Coming in October 2008

The Four Graces:

Queen Victoria's Hessian Granddaughters

by

Ilana D. Miller

Kensington House Books

FourGraces

The Four Graces: Queen Victoria’s Hessian Granddaughters is a family biography of the four Princesses of the House of Hesse, who come of age during an era of turbulent upheaval.  Each makes a brilliant marriage that will bring her both happiness and heartbreak. The eldest, Princess Victoria marries the handsome Prince Louis of Battenberg, the former lover of Lillie Langtry, and must watch helplessly as her family is torn apart by war and politics. Her three sisters make far more spectacular marriages in the royal houses of Europe. The exquisite Elisabeth is swept off to the splendor of the Romanov court by Grand Duke Serge and the gathering clouds of the Bolshevik Revolution.  Irène marries Prince Henry of Prussia and takes her place at the court in Berlin.  Alix, the youngest, marries the man she has loved since childhood, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and becomes the fabled Empress Alexandra.

From such exotic locals as Russia, Bulgaria and Ottoman Jerusalem, to the drawing rooms of Sandringham, and the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, The Four Graces is told from the point of view of the eldest sister, Princess Victoria of Hesse, who was the favorite granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England, and would later become the mother of Lord Mountbatten of Burma, the last Viceroy of India.  Starting in the court of Queen Victoria and ending with the birth of Victoria’s great-grandson, the current Prince of Wales, The Four Graces is the story of the electrifying period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with its terrifying wars and astonishing progress.

Ilana D. Miller is an Adjunct Professor of History at Pepperdine University in Malibu and the Senior Editor of the European Royal History Journal.  Her publication credits include the non-fiction narrative Reports from America: William Howard Russell and the Civil War (Sutton Publishing: 2001), several scholarly articles in Historical magazines, as well as historical fiction.

Available from Eurohistory.com or Amazon