserve respect and admiration as men in this field.”
Although Sweden was neutral during World War II, Louise remained active in the
Red Cross and set up her own charity, the Crown Princess Gift Association For
the Neutral Defense Forces, that sent knitted socks, scarves, and hats from
people all over the nation to the soldiers guarding the country’s border.
Louise also served as a messenger for people who wanted to communicate with
relatives and friends in other countries embroiled in the war. She even used
her position as a citizen of a neutral country to send supplies to private
citizens throughout Europe.
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| Crown Princess Louise with her husband, Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf |
On October 29, 1950, Gustaf
Adolf’s father died and he was crowned the King of Sweden as Gustaf VI Adolf.
Louise, now sixty-one years old, was finally the Queen of Sweden after almost
thirty years of being the Crown Princess. Since Louise was very democratic, she
was somewhat bothered by her new title and position. Although she was eccentric
for a royal and possessed a furious temper, she had a kind heart, a witty sense
of humor, and the ability to make fun of herself. She wore her heart on her
sleeve and could be both a normal woman and a regal queen in the public eye.
She loved Sweden and its people loved her. She reformed the court protocol,
making it much less strict and formal and had “democratic ladies lunches” with
professional women. She traveled quite often, usually under an alias to hide
her identity, and consistently visited her family in England. After she was
almost hit by a bus in London (since she frequently jay-walked), she started
carrying a small card with her that said, “I am the Queen of Sweden”, in case
she needed to be identified if she was hit by a car or bus.
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| Louise of Battenberg, Queen of Sweden |
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