Princess 007: Was Victoria, Princess Royal, Britain's Top Spy
Did Queen Victoria use her daughters as spies? Was Victoria Princess Royal her top spy, Princess 007?
Watch this video and decide for yourself.
Chapters:
00:00 Queen Victoria, Spymaster
00:35 The Happy Liberal Loyal Couple, Vicky and Fritz
01:18 Otto von Bismarck’s Accusations
01:52 Was Bismarck correct? Was Vicky a spy?
03:08 Frederick’s death and the End for Bismarck and Victoria
The digitization of Queen Victoria’s journals in 2012 showed that the Queen was an excellent and gifted spymaster.
Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Prussia, believed the Queen’s oldest daughter, Princess Victoria, the Princess Royale, to be her most important spy.
Do you agree with Bismarck? Was Princess Victoria the Queen’s top British spy?
Continue watching as this video examines evidence that may uncover the answer to this question.
The Happy Marriage:
Born in November 1840, Victoria, Princess Royale, was the oldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
When she was 17, she married Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, with whom she had eight children.
Frederick was informally known as ‘Fritz’ and was a successful military commander for his father, Kaizer Wilhelm I.
The marriage between Princess Victoria and Crown Prince Frederick, or Vicky and Fritz, was happy.
He was also a political liberal from his studies at the University of Bonn and believed in sharing more power with the ordinary people.
Victoria shared the liberal views of Frederick and hoped that Prussia and the later German Empire would become a Constitutional Monarchy.
Otto von Bismarck:
These liberal views of Frederick and Princess Victoria directly opposed Prussia’s ambitious and conservative chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.
Bismarck viewed Queen Victoria’s daughter and the German Crown Princess simply as a British spy
He deemed the Princess one of her mother’s most prized assets in intelligence gathering.
Further, Bismarck interpreted Princess Victoria’s intimacy and correspondence with Queen Victoria as potentially treasonous.
Was he right to assume so?
Was the Princess a Spy?
In one of her communication with her mother, Princess Royale wrote, “I send you all the papers so that you may see what Fritz has done, said, and written!”
For this reason, Bismark placed constant surveillance on the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess.
These actions forced the Princess, Crown Prince Frederick, and Queen Victoria to increasingly communicate using ciphers.
The use of Ciphers further infuriated Bismarck.
As his influence grew, Bismarck sought to freeze Princess Victoria out and successfully cut out the Crown Prince and Crown Princess from the Kaiser’s inner circle.
After that, the letters from Princess Victoria contained less-sensitive information.
By the end of the 1880s, Vicky warned Queen Victoria that Bismarck’s “creatures” had infiltrated her entourage.
Further, after she returned from one trip abroad, she discovered that someone had broken into her rooms and searched her desks and filing cabinet.
As tensions grew, the British ambassador warned the Crown Princess to stop writing anything incriminating on paper.
With that, Bismarck successfully neutralized the best spy in Queen Victoria’s royal intelligence network.
Death of Frederick III:
When Frederick ascended, one would think that the liberals and the Crown Princess would finally win.
However, Frederick died 90 days after ascending, and the throne passed to his ultra-conservative son, Wilhelm II, and the rest was history
Do you think that there were complications in his early death?
This question is probably a point that we can explore in another video.
The following video is our video on Queen Victoria's daughters, including Princess Royal:
This is a video about Frederick III:
This is a video about Queen Victoria's coronation:
This is a video about Victoria and Albert:
The music is “Ages Ago” by Brock Hewitt licensed via Music Vine: VC3JI2YFIWWYW2U6
#queenvictoria, #ottovonbismarck, #princessvictoria, #wilhelmii, #princealbert