The Eternal Collection

It is true that the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, had a special way of finding the bedrooms of beautiful women who attracted him. As the houses where His Royal Highness stayed were usually very large, he suggested that a rose placed outside the bedroom door would simplify his search and then prevent him from making embarrassing mistakes. The Prince married the beautiful Alexandra of Denmark in 1863, but just five years later, when their third child, Princess Victoria, was born, his love affairs were already delighting the gossips. There were tales of enticing beauties in Russia, where the Prince attended the Wedding of Princess Alexandra’s sister, Dagmar, to the Czarevitch Alexander and of many seductive Princesses and actresses in Paris, which he visited alone the following year. There the Prince led the way and inevitably the younger members of Society followed. To some it was a very welcome rebellion from the solemnity and the worthy preciseness of the Prince Consort and, after his early death, the gloom and boredom of Queen Victoria’s unceasing mourning at Windsor Castle.