Bequest
Title Bequest
Length 90 000 words
Genre
Mystery history. A fiction, based on a family myth, and inspired by a gold bracelet inscribed From Victoria R. May 1849.The bracelet contains a miniature of Queen Victoria by Guigilomo Faija, verified by The Royal Archives
Synopsis
In 1848 the young Queen Victoria survived assassination attempts on two successive days, then, on her Prime Minister’s advice, she fled London to enable him to call out troops to suppress protest against her rule.
The royal families of Europe were threatened on all sides. Victoria was pregnant with her sixth child and desperate to survive.
History records that the English throne prevailed despite revolution, successive abdications across Europe and the clandestine enthronement of Austria’s new young Emperor Franz Joseph. But in her days of doubting who were the friends Victoria trusted in her urgent need for an escape route?
The author’s bracelet indicates it was indeed, a protector with a slender wrist.
As cousins from poor households Prince Albert and Victoria R did not have private funds. There were no Swiss accounts such as saved the necks of French nobility in previous generations. Princess Clementine d’Orléans , Victoria’s cousin and dear friend, was forced to flee her native France for Vienna. Victoria devised an escape plan, then, in the final weeks of 1848 her life depended on the loyalty and tenacity of Anna, a young Austrian nursemaid from peasant stock.
This novel is her story.
The evidence that supports the myth is the gift of thanks given by Victoria to Clementine. It was passed on to its appropriate heirs and in 1938, when the Nazi forces seize her home, Bettina Mendl buried the bracelet in her garden, she used the old Victorian code to access the Swiss account and escaped to a fragile safety in Australia.
In 1950 she returned to Vienna to dig the treasure up. It was intact. I know because I have it . Bettina Mendl was my mother. Phyllis McDuff
