Review: A Fan of Helena's
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 23, 2013
I hesitate between 3 and 4 stars.  This book gives important  little-known information about this daughter of Queen Victoria.  The research was excellent, but I lowered the stars because I can't help but think that the author could have made the book more interesting.  Very excellent human interest facts were related in a dry, history book style.  This irked me as I was reading.  Mr. Van der Kiste has written many more books on this time in British history, and I do hope he makes the others more interesting.  He thought Helena was boring compared to her siblings, and that is how he told her story.Helena was a noble person.  She was not the oldest, nor the second, nor the youngest, nor the most vivacious, and certainly not the  prettiest of the Queen's daughters.  However, she was the faithful, dependable one on whom the family leaned, especially after the untimely death of Price Albert.  However, she was always there for her mother, even when the monarch became cranky and demanding during her long, long mourning period.  Helena was patient, dependable and loving, and even missing her mother greatly when she finally passed on.  Her semi-arranged marriage to Prince Christian of one of the small countries that became Germany became a good, solid, and loving union.  The qualifications to marry Helena were that the prospective groom had to be royal, but not in line for a throne.  He couldn't be poor, but he should not be very rich.  The Queen demanded that the groom be a person who would move to England and live near the queen, because Victoria could not survive without her reliable, dependable daughter nearby.  Helena handled much, probably most, of her mother's royal correspondence and helped shield her from the public during her long years of mourning for Prince Albert.  Prince Christian fit very nicely into the royal family.  The only strain was the relationship between Helena and Christian and the Prince of Wales and his wife, Princess Alexandria of Denmark.  Christian's country had sided with a German invasion attempt against Denmark.  After Victoria's death and Helena's brother became King Edward VII, the King and Queen dropped the grudge.  The two couples were brought together in grief through the loss of their oldest sons and other family troubles.  Helena was always there to support her siblings as well as her mother in their troubles.  She bore her own losses and tragedies with patience and fortitude.  Although Christian was some 15 years older than his wife, they were the only royal couple to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary for many, many years.  King George III and Queen Charlotte passed that milestone, but it could not be celebrated because of the mental condition of the king.  So, the country made a big fuss over the anniversary of "The Christians" as they were called.  With only the information given in this book, I think I could rewrite it and make it much more interesting.  So many super interesting events happened, but Van der Kiste makes them dry as the proverbial history book, as I said before.  There was hardly a charity or noble effort of good works of which Helena was not a founder, or at least an important part.  She worked tirelessly on behalf of establishing nursing as a respected career for middle class women.  Her good works were not limited to England but spread to Africa and other countries as well.  As I look at her picture on the book cover, I see her as a very attractive older woman.  The plainness in her younger pictures seem to me to be due to unbecoming hair styles.  I have become a fan of Helena's from reading this book.