England, 1879

THE QUEEN WAS THE SUN.

The four blossoming young girls she had plucked from her flock of granddaughters orbited around her in their somber, matching black dresses. Victoria, Elisabeth and Irene, the eldest girls, all stood near the Queen with downcast eyes, but Alix, the youngest, gazed forlornly across the room as her grandmother clutched her tiny hand in hers, seated together.

A quiet storm still brewed both inside Windsor Palace and outside in the gardens that were frozen over as winter had brought forth more of its icy winds into the New Year. Still, the dark clouds that hung over the young princesses could never block them from their grandmother's maternal sunlight.

As he emerged from the dark veil covering him behind the camera obscura, the elderly photographer pursed his lips, not quite satisfied with the daguerreotype. His royal clients remained nonetheless patient as he adjusted the lenses of his contraption, as time could never be an issue when it was no longer being perceived.

It seemed like December was yesterday, but its essence was drained. There had been no laughter on Christmas Day. Snow angels had lost their wings. No one shivered, they were numb from the cold.

When they had left the Neues Palais in Darmstadt to run into the comforting arms of their illustrious Grandmama-Queen, it seemed like time had stopped back home. How strange one could feel when everything changed, but nothing showed any evidence of it.

Their mother's room had been left as is. The Grand Duchess of Hesse always kept a hefty pile of papers for writing letters on her study, with ink stains splattered across the surface. Her children's toys littered her room's floor, as she loved seeing them during playtime. Curtains covered all the windows except for two, helping with the grand duchess' frequent migraines. Her favorite book of compositions was still opened on her piano to one of her most cherished pieces, Frédéric Chopin's 'Funeral March'.

It was the piece that played during her funeral procession.

To have seen how dedicated she was to nursing her children and her husband when the epidemic swept their household, how she immediately sent her daughter Elisabeth away to England to avoid catching the dreaded illness, how she patiently took care of everyone despite her weakening state, how she cradled her youngest daughter Marie's lifeless body when she succumbed to the sickness, the way she gasped her last breath when the typhoid fever finally caught up to her...

Nobody could have predicted the sudden passing of Grand Duchess Alice.

It left her husband widowed and devastated, her surviving children crushed with grief and her people, the Hessians who had adopted the English princess as one of their own, without their beloved grand duchess.

Shifting on her seat, Princess Alix looked up at her grandmother. In this moment, this was not the woman whose dominion expanded across the globe, this was a mother grieving the loss of her daughter, the first of her children to have died.

Yet, since before she could remember, the young princess had always seen her grandmama clad in black crêpe gowns with no jewelry and no corset, her brown locks hidden under a simple white cap. The Queen seemed to be in a perpetual state of mourning, ever since the death of her husband, Prince Albert.

Alix herself had never known her grandpapa, but her mama had always spoken fondly of him and hung a few of his portraits on the walls of the Neues Palais. She credited him with everything good in her life; her marriage to Grand Duke Louis, her liberal views on politics and child-rearing, her knowledge on managing the household's finances, etc. Grandpapa was more than a man, he was a saint.

But the princess didn't need for her mother to be remembered as a saint for her to miss her warm presence. Her mama didn't deserve to die, but she had often wished it during her life, which Alix had never understood why.

Her sister Victoria had told her that Mama was forever saddened by the passing of poor Friedrich— or Frittie, their brother who had been born after Ernie and before Alix herself. She was still young when Frittie had his accident, but Alix remembered hearing her mother's horrific screech when she found the boy's unconscious body on the terrasse below the grand duchess' room, where he fell.

The doctors couldn't save him. Mama had told Papa that they were 'cursed', but nobody told Alix what this curse entailed. All she knew was that Frittie had died quickly and it changed her mother for the rest of her life.

The princess was only six years of age, but she had always remembered her mama as a somber, highly religious woman with a poor heart. Now that she was gone, Alix finally understood why her mother had wanted to die with Frittie; she felt like life couldn't go on without her son, and she had probably felt the same way when Marie— whom they affectionately called 'May'— passed.

Alix barely remembered Frittie, but the memory of her parents announcing her little sister's death was fresh in her mind. Her golden-haired playmate with chubby cheeks that dimpled when she smiled, the little girl with whom she shared a room and spent all her time with in the nursery under the watchful eye of their beloved nurse Orchie... She was up in Heaven with dear Mama.

Grandmama's grip tightened around Alix's hand, as if she instinctively sensed her sorrow.

The princess looked back ahead of her. The royal photographer had assumed his position back behind his camera obscura. Her father, the grand duke, loomed in the background with the Queen's ladies-in-waiting and some of Alix's aunts and uncles.

Grandmama had told her that this portrait was important to signify the change that was happening in their lives. Not only were they united through loss, but also through family. The Queen was the sun and she had now welcomed new, lost planets into her orbit.

From this day forward, Alix knew that she, her sisters and her brother would now become Grandmama's children.

But nothing replaces a mother's love.

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