Princess Helena of the United Kingdom

Helena Augusta Victoria was born 25 May 1846, raised between royal residences under tutors selected by her father Prince Albert and Baron Stockmar. That intimate world shattered when Albert died in December 1861, leaving Victoria in deep mourning. In the early 1860s Helena exchanged romantic letters with Carl Ruland, her father's German librarian, until Victoria discovered the affair and dismissed him in 1863. Three years later, on 5 July 1866, she married the impoverished Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein and stayed in Britain within reach of her mother, becoming - with her youngest sister Beatrice - the queen's unofficial secretary. After Victoria's death in January 1901, Helena rarely saw her surviving siblings. She carried the heaviest schedule of royal engagements in the family, founded the British Red Cross, led the Royal School of Needlework, and pushed for nurse registration as president of the Royal British Nurses' Association, defying Florence Nightingale's opposition. In 1916 she became the first of Victoria's children to reach a golden wedding anniversary; Christian died the following year, and Helena followed in 1923, aged seventy-seven.