She Waited 30 Years to Be Empress She Got 99 Days Vicky, Empress Frederick

In March 1888, a dying man ascended to the most powerful throne in Europe. Frederick III, the new German Emperor, could not speak. Surgeons cut a hole in his throat to keep him breathing, and he communicated only through handwritten notes passed to ministers and family members standing at his bedside. At his side throughout those desperate weeks stood his wife, Victoria, known to her family as Vicky, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria of Britain and a woman who spent nearly three decades preparing to reform Germany from within.