Alfred of Edinburgh (1874-1899)

Alfred of Edinburgh with his youngest sister Beatrice (left) and a friend

The Duke of Edinburgh's first child and only son was born on October 15, 1874, at Buckingham Palace  and was named Alfred Alexander William Ernest Albert. His mother, the Duchess of Edinburgh, was always hard and strict with Alfred and his sisters and his father was continously abscent because of his naval career. So little Alfred suffered from a cruel mother and from an abscent father since his early childhod. The Edinburgh family lived in Coburg since the Duke was heir to the ducal throne. Since 1883 when he was 9 years old, Alfred was put completely appart from his sisters and under the charge of a tutor, Doctor Rolfs, who was a tyranical and arrogant man. Altough Prince Alfred was harebrained, flashy and always getting into trouble, he was also tender, sensitive, with a heart of gold. His sisters loved him very much and believed Dr. Rolfs was ruinning his life. The tutor liked to ridicule Alfred before others, making him feeling a fool; he destroyed his pupil's confidence and self-esteem.    While still being a teenager, Alfred was appointed to the First Regiment of the Prussian Guards. According to his aunt, the Crown Princess of Prussia, the military life ruined him since it was in the army where Alfred began to fall from one dissipation to another, until he finally contracted a venereal disease. His physical appearence became deteriorated and he looked pale and unhealthy. In one ocassion, in 1896, while being at Ilinskoe, Grand Duke Serge's and his wife Ella's country home, Alfred saved his sister Marie's life. Marie was swimming in the river and a strong current caught her and was about to drawn, when Alfered suddenly grabed her and saved her life.    In 1897, Alfred is supposed to have married an Irish commoner named Mabel Fitzgerald. The marriage was invalid because of the British Royal Marriages Act of 1772, and Alfred's infuriated mother, now Duchess of Coburg, insisted that the marriage must be anulled. It is supposed that Mabel was pregnant and that Alfred, in spite of his mother's impediment for his marriage, retired to his room and shot himself. Altough he was seriously injured, he didn't die. The Duchess of Coburg isolated his son in a dark and lonely room in the family palace in Coburg. She tried to hide the reason of her son's sickness, saying he had tuberculosis. As his sister Marie wrote, Alfred hardly recognized anyone and didn't know what he said. The Duchess od Coburg decided to send his son to the dry and sunny Merano, in the Italian Alps, for recovering. The doctors warned her agaisnt this decition, but she didn't care, so Alfred was transfered to Merano. A week later, on February 6, 1899, he died. His body was sent back to Coburg, where the Duchess was incosolable. The Duke blamed his wife for the tragedy and decided to spent the rest of his life as far away from her as possible. As the Duke didn't have another son, the Coburg's succesion fall in another grandson of Queen Victoria, Charles Edward of Albany, Prince Leopold's son.

Bibliography  Sullivan, Michael John: A Fatal Passion Eilers, Marlene: Queen Victoria's Descendants  Pakula, Hannah: María de Rumanía

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