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Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. The Summer Queen
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Family Tree of King George III
  5. Family Tree of Queen Victoria
  6. PART ONE
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. PART TWO
  21. Chapter Fourteen
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-One
  29. Chapter Twenty-Two
  30. Chapter Twenty-Three
  31. Chapter Twenty-Four
  32. PART THREE
  33. Chapter Twenty-Five
  34. Chapter Twenty-Six
  35. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-One
  40. Chapter Thirty-Two
  41. PART FOUR
  42. Chapter Thirty-Three
  43. Chapter Thirty-Four
  44. Chapter Thirty-Five
  45. Chapter Thirty-Six
  46. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. Chapter Forty-One
  51. Acknowledgements
  52. Select Bibliography
  53. The Summer Queen
  54. By Margaret Pemberton

On the walls of the bedroom Alicky had slept in, ever since she could remember, were watercolour sketches of Osborne, Windsor and Balmoral. All of them had been painted by Granny Queen; and hanging on the wall of one of the palace’s many corridors was an oil painting of Dash, the Cavalier King Charles spaniel that had been the first in a long line of dogs that Granny Queen had owned and doted on. All through her life Alicky had been surrounded by reminders that she was just as much English as she was German and, with an English nanny and then an English governess, she had grown up not only speaking English fluently – although with a German accent – but often thinking in English as well.

Looking to where her father was seated next to Granny Queen, she could tell that he was tense with barely suppressed excitement, and she was certain it was because he was about to stun all Vicky and Louis’s wedding guests by announcing Ella and Sergei’s engagement.

Not far away from her, her Aunt Beatrice was paying no attention to anyone but the groom’s very handsome brother, Henry. Alicky wondered if Beatrice had been purposely seated directly in Henry’s sightline. At twenty-seven, Beatrice, plain but kind, was very much a royal old maid. Was Granny Queen up to her matchmaking tricks again? Because of a blip on the Battenberg family tree, all the Battenberg brothers were Serene Highnesses, not Royal Highnesses, something that played very much against them in the royal marriage market. It hadn’t affected Louis, for Vicky had been too head-over-heels in love with him to care that he was not of equal birth; and Alicky doubted very much if Aunt Beatrice, facing a lifetime of spinsterhood, would care very much about Henry not being of equal birth, either – especially not as Henry was tall and broad-shouldered, and just as strikingly handsome and charming as his three brothers. For Henry, marriage to one of Queen Victoria’s daughters would be quite a step up in royal ranking and consequently, even though Beatrice was plain, quite a temptation.