Princess Alice of the United Kingdom

Alice Maud Mary was born 25 April 1843, third child of Victoria and Albert, raised between royal residences with an education designed by Baron Stockmar that ran from needlework to languages. In December 1861 she nursed her father through his final illness, then spent six months as her mother's unofficial secretary through the worst of Victoria's mourning. She married minor German prince Louis of Hesse on 1 July 1862 in a private, gloom-soaked ceremony at Osborne House. Life in Darmstadt brought poverty, tragedy, and fraying marriages, but when the Austro-Prussian War filled the city with wounded, the heavily pregnant Alice took over the management of field hospitals - her Princess Alice Women's Guild ran the state's military system, alarming Victoria with her daughter's blunt talk of gynaecological matters. She became Grand Duchess of Hesse in June 1877; by late 1878 diphtheria tore through the court and she nursed her family for over a month before succumbing herself on 14 December, the first of Victoria's children to die.