A Royal Outcast

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She was the great-grandmother of Europe. Her descendants sit on thrones across the continent to this day. But Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg was all but written out of history.

‘Fascinating, rigorously researched and vividly told...[a] groundbreaking biography.’ - Dr Anna Whitelock

‘An invaluable study of the little-known Princess without whom the course of British and European history would have been so very different.’ – Robert Hardman

In 1846, the eyes of the British royal family fall on the small village of Pfeffelbach in western Germany. It is here, in a church that is crumbling before them, that the mother of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, was laid to rest and forgotten about. And it is time to bring her home.

Married off at 16 to the 33-year-old Duke Ernst Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Louise bore two sons, Ernst and Albert, but her unhappy marriage led to her banishment, divorce, and loss of her children. She died alone at just 31, her reputation destroyed by court gossip and political intrigue. Was she a fallen woman, or a victim of royal machinations? And was Prince Albert truly Ernst’s son?

Princess Louise played a crucial role in the rise of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, but while her son Albert entered history, she was removed from it. Based on a decade of original research, A Royal Outcast is the first English-language biography to explore the life and legacy of Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg – the woman the royal family tried to bury to save Prince Albert’s reputation.