Back in December 2010, CountessKate wrote:
"Although Vicky continually wrote of Augusta’s difficult personality throughout the otherwise generally positive mentions, in 1874 QV began to sound more of a warning note. “I am grieved to hear that you get on less well as time goes on with the Emperor and Empress. You should however both of you never forget what Fritz owes to his mother. Without her watchful care in the midst of a very immoral family, he might have turned out very different to what he is; in which case you could never have married him. And she is so true a friend. To Papa and me, I never saw anything like it”.
Does anyone know what QV is referring to when she implies that Fritz was brought up in "a very immoral family"?
I'm intrigued by this comment as I have been trying to verify an old story that Fritz's father, Emperor William I, when still just Prince William of Prussia, had had a pre-marital affair about 1824, which resulted in the birth of an illegitimate daughter who had been fostered out to a middle-class family in Berlin. This could certainly be considered immoral behaviour by the standards of the time and I wondered if this might be what Queen Victoria was referring to.
If the story is true, the child in question would also have been Fritz's half-sister, and Vicky's sister-in-law. This might explain why, when Vicky's brother Prince Alfred visited Australia in 1867-68, he carried a Letter of Introduction to the family of the woman in question who had emigrated with her husband in 1848. Not only that, but Alfred met and took a liking to her 17 year old son (Affie was then 23 so not much older) offered him a position as his Aide de Camp and took him back to Europe on his ship, the Galatea, where the boy went to visit his relatives in Germany.
I'm aware that many families have stories of royal ancestry via illegitimate liaisons with various royal personages, and most of these are rubbish. However this particular tale has some evidence to support it, including contacts with the British royal family. I would like to find out whether it's true or not as the daughter was my great great grandmother.
