Princess Beatrice to marry

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January 15, 1885

Princess Beatrice is be married later this year, and "everyone wishes" the Princess and her "accepted suitor all the joys that spring from a happy marriage," reports and Pall mall Gazette (and reprinted by the New York Times.)

There is a "pathetic element in the spectacle of the last fledgling leaving the almost deserted nest," and it is understood that Queen Victoria, "feels it so much that she stipulates as a condition of the marriage that her new son-in-law must reside in close proximity to her Majesty."

The Daily Telegraph notes that this arrangements illustrates "how far royal personages differ from other mortals."  Outside this "charmed circle" a stipulation that a son-in-;aw must live with his mother-in-law is "hardly deemed a matter for enthusiastic congratulation" by his friends. 
The royal groom is Prince Henry of Battenberg.  Princess Beatrice will be come the sister-in-law to the Prince of Bulgaria, and, even more curious, sister-in-law of her niece, Princess Victoria, daughter of the late Princess Alice.

It is interested to note that Queen Victoria's granddaughter fell for the eldest Battenberg prince, while Princess Beatrice is to marry a younger brother.

Princess Beatrice is also a much older royal bride, as she is now in her 28th year. Her eldest sister, the Princess Royal, was in her eighteenth year, when she married the Crown Prince of Prussia.