The Princess of Downton Abbey

The popular Downton Abbey series of period television shows and movies has been known to feature royals throughout its run. The first film, 2019's simply titled Downton Abbey, built the main storyline around the Crawley family and their servants preparing for a visit from King George V and Queen Mary. The latest film, Downton Abbey: Grand Finale, features a much less well-known royal. In the film, she is referred to only as Princess Arthur of Connaught but in real life, she bore many titles and was positioned at the center of several royal families, not just the British one.

At her birth in 1891, Lady Alexandra Victoria Alberta Edwina Louise Duff was yet another great-grandchild of Queen Victoria. However, she already bore several distinctions. She was the first of Victoria's direct descendants who was not born as a prince or princess. Albeit, she was the first living grandchild of the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra; her older brother had been stillborn the year before. She was fifth in line to the throne after her grandfather, her uncle Albert Victor (who would die the next year), her uncle George and her mother.

Baby Alexandra's mother was the oldest daughter of Edward and Alexandra (known as Bertie and Alix in the family), Princess Louise, who would later bear the title Princess Royal. Louise had married a nobleman, Alexander Duff 6th Earl of Fife, who was 18 years older than her and a good friend of her father. Upon the marriage, Queen Victoria elevated the groom to Duke of Fife. The couple's second daughter, Lady Maud, was born two years after Alexandra. The family lived a relatively quiet life adjacent to the more public-facing members of the family. 

After 10 years of marriage, Queen Victoria paid the family a great honor. When she had first created Alexander Duke of Fife, the creation limited the title's descent only to male heirs. By 1900, it was fairly clear that the title would likely become extinct. So, Queen Victoria re-created the title again, this time allowing it to go to a female heir. Thus, seven-year-old Lady Alexandra Duff became one of those rare creatures among the British aristocracy: the heiress of a noble title in her own right.

Alexandra between her parents, Louise
and Alexander, with sister Maud, 1902
By Alexander Corbett via Wikimedia Commons

A few years later, Alexandra and Maud would be elevated even further. Their grandfather had succeeded Queen Victoria in 1901. It seemed to rankle him that any of his grandchildren did not have princely titles. In the modern British Royal Family, titles are only granted to male-line descendants of the monarch. His son and heir George's children had titles and his daughter Maud's newborn son was born a Prince of Denmark, but King Edward's daughter Louise's children were merely ladies. On November 9, 1905, at the same time that he created Louise Princess Royal, he granted her daughters the rank and style of Highness and Princess, with precedence above all others except Royal Highnesses. Thus, 14-year-old Lady Alexandra Duff became Her Highness Princess Alexandra. She and her sister are often referred to as Princess of Fife, but this is not technically correct since their status does not come from their father but from their maternal grandfather. 

The next time Princess Alexandra made headlines was in 1910. Her mother's cousin, the handsome and poetic Prince Christopher of Greece, had spent some time visiting with the wealthy Fife family. The 19-year-old princess and 22-year-old prince apparently developed a passionate affection for each other and may even have become unofficially engaged. The royal romance sparked the rumor mills at home and abroad, even prompting an announcement by The New York Times. However, perhaps under pressure from her disapproving parents, the romance ended. Christopher later shared the young couple was not very heartbroken, having been more in love with love than with each other. The papers found other alleged suitors for Alexandra, including the King of Portugal. Alas, papers of the time often published such romantic nonsense.

The Fife family were tightly knit and spent most of their time away from the court or from Bertie's Marlborough House set. They gave Louise's poor health as the reason for their limited forays into royal duties. When they traveled abroad, it was often for the benefit of her health. Choosing the dry Egyptian climate over the wet winters of England and Scotland. In late 1911, their annual escape to Egypt led to high drama. The family was aboard the SS Delhi when it shipwrecked during a terrible storm off the north African coast. The passengers were rushed into a rescue boat but that boat was overcome by the rough seas and sank. Despite wearing a life vest, Alexandra went under the waves and took in great gulps of water. She likely would have drowned had she not been pulled to safety. Her parents and sister were also dragged from the waves. Once ashore, they had to walk four miles through the storm to find refuge at a lighthouse. They then endured a 10-mile ride on donkeys to the British Legation at Tangier. At first, all seemed well with the family reporting back to Britain and to journalists that they had suffered no lasting harm. However, as they traveled along to Egypt and sailed up the Nile, it became clear that the 71-year-old Duke was not recuperating after all. He had developed pleuriscy. He died in Egypt on January 29, 1912 and Alexandra became the 2nd Duchess of Fife. As such, she was one of the largest landowners in Scotland -- the title came with 250,000 acres and 14 country houses.

Prince and Princess Arthur of
Connaught on their wedding day
from Hans van Marwijk via Wikimedia Commons

The following year, the still grieving family were delighted to welcome a new member when Alexandra married her mother's cousin Prince Arthur of Connaught, only son of Queen Victoria's third son, at Chapel Royal in St. James's Palace. With this, her title and status were raised once again. Despite the fact that she was higher in the line of succession than her husband, he was a male-line descendant. Thus, she became Her Royal Highness Princess Arthur of Connaught. She was usually referred to this way rather than with her own title as Duchess of Fife.

Arthur held a prominent position within the British Royal Family. After the death of King Edward in 1910 and accession of Alexandra's uncle King George V, Arthur and his father, who was also named Arthur, were the only adult royal princes. As his bride, Alexandra took on a much more public role than she had previously held.

The couple's only child Prince Alaistair of Connaught was born 10 months after the wedding, just 12 days after the start of World War I. The war, of course, separated the family, who had taken up residence in Mayfair. Prince Arthur served with the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium. Back home, Alexandra followed the same route as many of her female relatives on both sides of the war: she became a nurse at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington. (From the 1970s, most members of the British Royal Family have been born there.)

The war had a direct impact on the family. Cousin King George V did not agree with the expansion of royal titles that his father had implemented for the Fife girls. The war only excerbated his concerns that the public would grow tired of too many royals, especially as the family's ties to German royals were called into question. In 1917, the King officially changed the House of Saxe-Coburg to the House of Windsor and re-christened his British-dwelling cousins who had Germanic names and titles to British names and titles. The Battenbergs became the Mountbattens. The Tecks became the Cambridges. He also limited princely titles to the children and male-line grandchildren of the monarch. While he did not undo his father's creation of Alexandra and her sister as Princesses, as many other princes and princesses who could be demoted to lower titles, were demoted. This included Alexandra's son, Prince Alastair of Connaught. From then on, he was known by his mother's secondary title as Earl of Macduff.

By Alexander Corbett via Wikimedia Commons

After the war, Alexandra continued her nursing career, specializing in gynecology. She was well-respected in her field. She won a prize for a paper on preeclampsia and earned a certificate of merit. Her nursing career was interrupted from 1920 to 1923 when her husband served as Governor General of South Africa. The family was popular there, especially Alexandra, who found many ways to support nursing, hospitals and childcare there. But, she missed her hands-on work.

When they returned to Britain, Alexandra eagerly returned to her chosen career although with a degree of anonymity. She switched her specialization to the operating theater and became known as Nurse Marjorie, first at University College Hospital and later at Charing Cross Hospital. One patient's father, gave the anonymous royal a sixpence to thank her for helping his daughter. The coin became a treasured keepsake for the princess. In 1925, her uncle King George V honored her with the Royal Red Cross Badge in recognition of her service to nursing.

During the late 1920s, Alexandra's mother Louise Princess Royal became very ill. She suffered for  several years with gastric hemorrhaging and then heart disease. Her death in 1931, with daughters Alexandra and Maud, at her side was seen as a relief by many in the family. She undoubtedly benefited in those final years from Alexandra's expertise as a nurse.

Like his wife, Prince Arthur also took an interest in hospitals, serving the chairman of Middlesex Hospital's Board of Directors. He held several other leadership roles, particularly across Berkshire, where King George appointed him High Steward in 1935. The family attended the coronation of Alexandra's cousin King George VI in 1937 but they had little time left together. Arthur developed stomach cancer and passed away in 1938 at the age of 55. Alexandra was 47 and their son Alastair was 24. Four years later, when Alexandra's father-in-law died, Alastair became the 2nd Duke of Connaught.

Undaunted, Alexandra continued her nursing work. By the outbreak of World War II in 1939, she was offered the position of matron in a country hospital, but she preferred to be closer to the troops. She accepted a role at the Second British General Hospital, working with the servicemen who were being evacuated from Dunkirk.

Alexandra with baby Alastair
from Bain News Service in the US Library of Congress
via Wikimedia Commons

She then financed and equipped her own nursing home, the Fife Nursing Home, and personally ran it for over a decade. Although she was fully engaged in her passion for nursing and health care, Alexandra was still not exempt from more personal tragedy. Her only child Alastair had graduated Sandhurst in 1935 and entered full-time Army service, including time in Palestine and in Egypt where his maternal grandfather had died three decades earlier. During World War II, he was appointed aide-de-camp to the Earl of Athlone, a royal relative serving as Governor General in Canada. On April 26, 1943, Alastair was found dead in or near his room at the Governor General's official residence of Rideau Hall. Reported at the time as death from natural causes, the truth has never been publicly clear. Early reports said he had died of hypothermia from an open window. Later reports agreed that hypothermia had killed him but only because he had fallen from his window after drinking heavily. Whatever actually happened, his mother was almost certainly devastated to lose her only child at the age of 28. Two and a half years later, her only sibling, Maud, passed away from bronchitis.

Throughout the 1940s, Alexandra increasingly suffered from crippling rheumatoid arthritis, which eventually left her bedbound. She closed her nursing home and focused on writing in the 1950s. She shared her work privately. One volume focused on her nursing career, while another detailed her family's horrific shipwreck. She passed away in February 1959 at the age of 67. Her titles passed to her sister Maud's only child, James Carnegie, who became the 3rd Duke of Fife. The title is currently held by his son.

Princess Arthur's depiction in Downton Abbey: Grand Finale takes place at a moment when she did have a quite prominent role in the royal family. Set in June 1930, two months before the birth of Princess Margaret, Alexandra was still in the Top Ten of the Line of Succession, which looked like this:

1. The Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII and then The Duke of Windsor)
2. The Duke of York (later George VI)
3. Princess Elizabeth of York (later Elizabeth II)
4. The Duke of Gloucester
5. The Prince George (later The Duke of Kent)
6. The Princess Mary, Countess of Harewood (later The Princess Royal)
7. Viscount Lascelles
8. The Honourable Gerald Lascelles
9. The Princess Royal
10. Princess Arthur of Connaught

Princess Arthur AKA Princess Alexandra AKA 2nd Duchess of Fife was 17th in line at the time of her death. She lived during six reigns, those of her great-grandmother Victoria, her grandfather Edward VII, her uncle George V, her cousins Edward VIII and George VI, and her first cousin once removed Elizabeth II. 

Through her husband, whose sister Margaret married the future King Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden, she is a great-aunt to the current Royal Houses of Sweden, Denmark, and Greece. Through her mother, she is cousin once and twice removed (respectively) to the King of Norway and to King Charles III.

More about Alexandra

Alexandra, the Princess Who Might Have Been Queen of Portugal on Royal Musings
Christopher of Greece to Marry Alexandra of Fife on Royal Musings
The Marriage of Prince Arthur of Connaught and the Duchess of Fife on Royal Musings
Princess Alexandra 2nd Duchess of Fife on Alchetron
Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife on 1066
Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife on Royal Watcher Blog
Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife: A Champion of Nursing on Royal Splendor
Relatively Royal: Meet the Fifes on Esoteric Curiosa
Wedding of Prince Arthur of Connaught and Princess Alexandra Duchess of Fife on Royal Watcher Blog