OOdles of lovely data.....I have a bit of a soft spot for Ducky! I have come to find her bravery and loyalty quite redeeming features! She was far more down to earth than Missy too!
I feel a certain sadness that she was more or less forced into marriage with Ernie, though she did try to make the best of it didn't she? She was really a pawn in her grandmama's grand matchmaking schemes.
I have always thought Ernie a most likeable character, but perhaps he needed to be mothered in his marriages and IMO I do not think Ducky was particularly inclined to be maternal to her husbands. I think with her evident strength of character, she found life with affable but perhaps emotionally troubled Ernie a bit of a strain! I genuinely believe that Ducky was made out as the villainess of the piece in the break down of the marriage, which I feel is a tad harsh! The attempted reconciliation and tragic birth of their stillborn son was probably the catalyst for final and complete breakdown of marital relations. Elisabeth's death must have been agony! She was adored by Ernie and no doubt Ducky too, but the latter was no doubt a little too 'English' in her lack of taste for demonstrative love! Ernie seems to have been thoroughly 'hands on' with all his children, which I really like in him!
Ducky did get her man in the end, for which I think she was prepared to sacrifice her all! Brave, selfish but also a true mark of her determination to find happiness! I can not say I think she was beautiful, but my goodness I think she was arrestingly striking! Perhaps she didn't photograph particularly well, but in the flesh, I bet she had a dose of magnetism! Her eyes so often look sad in pictures! Rather like Louise F. She, Ducky, was evidently quite a 'deep' character, and I find her far more interesting in a personal way than 'Heart on her sleeve' Missy! It is as though Ducky was somehow 'fated!' It seems tragic that she came to feel betrayed by Kyrill too! Heaven only knows what he did.....but her pain and grief are papable from the scant anecdotes we do have! I am sure I read somewhere that had all her personal papers destroyed, though I may be wrong! I still wonder where the rumours about Ernie and the stable boys came from and can't imagine Ducky would have stooped to such base levels herself!
A Fatal Passion is very 'thin' on it's subject! I was sorely disappointed in it really! Of all QV's grand daughters, I think Ducky really does deserve a proper bio by a 'Pope Hennessy' calibre historian. Hers was a remarkable life, to which a great many of us today can relate in some part on a personal level at least!
