14. Princess Viktoria of Prussia had been a widow for ten years when she met a handsome young Russian refugee who stole her heart – and more besides
As a young lady growing up in the Prussian Court in the 1870s, Princess Viktoria had hoped to wed the handsome and dashing Prince Alexander of Battenberg. Not only were her parents, the Emperor Frederick III and the Princess Royal, keen on the union, Viktoria was besotted with her suitor. However, the marriage plans were soon called off for political reasons. Instead, she married Prince Adolf in 1890. They were together for 26 years, until Adolf’s death. Viktoria remained single for a full decade, until she met Alexander Zuobkoff, a Russian refugee 35 years her junior.
Zubokoff described himself as a dancer, however accurate this might have been. What was certain, however, is that he was a chancer and wasted no opportunity to squander his older wife’s wealth. Within a couple of years, Viktoria was on the verge of bankruptcy. She was forced to move out of her palace and into a small flat in Bonn. Many of her possessions were also put up for auction. Unsurprisingly, she wanted a divorce, even revealing that “conjugal relations did not exist” in her unhappy marriage. Before she could get her divorce, she died suddenly at the age of 63, still married to a man young enough to be her son.