Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia

Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia (; 13 September 1892 – 11 December 1980) was the only daughter and the last child of Wilhelm II, German Emperor, and Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein. Through her father she was a great-granddaughter of both German Emperor Wilhelm I and Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. Her 1913 wedding to Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover was the largest gathering of reigning monarchs in Germany since German unification in 1871, and one of the last great social events of European royalty before the First World War began fourteen months later. Shortly after the wedding, Victoria Louise became the Duchess of Brunswick by marriage. Through her daughter Queen Frederica of Greece, Princess Victoria Louise was the maternal grandmother of Queen Sophia of Spain and Constantine II of Greece. Early life and education Princess Victoria Louise was born on 13 September 1892, the seventh child and only daughter of German Emperor Wilhelm II and Empress Augusta Victoria. "After six sons, God has given us our seventh child, a small but very strong little daughter," the empress wrote in her diary soon after the birth. The princess was christened on 22 October, and was named after her paternal great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, and her paternal great-great-grandmother, Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Known officially as Victoria Louise, she was nicknamed "Sissy" by her family. Historian Justin C. Vovk writes that Victoria Louise was intelligent like her paternal grandmother Empress Frederick, stately and dignified like her mother, but imperious and willful like her father. She enjoyed being the center of attention and was her father's favourite. According to her eldest brother Crown Prince Wilhelm, Victoria Louise was "the only one of us who succeeded in her childhood in gaining a snug place" in their father's heart. In 1902, her English governess, Anne Topham, observed in their first meeting that the nine-year-old princess was friendly, energetic, and always quarreling with her next eldest brother, Prince Joachim. Anne later noted that the "warlike" emperor "unbends to a considerable extent when in the bosom of his family," and is the "dominating force of his daughter's life. His ideas, his opinions on men and things are persistently quoted by her."