Here we have Queen Alexandra in Tudor costume. She was Princess of Wales when this was taken, though reaching the end of her term. I believe (not 100% sure) that this was taken at the same 1895 ball I showed the photos of George and Mary from.

Alexandra was born in 1844 and was a Princess of Denmark. At 17 she got engaged to the heir to the British throne, Prince Albert Edward. As a girl, Alexandra had shared a room with her sister and best friend, Dagmar (later Empress of Russia) and had made clothing for herself and her sisters. She was only 18 when she got married, and not long after the marriage she got pregnant with her first child. She also discovered that her new husband was a womanizer.

She’s often compared to Princess Diana, but unlike Diana she was raised to expect a royal marriage, and royal marriages often include infidelity. Alexandra looked the other way as her husband had affairs with many different women. These included, Lillie Langtry, a beautiful actress who Alexandra later became friends with, Daisy Warwick, probably the love of Albert Edward’s life, and Alice Keppel, Camilla Shand’s great-grandmother.

Alexandra turned her attention to her children and was generally regarded as a better mother than most royal women of her era, though she was very possessive and almost smothered them. She treated her offspring as children well into their twenties, and tried to prevent her daughters from marrying. She was sucessful in the case of her middle daughter Victoria, who stayed her mother’s companion her whole life.

Alexandra was incredibly close to her oldest son Prince Albert Victor, called Eddy. Eddy died in 1892 and Alexandra was crushed. She kept quiet, though she was widely believed to have disapproved of her dead son’s fiancee Mary of Teck, who then married her second son, George.

Alexandra was a very affectionate grandmother to all of her grandchildren. She was particularily well regarded by George and Mary’s children, who didn’t get a lot of affection from their parents. One story about her grandson Prince Olav of Norway (her daughter Maud’s son) was that he had gotten in trouble with his governess and had been threatened with a beating. So he ran off and hid under a bed. The family set off to look for him and Alexandra found him. His response was “Hello, Grannie! Is she after you, too? Come hide with me and I’ll protect you!”

So Alexandra crawled under the bed and laid down whsipering and laughing with her grandson until the governess found them both. But she kept Olav out of trouble.

Alexandra did not become Queen until 1901, when she was in her late-fifties. Her husband reigned as Edward VII, but was only on the throne until his death in 1910. When her son, George was crowned, Alexandra stayed at home during the coronation and according to Matriarch by Anne Edwards, a biography of her daughter-in-law, she ran around her rooms madly screaming and crying that “Eddy should be crowned, not George.”

In her later years, Alexandra began to lose her hearing, though she stayed young looking and energetic. She remained close to her sisters, daughters, and grandchildren.