Princess Victoria of Schaumburg-Lippe (Moretta), 2nd daughter of Kaiser Friedrich III

[Marc]

It would be great to know or to see much more of her!Anything I know was that she died peniless because of her second marriage!

[Eurohistory]

There is an interesting book about Victoria's scandalous second marriage. I believe it is titled THE GREAT HOHENZOLLERN SCANDAL. Such a sad story.

Arturo Beéche

[grandduchessella]

There is an interesting book about Victoria's scandalous second marriage. I believe it is titled THE GREAT HOHENZOLLERN SCANDAL. Such a sad story.

Arturo Beéche

Did you like that book Art? I have it and found it such a sleaze fest in how it was written.  :-/

[sydguy71]

Forgive my ignorance, but what was the great scandal....sounds like a book worth reading

[Alicky1872]

Basically, she married a Russian emigre (and con artist) thirty years younger than herself, named Alexander Zoubkov, who stole all her money. She died peniless and brokenhearted.

Although I'm sure there are others who could give you a more long winded take on this.  

[bluetoria]

Have you read the collection of her letters  'Queen Victoria at Windsor & Balmoral' from June 1889, edited by James Pope Hennessy. They are very moving; I think it very sad how she looks at all her relations who are becoming engaged & married & despairs that she is so unloveable. It seems to me that that idea stayed with her all her life, even after her marriage to Adolph (which Vicky claimed she accepted 'in her despair' of finding anyone else.) Perhaps that is why even so late in life she responded well to the flattery (I presume) of the 'con man'.

[grandduchessella]

Thanks for that info,Alicky!Very sad princess indeed...

It was indeed quite sad. There was one humiliation after the other--he publcly exploited their marriage cojoling her to give interviews and posed for publicity photos that were often used to mock them and esp her; it estranged her from her immediate and extended families; she was forced to abandon her home because she was no longer Adolf's widow when she remarried; she wound up selling even some of the silver wedding annivesary presents that had been her parents and which were bequeathed to her for pennies on the dollar (or mark) ; she wound up destitute in a tiny apartment with only one devoted servant to take care of her and basically willed herself into dying.

[Alicky1872]

Have you read the collection of her letters  'Queen Victoria at Windsor & Balmoral' from June 1889, edited by James Pope Hennessy. They are very moving; I think it very sad how she looks at all her relations who are becoming engaged & married & despairs that she is so unloveable.

Yes, not to mention her desire to have a baby, while her sisters and cousins had child after child... Vicky's letters to Sophie about Moretta's pain, are heartbreaking to read.

[bluetoria]

If only she could have married Sandro... These stories are always so full of 'if onlys.'

[Alicky1872]

I know we say everything happens for the best, and to an extent this is true, but would Moretta have been better off with Sandro? She would have been under so much strain from the uncertainty of his throne, she would have been at constant odds with her brother Willy, then there's the fact that Sandro died young...so I think she was better off with Adolf, but if only Alexander Z. hadn't come into her life!

[bluetoria]

With Sandro, though, I think she would have recovered her self-esteem. She wouldn't have had to go through all those humiliating & desperate attempts to find her husaband which led Willy to say she would marry 'anyone who was manly' & eventually led even QV
to consider her desperation unseemly.
Perhaps if she had been brought up with the Hessians, for example, she might have realized that marriage was not the be-all & end-all, but for Moretta I think it was - which made her all the more desperate.
I don't think she loved Adolph. Vicky wrote:
"In her depression & discouragement, feeling that the happibness she had hoped for is not to be hers, she accepts [him]"
Her miscarriage & sibsequent inability to have more children must have been truly heart-breaking for, as you say. She had been denied happiness with the man she really loved & then denied the children she SO wanted. Even when did settle with Adolph (& Marie Mallet described them as 'a most devoted couple') there came all the furore & squabbling about Detmold. Nothing EVER seemed to work out for her.
Had she married Sandro, I think, she might at least have had the one 'grand passion' - however brief - that would have brought her some satisfaction.  "Better to have loved & lost than never to have loved at all..." etc.
(But then, of course, I am viewing it romantically rather than practically...as is constantly my failing )

[SSKENDER]

I can understand the resemblance; however, the majority of pictures I have seen of Viktoria do not look like this at all.  I will try to find some and post to show you.

Even in these pictures that you posted i see the resemblance....maybe I'm wrong.  Anyone else have some pictures that can be posted so we can compare?
Arturo, no imput on this one? haha
Regards

[Eurohistory]

As her niece, yes I can see some facial resemblence between Helen Greece and Victoria Schaumburg-Lippe...what is uncanniest here is the resemblance in their marital experiences...such terrible sadness they both shared.  Loveless marriages...

Arturo Beéche

[grandduchessella]

Here's Moretta's wedding picture. A newspaper account of the day said that it was Vicky's lace veil that she wore. How sad that if it was it wasn't used for the same happy love-match that Vicky made.

[bluetoria]

Thank you for posting these pictures, jfkhaos & grandduchessella
She has a very sad look about her in all her pictures I think. On the final one - perhaps it is just that it isn't close-up - she doesn't look out of place (or rather much older than her husband) does she? It seems a very small gathering - presumably no one else attended? As it shows her being married by the Orthodox rite, did she convert?